Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Mortal Kombat Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution L A N DM A R K V I DE O G A M E S The Landmark Video Games book series is the first in the English language in which each book addresses a specific video game or video game series in depth, examining it in the light of a variety of approaches, including game design, genre, form, content, meanings, and its context within video game his- tory. The specific games or game series chosen are historically significant and influential games recognized not only for their quality of gameplay but also for setting new standards, introducing new ideas, incorporating new technol- ogy, or otherwise changing the course of a genre or area of video game history. The Landmark Video Games book series hopes to provide an intimate and detailed look at the history of video games through a study of exemplars that have paved the way and set the course that others would follow or emulate, and that became an important part of popular culture. Myst and Riven: The World of the D’ni by Mark J. P. Wolf Silent Hill: The Terror Engine by Bernard Perron DOOM: SCARYDARKFAST by Dan Pinchbeck Tempest: Geometries of Play by Judd Ethan Ruggill and Ken S. McAllister Mortal Kombat: Games of Death by David Church Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Mortal Kombat G A M E S O F D E A T H D AV I D C H U R C H University of Michigan Press Ann Arbor Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Copyright © 2022 by David Church Some rights reserved This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-N onCommercial- NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Note to users: A Creative Commons license is only valid when it is applied by the person or entity that holds rights to the licensed work. Works may contain components (e.g., photographs, illustrations, or quotations) to which the rightsholder in the work cannot apply the license. It is ultimately your responsibility to independently evaluate the copyright status of any work or component part of a work you use, in light of your intended use. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons. org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ For questions or permissions, please contact um.press.perms@umich.edu Published in the United States of America by the University of Michigan Press Manufactured in the United States of America Printed on acid- free paper First published February 2022 A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-i n- Publication data has been applied for. ISBN 978-0 -4 72- 07522-5 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0 -4 72- 05522-7 (paper : alk. paper) ISBN 978- 0- 472-9 0262- 0 (open access e-book) DOI: https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677 Cover: Bitplex, “Mortal Kombat 1 (1992) Reimagined as a 3D Game!” (2019). Courtesy of Bitplex. Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Contents Acknowledgments vii Introduction: ABACABB 1 One Ludic Precursors and Generic Innovations 9 Two Cinematic Influences and Cultural Politics 41 Three Mortal Kontroversy; or, Dispatches from the Console Wars 71 Four Imitation, Derivation, and Reinvention 97 Notes 123 Glossary 129 Mortal Kombat Ludography 135 Bibliography 139 Index 153 Digital materials related to this title can be found on the Fulcrum platform via the following citable URL: https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Acknowledgments First, my thanks to Bernard Perron and Mark J. P. Wolf for supporting this book’s inclusion in the Landmark Video Games series and for being such reliable guides during my first academic venture into the field of game studies. I greatly appreciate Christopher Dreyer, Kevin Rennells, and the good folks at the University of Michigan Press for bearing with me along the way. Daniel Burton-R ose very generously offered feedback and additional research suggestions on the sections about East Asian history in chapter 2, although any errors are my own. The external reviewers of the full manuscript also provided wonderfully useful recommendations, espe- cially to nuance my discussion of the games’ representational politics. Thanks as well to John Tobias and Daniel Pesina for answering several of my questions as I worked on this project. (If my preteen self had known that I would one day be in contact with both Mortal Kombat’s cocreator and the original Johnny Cage, my head likely would have exploded!) Image permissions were generously provided by Bitplex; Daniel Pesina; Scott Morrison, James M. Doré, and Mehpara Suleman at Incred- ible Technologies; and Steve Harris at EGM Media. Any cases of acciden- tal omission will be corrected in future editions of the book. There are numerous excellent Mortal Kombat fan sites out there; among those consulted for this project, I must credit the Mortal Kom- bat Wiki, Mortal Kombat Online, the Realm of Mortal Kombat (TRMK), and Mortal Kombat Warehouse. The International Arcade Museum and Killer List of Videogames, and the Cutting Room Floor, were websites with useful additional sources of contextual information. My gratitude Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution to those who scanned and uploaded 1990s- era video game magazines to websites like Retromags and Retro CDN, which allowed me to revisit many magazine issues that I owned as a youth plus many more that I did not. Other fans uploaded behind- the-s cenes footage, comic book scans, and other videos to YouTube, in addition to creating and upload- ing emulated ROMs (read- only memory files) of old fighting games to the Internet Archive. Emulators may not be able to properly recreate the original gaming experience offered by period- era hardware, but they have been invaluable in providing some semblance of gameplay experi- ence for otherwise long- vanished games. A special thanks to Aisha Shelton for loaning me her SEGA Genesis after the cruel discovery that my own semi- broken console and its car- tridges were lost in a renovation of my boyhood bedroom. Logging yet more hours with the Mortal Kombat games on the same console upon which I long ago played the games was more than an exercise in mis- placed nostalgia. I also revisited the original trilogy through play on vin- tage arcade cabinets whenever available, and in attenuated form on the Arcade1Up replica machine. Finally, my heartfelt gratitude to my parents for their patience with me during my preteen Mortal Kombat infatuation. I hope this book’s attempt to take such games seriously will help to have made it all some- how justifiable in the end. viii • Acknowledgments Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Introduction ABACABB There is no knowledge that is not power. —M ortal Kombat 3 (1995) attract mode —R alph Waldo Emerson (1862) Since its premiere as a coin- operated arcade game in October 1992, the Mortal Kombat game series, co- created by Chicago-b ased Midway employ- ees John Tobias and Ed Boon, has collectively sold over 35 million units for home consoles, spawned a transmedia franchise earning well over $5 billion worldwide (Makuch 2015), and was inducted into the Strong National Museum of Play’s World Video Game Hall of Fame in 2019. Still, outside its instrumental use in a plethora of psychological- effects papers, the Mortal Kombat series has received relatively little academic attention commensurate with its enormous cultural influence—n ot despite but precisely because of its notoriety in popularizing both the fighting game genre and widespread anxieties over video game violence. As Rachael Hutchinson (2007, 238) observes, fighting games already comprise a cul- turally “low” genre among video games and are often denounced “in terms of simple entertainment, lacking narrative power and encourag- ing an apathetic and passive attitude to violence,” an association that this series doubles down on with its spectacular geysers of blood and viscera. Hence, it is perhaps no coincidence that the less overtly violent Street Fighter series (Capcom [JP], 1987–) 1 has earned far more scholarly Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution notice to date (Surman 2007; Harper 2014; Gregersen 2016; Goto-J ones 2016b; Ware 2016; Skolnik and Conway 2017; Hutchinson 