When Mortal Kombat took arcades by storm in the early 90's, it spawned an endless sea of clones that looked to cash in on the violent fighting game series' success. Where Street Fighter's success spawned many pixel-art fighting games from Japanese developers, Mortal Kombat inspired countless western-developed violent fighting games with digitized actors.
While Capcom's 2D fighters had plenty of healthy competition in the way of SNK's stable of excellent fighting game series, Mortal Kombat pretty much went unopposed within its niche throughout the entire decade for one simple reason: almost every single MK clone ever developed sucked ASS.
And I don't just mean that most MK clones failed to best the game they were looking to emulate. Oh, no. By and large every single one of them was straight-up awful in every way, many of them featuring borderline broken gameplay and failing to get any aspect of the genre right. Stiff controls, horrendous sound design and character animation, braindead AI for CPU opponents, laughable fatality design, stages that were comprised of stitched-together photographic elements... etc. MK clones basically became a joke within the industry while Ed Boon and his team kept cranking out one successful MK sequel after another.
So... what gives? How did NOBODY else manage to make a halfway decent digitized-actor fighting game?
Personally, I chalk it up to the fact that the fighting game genre was really the domain of Japanese developers at that time. Mortal Kombat was never as polished or playable as its Japanese contemporaries in the gameplay department, and its success was largely due to its shock value and eye-catching graphical presentation. The problem with most MK clones was that they were simply trying to ape that shock value and little else. While MK couldn't stand up to most Japanese fighters in the competitive gameplay department, it definitely held its own in terms of character design, stage design, and audiovisual spectacle. Nearly all MK clones looked and sounded like pure garbage when held up next to MK, the very game that they were seeking to emulate.
Hell, even a talented studio like Naughty Dog managed to make a garbage-tier MK clone (Way of the Warrior on 3DO).
I've always had a fascination with these MK clones, so I'm gonna post some links below if you want to look into the subject further. It's pretty interesting.
Related Links
While Capcom's 2D fighters had plenty of healthy competition in the way of SNK's stable of excellent fighting game series, Mortal Kombat pretty much went unopposed within its niche throughout the entire decade for one simple reason: almost every single MK clone ever developed sucked ASS.
And I don't just mean that most MK clones failed to best the game they were looking to emulate. Oh, no. By and large every single one of them was straight-up awful in every way, many of them featuring borderline broken gameplay and failing to get any aspect of the genre right. Stiff controls, horrendous sound design and character animation, braindead AI for CPU opponents, laughable fatality design, stages that were comprised of stitched-together photographic elements... etc. MK clones basically became a joke within the industry while Ed Boon and his team kept cranking out one successful MK sequel after another.
So... what gives? How did NOBODY else manage to make a halfway decent digitized-actor fighting game?
Personally, I chalk it up to the fact that the fighting game genre was really the domain of Japanese developers at that time. Mortal Kombat was never as polished or playable as its Japanese contemporaries in the gameplay department, and its success was largely due to its shock value and eye-catching graphical presentation. The problem with most MK clones was that they were simply trying to ape that shock value and little else. While MK couldn't stand up to most Japanese fighters in the competitive gameplay department, it definitely held its own in terms of character design, stage design, and audiovisual spectacle. Nearly all MK clones looked and sounded like pure garbage when held up next to MK, the very game that they were seeking to emulate.
Hell, even a talented studio like Naughty Dog managed to make a garbage-tier MK clone (Way of the Warrior on 3DO).
I've always had a fascination with these MK clones, so I'm gonna post some links below if you want to look into the subject further. It's pretty interesting.
Related Links