2019; Patter- son 2020). Upon the release of its home ports in September 1993, Mor- tal Kombat’s title alone became a convenient shorthand for everything supposedly wrong with the rapidly growing medium, especially as coin- operated arcade games increasingly gave way to the market penetration of 16- bit home consoles and beyond. To video game historian Raiford Guins (2014, 165, 240), for example, the rise of fighting games in the Mortal Kombat vein marked a fall in the creativity and generic diversity of earlier arcade games, heralding the beginning of the end for a coin- o p market whose whimpering decline was masked by the enthusiastic adoption of home gaming systems. As the primary object of a nationwide controversy in the United States centered on the entry of violent media content into the home (see chapter 3), the series helped politicize the already- suspect medium of video games as a growing threat, much to the chagrin of many industry insiders and everyday gamers alike. But to those of us for whom the macabre tone and sensationalistic violence of the Mortal Kombat series served as an initiatory experience into the unseemly social space of arcades, a marker of youthful rebel- lion against parental strictures, and an entrée into the rapidly expanding world of home consoles, Guins’s declension narrative is certainly subject to competing nostalgias. I can attest that for a boy of approximately ten to thirteen years old during the 1992–9 5 height of the Mortal Kombat craze, there was no other series of games with the same capacity to fire one’s imagination at the arcade or alongside the horror movies that my friends and I avidly consumed during weekend sleepovers. Through revisiting the games and their historical moment for this book, I have even sur- prised myself at the number of dredged- up memories attesting to just how intensely Mortal Kombat became a part of my life during those transitional years from childhood to adolescence— from the shameful act of occa- sionally pilfering a small bill from my parents’ wallets to supplement my arcade- bound excursions (sorry, Mom and Dad!) to crudely storyboard- ing hypothetical sequels whose new characters and their special moves my younger brother and I would acrobatically practice on our backyard trampoline. I say this not to suggest that there was anything especially dis- tinctive or idiosyncratic about my love of Mortal Kombat during those few years, but rather that these games held a deep fascination for millions of young Americans during the early to mid-1 990s, and this book attempts to sketch the contours of how such a controversial “bad object” moved from cult status to cultural phenomenon in the United States. 2 • Mortal Kombat Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution As such, this book does not argue that Mortal Kombat is as canoni- cal and groundbreaking as the hit fighting game with which it was ini- tially developed to compete, Capcom’s Street Fighter II: The World Warrior (1991). In fact, throughout the series’ lifespan, Mortal Kombat’s battle for industrial success has often been spurred by being one step behind many competing developments in the fighting genre, especially those introduced in games imported from Japan. I will instead posit here that the first few Mortal Kombat games differentiated themselves from their competitors through the very same traits that eventually led to the series’ own late- 1990s decline in popularity: outlandish violence, elaborate world-b uilding, and cinematic aesthetics. Nor will this book deem Mortal Kombat a great work of art, for it not only predated the post-2 000s “games- as-a rt” debates,2 but, more impor- tantly, it also exemplifies a period when video games lacked First Amend- ment rights as “protected speech” and were thus subject to potential government intervention, the threat of which quickly led to the imple- mentation of the Electronic Software Rating Board (ESRB) in 1994. Although not deliberately trying to court such an outsize response from would- be reformers, it should be readily apparent that the game’s low- brow appeals to gore and shock value are vigorously opposed to con- ventional standards of “artworthiness” in the first place, even as quality gameplay would still separate this series from its more crassly motivated imitators (see chapter 4). If Mortal Kombat remains important beyond simply the generic history of fighting games, it is also a landmark game from a moment when public policy attempted to intervene in the reme- diation of cinematic aesthetics within interactive digital games and in the transition of public gaming spaces into the domestic sphere. As a scholar of exploitation cinema (i.e., low-b udget, often indepen- dently produced genre films using sensationalistic subject matter and bodily spectacle as their main appeal), I cannot help seeing strong par- allels between Mortal Kombat and the martial- arts films that inspired its original development (see chapter 2), in addition to how the lurid inclu- sion of animated blood and “fatalities” wrested attention away from mar- ket leaders while further inspiring a wave of poor- quality imitators. As we will see across this book, the extent to which Mortal Kombat prioritized such end- of-r ound “finishing moves,” effectively reorienting the genre away from the primacy of in- round gameplay— that is, shifting the focus from fighting games to killing games— has remained a point of conten- tion among both moral entrepreneurs and fighting game enthusiasts. Moreover, the many cinematic allusions that self-d escribed “kung-f u Introduction: ABACABB • 3 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution movie fanatic” John Tobias included in the games (Hickey 2018, 178), paired with Mortal Kombat’s oft- imitated use of live actors to become pho- torealistic sprites, begs a methodological approach combining cinema studies and game studies. This will allow us to unpack the web of ludic, cinematic, and cultural influences that have intersected in Mortal Kom- bat’s form and content— a patchwork that literally “fleshes out” its viscer- ally brutal gameplay and gothically dark diegesis. That said, the limited scope of this book focuses primarily on what I call the “Mortal Moment,” or the brief period between 1992–9 5 when moralistic hand-w ringing around Midway’s original trilogy of games (henceforth abbreviated, after their first mention, following the games’ own stylization, as MKI, MKII [1993], MK3 [1995], and so on) spawned widespread sales and cross- media franchising, engendering a fully fledged media phenomenon. Although the later games in the franchise (1997– ) are not without their respective points of interest and continue to sport a robust fandom as new entries are released, I will also explain why so much of what made the original trilogy so distinctive to those of my gaming generation was lost or at least displaced as the series con- tinued across the next three decades. Many of the series’ continuing fans will no doubt disagree with me on that front— and my predomi- nant interest in the “Mortal Moment” is admittedly colored by my own period of personal investment in the series— but I will largely leave Mor- tal Kombat’s later entries and their ongoing fandom as topics for others to unpack. Hence, I have tried to write a short and accessible volume that will provide a useful introduction for media scholars but also add something substantial to fans’ contextual understanding of at least the first three games. In chapter 1, I situate the first three Mortal Kombat games within their generic context by briefly exploring the historical genealogy of 2D games featuring hand- to-h and combat, leading up to the 1991 introduction of Street Fighter II as the first “modern” fighting game. By tracing the early divergences between boxing, beat- em-u p, and fighting games, we will see how the latter genre’s conventions gradually coalesced into the model that the Mortal Kombat games would adapt and exploit for their own pur- poses. After discussing the initial development and gameplay of MKI, I will explore the three most significant generic developments popular- ized by the series’ earliest entries: the use of finishing moves (fatalities), the incorporation of “Easter eggs” and other secrets into the game archi- tecture, and the use of pixilated actors as digitized sprites. Overall, then, the first chapter will focus on the specific elements of gameplay that 4 • Mortal Kombat Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution differentiated Mortal Kombat from its competitors in the coin-o p market, especially in the context of the American arcade as a liminal social space. Chapter 2 expands beyond the photorealism of the pixilated actors as a means of opening up Mortal Kombat’s distinctly cinematic qualities but with particular focus on its narrative content. Most of the games’ fram- ing narratives, however scant at first glance, are variations on a theme: a no-h olds-b arred fighting tournament forms the stakes for an epic battle between earthly good versus otherworldly evil for the ultimate salvation of the world, pitting supernatural forces against each other in a series of brutal clashes. In detouring through not only Hong Kong wuxia and kung fu films but also the game’s origins as an abandoned vehicle for actor Jean- Claude Van Damme, we find many of the cultural reference points that inspired John Tobias’s development of the Mortal Kombat story and characters. By delving into the history and politics of martial-a rts cinema as a transnationally circulating form, I will argue that Midway’s use of actual martial artists as actors thereby gains greater resonance as an American-m ade game drawing upon a mishmash of East Asian influ- ences. To wit, Mortal Kombat evinces orientalism as an inherently biased system of knowledge that claims to understand “the Orient” as an exotic, dangerous realm onto which Western-c olonialist fantasies and anxiet- ies can be easily projected (Said 1978). Moreover, by comparing Mortal Kombat to the types of sensationalistic exploitation films that inspired its imagery, we can better contextualize the stereotypical racial and gender representations flagged by early critics of the franchise. Although I do not see such criticism as wholly unfounded, I suggest here that the very transnationality of the games’ influences also complicates (but does not absolve) any simple condemnation of the games’ roots in an orientalist imaginary. Rather, the strong influence of fighting games and martial- arts cinema indicates “the inescapability of Asian associations” or a sense of “the Asiatic” with which “players of all backgrounds” can ludically engage (Patterson 2020, 27). Whereas chapter 2 explores Mortal Kombat’s lore-fi lled diegesis as heavily influenced by martial- arts cinema, chapter 3 examines the con- troversy that the game’s photorealistic violence provoked. As an impor- tant episode in ongoing debates over video game violence, the gov- ernmental and journalistic debates around Mortal Kombat have already been explored in other histories of video games, but this chapter delves more deeply into some of the specific anxieties that charged this crisis moment. By comparing Mortal Kombat to the other two games singled out in U.S. Senate hearings, Night Trap (Digital Pictures [U.S.], 1992) Introduction: ABACABB • 5 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution and Lethal Enforcers (Konami [JP], 1992), we will see how all three games, despite their obvious generic differences, share distinctly cinematic qualities that rendered their violent content (albeit tame by today’s standards) all the more alarming by threatening to collapse together disparate media forms: movies and video games. Meanwhile, the contro- versy was furthered by the collapsing of disreputable arcade spaces into the family home as these games were ported onto 16- bit home consoles, with the arcade fidelity of violent content serving as not only a highly visible test of these new consoles’ technological affordances but also a referendum within the gaming community on whether Mortal Kombat’s value could be separated from its reputation for gore.3 By exploring the critical reception of MKI and MKII ports by both Nintendo and SEGA amid the birth of the video game rating system, we will see how crucial the Street Fighter II versus Mortal Kombat battle was in the so-c alled console wars of the 1990s (Kline, Dyer- Witheford, and de Peuter 2003; Harris 2014), and how these industrial conflicts over technological superiority and market share became caught up in wider cultural anxieties. The chapter concludes with a brief look at the media- effects research that continued using the Mortal Kombat games in psychological studies even after the public phase of the controversy had died down, and how confir- mation bias has often exaggerated the purported effects of violent game content. If chapter 3 looks at the anxieties surrounding Mortal Kombat’s intro- duction to the domestic sphere, chapter 4 explores how the franchise subsequently capitalized on its notoriety to promote a cross- media glut of increasingly family-f riendly spin-o ffs and merchandising, including a stage show, live-a ction movies, comic books, and an animated series. This chapter also examines the many post– MKII clone games whose exploit- ative imitation of a successful franchise both cheapened the brand and provided inadvertent inspiration for later Mortal Kombat sequels. With the late-1 990s rise of more advanced game consoles, whose 3D graphi- cal capabilities rivaled that of arcade machines, the Mortal Kombat series eventually followed the fighting genre’s larger trends toward 3D model- ing and different modes of gameplay, abandoning the coin-o p market after Mortal Kombat 4 (Midway, 1997) while branching into spin- off con- sole games in other genres. This final chapter thus explores how mar- ket oversaturation by both ancillary texts and cheap imitators killed off the “Mortal Moment.” It also looks at how the later Mortal Kombat fran- chise compensated for its awkwardly belated transition into the realm of 3D fighting games by reinvesting in transmedial storytelling and cross- 6 • Mortal Kombat Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution generic exploration, even as the gameplay and overall aesthetic of its flagship entries became increasingly indistinguishable from generic peers. The chapter concludes with a brief look at the most recent entries in the franchise to date and how they have attempted to reboot the series by returning to Mortal Kombat’s original 2D fighting aesthetic. Overall, then, Mortal Kombat stands as a game series that undeniably achieved fame and courted controversy by delivering previously unseen levels of realistic violence, helping popularize the fighting genre in the 1990s. Yet, even beyond its blood- spattered aesthetic, these games also have an important and frequently overlooked place amid several major transitions in video game history: the creation of industry self-r egulation standards, the convergence of cinema and video games, the populariza- tion of 16- bit home consoles, the shift from 2D to 3D game engines, and so on. If Mortal Kombat once seemed to offer little more than a gory gim- mick, it has since become a well- established landmark in video game his- tory, its one- time notoriety now tamed by familiarity and longevity. But by tracing its place in a web of cultural, generic, and industrial influences, we can continue to unlock its more occulted secrets. Introduction: ABACABB • 7 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution one Ludic Precursors and Generic Innovations It would not be a stretch to argue that Mortal Kombat (hereafter MKI, et al.) has become one of the most iconic examples of the fighting game genre, but to understand how this came to pass, we need to first back- track into the history of that genre and discern how some of its more enduring conventions were formalized. After briefly examining some of the early trends leading up to the breakthrough success of Street Fighter II: The World Warrior, I will describe the origins and development of MKI at Midway during 1991– 92 as an attempt to take on Capcom’s coin- op smash hit through deliberate markers of product differentiation. As we will see both here and in chapter 4, the Mortal Kombat series has often lagged one step behind major developments in the fighting genre, espe- cially those introduced by Japanese game designers, but it is precisely this underdog status that has also spurred Midway’s drive for creative dis- tinction. Indeed, had Street Fighter II not already been the market leader in coin-o p fighting games by 1992, it is doubtful that MKI would have seemed so strikingly different in the first place. Moreover, as Tara Fickle (2019) and Christopher B. Patterson (2020) argue, the competition between such “global games” cannot be wholly separated from longer histories of imperialist competition, such as Japan’s post– World War II/ post– Occupation recuperation of its global reputation via a “soft power” program of industrial exportation that achieved market dominance in goods like computing software and digital games. I will focus on three defining features that initially distinguished MKI from its competitors in the arcade market: the potential enactment of fatalities and other finishing moves as spectacular endings to each match; 9 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution the incorporation of “Easter eggs,” including hidden characters, levels, and in- jokes, all lurking beyond the not- so-s ecret methods of performing the finishing moves; and the use of pixilated sprites based on the pho- tographic capture of live martial artists. None of these supposed innova- tions were unprecedented in their own right, and yet Midway’s refine- ment and combination of these ingredients in MKI and Mortal Kombat II proved unexpectedly successful competition against their generic kin. The Early History of 2D Fighting Games Popular histories of video gaming often cite Heavyweight Champ (SEGA [JP], 1976) as the first coin-o perated fighting game (Donovan 2010, 221). Its large, monochromatic boxer characters fight from a stationary stance against a simple black screen, each positioned beneath a point coun- ter tracking the number of successfully landed punches. Each crude avatar (or player-c haracter) is controlled with a one-h anded interface resembling a red boxing glove fixed to a lever on the front of the arcade cabinet. Grasping the metal handle inside the “glove,” each player can manipulate the mechanical arm up or down for high or low attacks, while pushing the handle in or out to strike. Although it might be better classified today as a boxing game, the side- view profiles of each fighter and the capacity for two-p layer, mano a mano play are both important precursors to the fighting games that would follow. Later boxing games, however, would largely follow the model popularized by Nintendo of Japan’s Punch- Out!! (1984) and Super Punch-O ut!! (1985), which situates the player’s second-p erson perspective from behind the back of their avatar, looking up at the facing opponent, as more traditional joystick and button controls allow one’s avatar to move back and forth, in and out, within one half of the ring, dodging and landing various punches. SEGA’s 1987 reboot of Heavyweight Champ would, for example, combine the mechanical-a rm interface of the original game with this newly popu- larized camera perspective. Among other notable precursors, the sword-fi ghting game Warrior (Vectorbeam [U.S.], 1979) presents close-q uarters combat between two armor-c lad fighters in a sword- and-s orcery setting (at least according to the cabinet artwork). Gameplay itself consists of two wire-f rame fight- ers, seen from a bird’s- eye overhead view, as they start from different corners of a rectangular arena with two pits in the center and stairs cir- cling around the outside edges. This fixed backdrop provides a crude illusion of depth, for players can walk or be knocked into the pits if 10 • Mortal Kombat Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution not careful— an early version of the automatic- loss hazards built into the arenas in some later fighting games (such as the “ring outs” in 3D fighting games like Virtua Fighter [SEGA, 1993] or the “death traps” in Mortal Kombat: Deception [Midway, 2004]). Whereas one cannot block or defend against counterattacks in the original Heavyweight Champ, War- rior’s player can at least parry swords until a direct hit occurs, at which point the losing player’s avatar dies and regenerates in their respective corner. As it coalesced into a genre unto itself, the fighting game would become increasingly marked by both defensive and offensive capabilities (Begy 2012, 212). Meanwhile, another generic thread focused on hand-t o- hand com- bat was developing into what would colloquially become known as the “beat- em- up” or “brawler” game.1 In one of the earliest examples, Chuck Norris Superkicks (Xonox [U.S.], 1983; later retitled Kung Fu Superkicks), the player as the titular action star travels toward a monastery to rescue a captured man, earning different martial- arts belts and moves along the way. The avatar, clad in a white gi, advances through a vertically scroll- ing over-l evel, which is periodically interrupted by a side-v iew battle screen. In the battle screen, he must move both horizontally and verti- cally in fighting against a handful of progressively difficult opponents, who appear from the screen edges and can each be dispatched with a clean blow. Although the second- generation home consoles for which the game was developed (e.g., Atari 2600, ColecoVision, Commodore 64) have very simple graphical capabilities, the game nevertheless sports a narrative progression through various battle levels toward a clearly defined goal of saving a specific non- playable character (NPC). The PC-D OS game Bushido: Way of the Warrior (Ebenel Enterprises [U.S.], 1983) is more graphically advanced but also involves a series of side-v iew battle screens in which the player must use unarmed combat to defeat a handful of katana- and shuriken- armed ninjas on each screen, advancing through different non- scrolling levels of a Japanese dojo but all the while susceptible to a one- hit loss. The following year, the coin- op title Kung-F u Master (Irem [JP], 1984) would further develop this generic direction in its story of a martial artist who must fight his way through five side- scrolling levels, each culminating with a boss character, as he advances up the “Devil’s Temple” to rescue his captured wife. Inspired by the multilevel progres- sion of Bruce Lee’s posthumously finished film Game of Death (Bruce Lee and Robert Clouse, 1978), described in more detail in chapter 2, Kung-F u Master allows the avatar to punch and kick his way through a Ludic Precursors and Generic Innovations • 11 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution plethora of generically indistinguishable opponents (e.g., jumpsuit-c lad fighters, snake-fi lled pottery), with the ability to jump over or crouch under projectiles as a defensive tactic. Unlike earlier games, the avatar and boss characters each have a health meter and can sustain multiple hits before death— an important influence upon later fighting games. However, as a beat-e m- up game, Kung-F u Master’s side-s crolling format and swarms of easily dispatched enemies per level differs from the one- opponent-a t- a-t ime quality of proper fighting games. Subsequent beat- em- up games, such as Double Dragon (Technōs Japan, 1987), Golden Axe (SEGA, 1989), and Final Fight (Capcom, 1989), follow suit in stressing the avatar’s endurance in fighting off innumerable enemies (hence the alternate nickname “brawler”), and would not only incorporate usable offensive objects (such as weapons or barrels) into each level but also feature heavily raked (i.e., inclined upward and away) levels whose iso- metric perspective creates the illusion of depth through some degree of vertical avatar movement in conjunction with the overall side-s crolling (Gaboury 2016, 362). Overall, though, this focus on melee combat meant that beat- em-u p games increasingly split off into a different generic path from other fighting games by the late 1980s, with two- player cooperative modes far more common in beat- em-u ps than two- player competitive gameplay. If Kung- Fu Master charted this increasingly divergent branch, another arcade game from that same year, Karate Champ (Technōs Japan, 1984), represented a different but related generic trajectory. Set within a series of non- scrolling karate arenas (a dojo, a stadium, etc.) as one advances through different stages of a one- on-o ne martial- arts circuit, the player(s) use a dual-j oystick interface to perform a variety of spe- cial moves enabled by two- handed combinations of the four directions on each of the joysticks (see fig. 13– 14). Not only does the game focus on the mastery of specialized moves—a lbeit rooted in the twin joystick controls instead of the single joystick and multiple-b utton combinations endemic to later fighting games— but the game also determines the win- ner of each match through a best-o f- three system. And while later fight- ing games typically use per-r ound health meters, Karate Champ stages its matches as a point- based system, with the first landed blow earning a half point and two subsequent full-p oint hits winning the match. It is also dis- tinguished by its use of bonus stages, such as striking and evading flying projectiles, breaking a stack of boards, or knocking out a charging bull with a well-t imed blow; such interstitial stages would carry into later fight- ing games, such as the “Bonus Stages” in Street Fighter and its sequels, in 12 • Mortal Kombat Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution addition to MKI’s “Test Your Might” game (in which the player quickly taps the buttons to charge up their avatar’s power for breaking materials of increasing hardness). Other fighting games made refinements of these basic elements, but after the spate of games beginning with Karate Champ, they increasingly featured some form of one- on- one martial- arts combat. Karateka (Brø- derbund [U.S.], 1984) combines one-o n-o ne combat with the use of a health meter, but unlike either the beat-e m- up’s side-s crolling progres- sion toward the terminus of a given level or Karate Champ’s stationary are- nas, Karateka features an arena that horizontally tracks from side to side along a flat plane as the combatants advance on each other, using back- ground imagery to provide one- point perspective for the foreground action (Sharp 2014, 108). This use of one-p oint perspective would become a convention in most of the later 2D fighting games. Karateka is also distinguished by its early use of rotoscoping, with the hand-d rawn character animation modeled from video of a live martial artist—a tech- nique that Karateka designer Jordan Mechner would later refine for his adventure game Prince of Persia (Brøderbund, 1989). Although Karateka follows the model of single-h it wins or losses used in earlier games like Warrior, Yie Ar Kung-F u (Konami [JP], 1985) follows Kung- Fu Master in using a health meter— in this case, a segmented one in which each character can sustain eight hits before losing. Unlike the battles between unnamed red and white fighters in Karate Champ, Yie Ar Kung-F u also features a succession of different opponents in each match, each with their own distinct name, appearance, and weapon. Overall, this advancement through a succession of distinctly different characters with their own fighting styles would soon become a generic trademark of the fighting game, along with the following traits: an option for two- player competitive play, the use of an in- round health meter, a multi- round/best- of format for each overarching match, the existence of both standard and special moves, and (typically) some small amount of fram- ing narrative to motivate the match progression (Begy 2012, 210; Surman 2007, 208; Harper 2014, 13). These traits would all go into Capcom’s 1987 Street Fighter, which boasts larger sprites and better graphical capabilities than most of its precursors but whose two playable characters, Ryu and Ken, are still basi- cally “palette swaps” of each other (i.e., sprites of identical visual design, apart from different coloration), sharing the same standard and special moves (including the Hadōken “fireball,” perhaps the first palm-fi red projectile of magical energy seen in a fighting game), and separated by Ludic Precursors and Generic Innovations • 13 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution little more than hair and gi colors. Specific joystick movements needed to perform the special moves were not marked on the cabinet (much as Mortal Kombat’s special moves would not be), leaving them up to the play- er’s discovery, and the cabinet’s original incarnation sported a kinetic interface (designed by Atari) with a joystick and two pressure-s ensitive pads— one each for the avatar’s punches and kicks— that would respond accordingly to light, medium, and heavy contact (fig. 1). After overzeal- ous players began damaging either the pads or the cabinet, however, a revised version of the cabinet replaced the two pads with a six- button array corresponding to each set of three punch and kick commands (Ashcraft 2016). Thus was born not only an interface with multiple but- tons for punches and kicks but also the emphasis on superhuman special moves as a central part of gameplay commanded by such newly numer- ous controls. Until the late 1980s, what we would now consider fighting games were often categorized in gaming magazines like Computer Entertainment under the broad banner of “sports” games, conflating martial arts, box- ing, wrestling, and other full- contact sports as similar athletic endeav- ors. Indeed, Karate Champ’s U.S. publisher, Data East, filed a copyright infringement suit against Epyx, the U.S. publisher of a 1986 port of International Karate (System 3 [JP], 1985), which had been retitled World Karate Championship for the American market. Although a decision was first made in Data East’s favor, an appeals court reversed the decision on the basis that, despite the potentially infringing game’s many similarities in look and feel, the fact that both games were based on a real-w orld sport meant that the underlying concept could not be copyrighted, and thus any competition- based karate game could be expected to share cer- tain commonalities (Kent 2001, 368– 70).2 And yet the shift from seeing one- on- one games rooted in martial- arts combat as fighting games instead of sports games also rested on the growth of diverse in- game character- ization and a framing narrative with Manichean “good versus evil” over- tones. According to Dominic Arsenault (2014, 226), fighting games are best seen as a subset of the larger supergenre of action games, much as, I suggest, martial-a rts films have become seen as a subset of action cinema. Whereas boxing games and some of the earlier martial- arts games have little framing narrative beyond rising through the ranks to become the champion—a motivation shared with all manner of competitive sports— the character dynamics in late- 1980s fighting games increasingly share the beat- em-u p’s loose narrative context of a good-v ersus- evil conflict, 14 • Mortal Kombat Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Fig. 1. Atari’s concept art for Capcom’s original Street Fighter arcade cabinet, with pressure-s ensitive pads to register the strength of the player’s blows. much as martial- arts films are typically fueled by far more than the spirit of wholesome competition (see chapter 2). Street Fighter II vs. Mortal Kombat Capcom’s release of Street Fighter II: The World Warrior (hereafter SFII) into the coin- op market in March 1991 is today considered a pivotal moment for the fighting genre, for the game not only set the standard for all “modern” fighting games but also began drawing players back to arcades at a time when the overall coin-o p market was slumping (Kent 2001, 446; Harper 2014, 11; Skolnik and Conway 2017, 10). The game introduced several major innovations, including a full roster of playable characters, each with their own distinct design, special moves, and array of strengths and weaknesses— vastly widening gameplay strategy beyond simply mas- tering a few preprogrammed moves (fig. 2). The Light, Medium, and Strong attacks also frequently differ from one another in not only speed and strength but also the accompanying animation, allowing different Ludic Precursors and Generic Innovations • 15 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Fig. 2. Large, cartoonish sprites in Street Fighter II, featuring Ryu launching his “palm power” Hadōken fireball as one of his special moves. standard attacks to be more efficient against different opponents. Cap- com had previously used a three- character roster of selectable avatars, each with their own distinct fighting style, in its 1989 beat- em- up Final Fight— initially promoted as a sequel to Street Fighter before its generic distance from a proper fighting game led to Final Fight’s rebranding as a separate series—w hich was therefore an important inspiration for SFII (Gregersen 2016, 65). Each SFII character represents a different nationality in a rather ste- reotypical way, as also conveyed through the background details and music provided in each of their home- field arenas, and the overall game is motivated as a globe-t rotting tournament (as previously seen in Interna- tional Karate) to defeat an evil dictator-c um- boss. Now that certain char- acters would be more effective against others, issues of game balance became far more significant than overcoming the awkward interfaces or unfair advantages in artificial intelligence (AI) seen in some earlier fighting games. Yet, as David Sirlin (2016, 171– 74) suggests, because the different strengths and skill sets offered by different character options make such fighting games inherently “asymmetric” (or imbalanced), a compensatory measure is providing more starting options.3 Guile and Dhalsim, for example, were seen as “unstoppable” in the first iteration 16 • Mortal Kombat Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution of SFII, until the designers corrected such imbalances and added four playable boss characters in the updated version, SFII: Champion Edition, released in spring 1992 (Sushi- X 1993, 36).4 Players may be limited to performing the types of moves, both standard and special, that come programmed into the game’s code, but they are still given more creative and strategic leeway in being able to frequently come back to the Char- acter Select screen to select a new avatar after each match (at least in two- player mode) (Hutchinson 2007, 293– 95). SFII also innovated through its incorporation of simple combos, or unblockable chains of hits that, in this specific game, were largely made possible by the sheer speed of successive close-r ange blows. Following the lead of these circumstantial combos, preprogrammed combo systems would later become coded into many fighting games, including Mortal Kombat 3, as a crucial ingredient of gameplay. Despite the blocking of an opponent’s attacks having existed in fighting games since as early as Karate Champ, the use of the block function (achieved in SFII by push- ing away on the joystick) became more important given the gameplay’s extensive use of long-r ange projectile attacks, to say nothing of the even faster gameplay and enhanced special moves included in its December 1992 update, SFII Turbo: Hyper Fighting. Over its various iterations, SFII also became the first fighting game to inspire competitive tournaments between skilled arcade gamers, effectively bridging intradiegetic and extradiegetic spaces via the tournaments increasingly unfolding in coin- op venues (Skolnik and Conway 2017, 10). Although Capcom’s many updated editions of SFII refined its overall gameplay and helped consolidate its surprising success in the coin-o p market, these new editions were also developed in part to compete with the sudden rise of rivals for coin- op players’ eyeballs and quarters. Fel- low Japanese developers SNK responded with imitators like Fatal Fury (1991) and Art of Fighting (1992), including these and other games in their Neo●Geo Multi Video System arcade units (introduced in 1990), from which players could select from six different SNK games, modularly replaceable with different ROM cartridges as new games were released to arcades. A Neo●Geo home console, also launched in 1990, contained identical processing power, allowing arcade- perfect ports of their fight- ing games, but SNK’s tight proprietary control over their software and hardware meant they did not pose a significant threat to Capcom’s more diversified market strategies. By contrast, Capcom sued their Japanese competitor Data East for copyright infringement over the many simi- larities between SFII and Fighter’s History (1993), in part because Data Ludic Precursors and Generic Innovations • 17 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution East also ported their game to home consoles like the Super Nintendo (Super Famicon) Entertainment System, thus encroaching on console territory already occupied by Capcom’s licensed ports. Given the fact that Data East had previously sued Epyx over infringement on Karate Champ, this reversal of fortunes was rather ironic, but the court decision was quite similar: Capcom used SFII’s 1991 release date and huge popu- larity as evidence that they were first to market with a pioneering game, but Data East ultimately escaped a guilty verdict because their charac- ters were based on various national- cultural stereotypes and preexistent fighting styles that could not be copyrighted in the first place.5 With SFII clones increasingly trying to cash in on Capcom’s success in the coin-o p market, it was perhaps little surprise that a well- established American company would attempt to compete, albeit with more prod- uct differentiation than seen in the SNK and Data East games. By 1991, Midway Games, Mortal Kombat’s Chicago-b ased developer, had become a major force in the arcade world through a combination of success- ful games and industrial consolidation. Midway was founded in 1958 as an amusement machine manufacturer, but it was purchased by Chicago pinball company Bally in 1969. Midway moved into coin-o p video game development in 1973, developed the most popular coin-o p game of 1976 (Sea Wolf), and absorbed Bally’s pinball division in 1981. Both companies were purchased by Chicago-b ased WMS Industries, another old-t ime pinball manufacturer and the parent company of Williams Electronics (creator of Defender, 1980), during the arcade market’s 1988 downturn. Yet Midway’s brand name was so well known at this time that the Williams game development division was absorbed under Midway’s auspices and Bally was dropped from the company name in 1991 (Kent 2001, 7, 101, 137, 144; Budziszewski 2012, 67–6 8; Boothroyd 2012, 409; Ali 2019, 37). The consolidation of Midway/Bally/Williams into a single corpora- tion created a strong pool of talent, including Mortal Kombat designers Ed Boon and John Tobias. Boon began designing pinball games at Wil- liams after graduating with a computer science degree from the Univer- sity of Illinois at Urbana– Champaign, and his first proper programming job was on the coin- op football game High Impact (Midway, 1990) and its sequel. Meanwhile, Tobias, a former student at the American Acad- emy of Art, was an artist at NOW Comics before joining Midway, where he worked as an animator on top- down, multidirectional action shoot- ers like Smash TV (1990) and its follow-u p, Total Carnage (1992) (Kunkel 1993b, 42; Bieniek 1995c, 50– 51; “Mortal’s Master” 1995, 38– 40; “Game Makers” 1996, 34– 36; Kent 2001, 462). Loosely inspired by the Arnold 18 • Mortal Kombat Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Schwarzenegger sci-fi /action film The Running Man (Paul Michael Gla- ser, 1987), Smash TV was a coin- op hit, but Total Carnage was a commercial failure, leading Tobias in a different generic direction (Ali 2019, 55, 62). By their own admission, SFII’s success, in addition to the large size and detail of its character sprites, inspired Boon and Tobias to make a fighting game, but it was not until the producers of the film Universal Sol- dier (Roland Emmerich, 1990) approached Midway’s director of market- ing, Roger Sharpe, to produce a tie- in game featuring rising action star Jean- Claude Van Damme that Boon and Tobias felt justified in pitching their idea to upper management. Yet, despite the Midway team’s hopes to license Van Damme’s likeness to play either a character or himself, the negotiations fell through when Van Damme’s agent demanded a pro- hibitively expensive licensing fee and (perhaps as a negotiating tactic) informed Midway that the star was already signed to a game in develop- ment at SEGA. Determined to make a freestanding fighting game with- out a licensed movie tie-i n, Tobias instead developed a framing narrative involving bits of Chinese mythology combined with tropes from martial- arts films. Using his background as a visual artist and memories of play- ing Karate Champ as a youth, Tobias designed the characters and their backstories, while Boon served as main programmer. Joined by composer and sound designer Dan Forden and background artist John Vogel, the four- man team created MKI in approximately six to ten months—a more compressed schedule than the typical twelve to fourteen months at Mid- way (see LaMancha 1994, 34; Kunkel 1994, 38–3 9; Quan 1994b, 26; Kent 2001, 462; Mick- Lucifer 2012). It was released to arcades in October 1992, only five months after SFII: Champion Edition and three months after the theatrical release of Universal Soldier. If MKI’s overall gameplay is faster paced than SFII (at least until the latter’s Turbo upgrade), it also has a sort of brutal simplicity by compari- son; most rounds boil down to some combination of jump kicks and leg sweeps as common standard attacks, with high-d amage standard attacks like uppercuts and roundhouse kicks used where available. Indeed, the uppercut became one of the game’s most emblematic standard moves, drawing as much blood as many of the end- of-m atch fatalities and even providing novice players with an easy means of performing MKI’s sole “stage fatality” (“The Pit,” an elevated arena in which the victor can uppercut the loser onto a bed of spikes far below) without any special- ized knowledge of other finishing moves. MKI’s characters sport a simi- lar number of special moves as SFII’s fighters (two or three), but overall, special moves serve a more central role in MKI’s gameplay— and would Ludic Precursors and Generic Innovations • 19 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution gain strategic diversity when their number per character was doubled in MKII. Projectiles, for example, do not always cancel each other out when they encounter each other (as they do in SFII), since Tobias felt it was more exciting for the projectiles to pass through each other to cause mutual damage to both characters (Quan 1994b, 116). Unlike the speed- and strength- based gradation of attacks in SFII’s six- button interface, MKI sports a five- button interface arranged around the place- ment of attacks (High Punch, Low Punch, High Kick, Low Kick), plus a dedicated Block button (fig. 3). As Boon recalls, “We always found it odd that you would get a ‘free block’ if someone was attacking you while you were walking backwards,” hence “blocking should be a much more deliberate action that the player should initiate” (Jones 2007, 29). Whereas Capcom deliberately designed the fluid joystick movements for SFII’s special moves to kinesthetically recall the avatar’s corresponding onscreen movements (Surman 2007, 210–1 1),6 MKI’s dedicated Block button (which holds the avatar in place) allows many special moves to be executed via directional tapping of the joystick, thus giving the embod- ied experience of MKI’s gameplay a more staccato feel. Still, Midway was so confident in MKI’s ability to compete with SFII that its operator’s manual prominently features instructions on how to retrofit an existing SFII cabinet to play MKI’s central processing unit (CPU) boards (see Midway Games 1992). According to James Newman (2016, 409, 415), video game walk- throughs and strategy guides are often denigrated by gamers as cheap shortcuts or forms of cheating, but he argues that we might actually see their historiographic value as records of period gameplay. Following this suggestion, I have consulted several strategy guides for MKI and MKII to discern the major gameplay differences observed at their time of release. MKI effectively competed with SFII in part because it popular- ized another form of circumstantial combo, based less on sheer speed and proximity than on successfully knocking one’s opponent off their feet and then “juggling” them with another attack (typically a special move), with “up to three juggle hits” possible before the final move of the combo (Char-L i, Vega, and Guzman 1994, 84). Sub-Z ero and Johnny Cage, for instance, can knock their opponents into the air with a “deep” jump kick that connects below the opponent’s waist, then immediately follow this with a shorter- range jump punch/kick as their opponent is still falling, and finally end the combo with a laterally traveling special move like Sub- Zero’s slide or Cage’s shadow kick. As Boon and Tobias recall, these juggling-b ased combos initially “happened almost by acci- 20 • Mortal Kombat Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Fig. 3. Five- button control interface for Midway’s Mortal Kombat. Author’s photo. dent” during early tests of the game but were refined to “be flexible enough for kids to come up with their own custom combos” and thus deliberately differ from SFII’s gameplay (Quan 1994c, 115). Although the early release version of MKI was criticized for “perpetual juggling in the corner” (Quan 1994d, 46)—a game balance problem that also highlights the arbitrariness of arena boundaries in 2D fighting games— MKII would incorporate more “teleport” moves, allowing one’s avatar to magically jump to the opposite side of the arena, escaping the spa- tial compression of such arena edges and potentially disorienting one’s opponent by reversing the characters’ left-r ight orientation. MK3 would introduce double- decker arenas that allow one to uppercut their oppo- nent into the arena above, where the match continues (a feature that also evocatively fleshes out the diegesis by highlighting the spatial con- nection of seemingly unrelated backgrounds). Knocking characters off their feet might also be done with a so- called cross-u p or turnaround punch/kick (a technique introduced in MKII, in which one jumps over one’s opponent and then plants a surprise midair blow on their far side), or with a special move intended to stun one’s opponent (e.g., Scorpion’s spear, Sub- Zero’s ice blast) and set them up for a high-d amage hit or Ludic Precursors and Generic Innovations • 21 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution combo. Characters in SFII might be stunned by an opponent’s particu- larly strong melee, temporarily standing defenseless with stars orbiting their head, but Capcom’s game frames such stuns as more of a reward for high damage already incurred than as MKI’s strategic setup for a combo. Overall, based on rankings by competitive players, Mortal Kombat’s top- tier characters are marked by “their abilities to attack both low and high with their various arsenals” (Char- Li, Vega, and Guzman 1994, 83),7 and advanced skill often hinges on the timing and placement of jump kicks. With such differences in gameplay as one major deciding factor in coin drops, camps of Street Fighter versus Mortal Kombat loyalists began to form, although some fans also hoped for a franchise crossover game that would literalize the Capcom versus Midway industrial battle (Kanter 1997), despite the various legal and practical barriers to such a game’s development.8 In assessing the ludic differences between the growing SFII versus MKI “Arcade War” of 1992–9 3, an early reviewer (and self- admitted SFII partisan) for Electronic Games praised MKI’s graphics and sound as the best in the industry but described its dedicated Block button as less intuitive than SFII’s reverse-j oystick push, while ultimately observ- ing that MKI’s gameplay “feels sluggish and imprecise”; because MKI supposedly contains “very few combos” and less individuated characters than SFII, “the action becomes repetitive” (Sushi-X 1993, 37–3 8). Even as the sequels in each franchise were released, critics would laud MKII’s “cool story line,” well- balanced new characters, even faster gameplay, and increased ability to protect against corner combos (in which a fighter knocked off their feet drops straight down at the arena edge, making it easier for cheap juggles) as all adding up to more than “merely an MK: Champion Edition.” But there were still concerns that “once you’ve logged some hours with MKII . . . you’ll notice some weaknesses. You often feel like there are only so many patterns, and you’re seeing the same stuff over and over again.” The “one-d imensional combo system” for quickly chaining one special move into another was also accused of feeling less like an organic combination of moves than a product of the program- mers’ timing glitches (Quan 1994a, 30–3 1). To be far more charitable, however, MKII’s improved avatar control (plus an almost imperceptible shortening of the lag time between when a successful blow registers and when the sprites of the struck character visually react) had made MKI’s interface seem positively sluggish by comparison. MK3 would attenuate the juggle- based combo system by giving each character a set of simple and more advanced preprogrammed combos— also known as “chain combos,” or “dial-a - combos” as sometimes dismis- 22 • Mortal Kombat Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution sively termed— where one button push automatically sets up the next potential hit and so on, creating a nearly unblockable series whose num- ber of successive hits (typically between four and seven blows, linked via a corresponding chain of button pushes) and percentage of damage done to the opponent are touted in an onscreen message. Although I will describe in chapter 4 how these notable revisions were developed in response to generic developments in other coin-o p fighting games, including the heavily combo- centered gameplay of U.K.- based Rare’s Killer Instinct (1994; published by Midway), MK3’s less popular addi- tion of a dedicated Run button to enable brief sprints (inspired by the Turbo button on Midway’s concurrent coin-o p hit, NBA Jam [1993]) was also intended to increase the game’s potential for two- player com- petitive play as gaming tournaments became more widespread in the mid- 1990s. But despite its attempts to distinguish itself from the Street Fighter series through in-r ound gameplay, the game’s most iconic and notorious markers of product differentiation—t he inclusion of blood and fatality moves— would also complicate its standing within the gam- ing community. Blood and Finishing Moves Beyond the mechanics of in-r ound gameplay, MKI’s most spectacularly noticeable difference from SFII is a largely aesthetic one: animated sprays of blood accompanying many landed blows, and fatality moves that provide an optional ending to each match. Whereas SFII has occa- sional inklings of blood—s uch as on the defeated opponent’s face in a post-m atch taunt screen (a convention begun in the first Street Fighter game, showing the faces of both fighters and a taunting quote from the victor)— the spilling of blood is a constant occurrence in MKI and its sequels. Moreover, each of SFII’s rounds dramatically ends with the defeated character spiraling in slow motion to the ground, but MKI’s characters simply flop backward like a plank. The dramatic payoff instead comes at the end of each match, with the narrator shouting, “Finish Him/Her!” as the stunned opponent wobbles in place for a few seconds to afford the victor the opportunity for a coup de grâce. If the victorious player performs the correct joystick/button combination (often little more difficult than an in- round special move) from the correct distance, then the screen goes dark and the winner violently dispatches the loser. Needless to say, there is no post-m atch taunt screen to reassure players that the bloodied loser has survived to fight another day. Ludic Precursors and Generic Innovations • 23 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Blood and gore in video games is already part of a longer tradition within the medium’s history. The light- gun shooter Chiller (Exidy [U.S.], 1986), for example, uses the horror movie setting of a haunted castle filled with ghouls and creepy creatures, but several of its levels include gory torture chambers filled with non- playable human characters; the game’s objective to beat the timer by shooting the most targets requires mutilating these helpless victims with gunshots and execution devices. Haunted houses and castles in the Castlevania (Konami, 1986– ) platform games and the Splatterhouse (Namco [JP], 1988–) beat- em- up series also provide varying amounts of gore appropriate to their inspirations in horror cinema, while Midway’s shooter Smash TV features a seemingly endless stream of defeated enemies dissolved into clouds of blood and indistinct body parts. Perhaps the closest precursor to Mortal Kombat’s fatalities is the PC- DOS sword- and-s orcery-t hemed fighting game Barbar- ian: The Ultimate Warrior (Palace Software [U.K.], 1987), which opens each match with the ominous narrator announcing “Prepare to Die!” and can conclude with the opponent’s gory decapitation if a late- round sword blow to the neck is not parried. But Mortal Kombat helped bring such lurid spectacle to a newly popular level, especially in conjunction with the photorealistic sprites of pixilated live actors being torn asunder, not just crudely animated characters. As John Tobias recalls, “We originally had planned for our end boss character, Shang Tsung, to decapitate the player’s character [with a katana] in a single[- ]player match. But we ended up using the frames to give the players a chance to do it to each other in a one-o n- one match,” in place of the initial plan for nonlethal beatdowns to cap each match (Hickey 2018, 176). This method of “put[ting] a big exclamation point at the end [of the match] by letting the winner really rub his victory in the face of the loser” was not deliberately intended to create con- troversy but rather to improve the overall gameplay experience while differentiating the game from SFII (Donovan 2010, 227). The dimming of background lighting for fatalities spotlights the action in a rather the- atrical, Grand Guignol fashion while also perhaps recalling the dimmed lighting of the arcades themselves as an extension of the game world’s “magic circle” (Huizinga 1949, 10) of space- time suspended outside the bounds of everyday life wherein such amoral acts of extreme violence obviously would not be permitted.9 And yet Midway’s inclusion of a dual in- line parallel (DIP) switch, allowing the arcade operator to manually turn the blood and fatalities on or off (see Midway Games 1992), served as tacit acknowledgment that not only was the game’s violence poten- 24 • Mortal Kombat Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution tially unsuitable for family-f riendly locales but also that blood and fatali- ties are not intrinsic to gameplay—e ven if heavily expected by fans. Let- ters to gaming magazines, for example, complained about finding such expected features turned off on MKI cabinets at Disney theme parks (Hornibrook 1993). Despite their centrality in the game’s appeal, fatalities are not justi- fied by gameplay itself, since performing them is not essential to win- ning either individual matches or the game as a whole, and they are seldom justified by the game’s overarching narrative. Although some characters are narratively motivated by vendettas or evil ambitions (see chapter 2), it is highly questionable how much any given player actually chooses or identifies with their avatar based on such narrative concerns, since the affordances of each character’s gameplay strengths are likely a more important factor in character selection (Ware 2016, 164; Hutchin- son 2019, 72– 73). Hence, the novelty value of the game’s fatalities— and the game’s blatant use of the “Finish Him/Her!” moment to bracket their potential enactment—a llowed critics to see such finishing moves as more of an arbitrary gimmick than a core part of gameplay (see chap- ter 3). Among competitive fighting gamers, the Mortal Kombat games are often written off as more “casual” games compared to the “deep play” offered by the Street Fighter series (Harper 2014, 55), since Mor- tal Kombat’s gameplay can seem more motivated by the race to perform preprogrammed finishing moves rather than the pleasures and strate- gies of in-m atch combat— though several of the rebooted Mortal Kombat games have been periodically featured in competitive gaming tourna- ments, such as the Evolution (EVO) Championship Series, since 2011. By the release of MKII, for instance, its predecessor’s point-b ased score system was replaced with a total Wins counter, eschewing the older coin- op convention of high scores for a tally of defeated opponents. Much as Chris Goto- Jones (2016b, 37n10) notes that the inclusion of gore marks the American Mortal Kombat series’ cultural difference from the rela- tive restraint of Japanese fighting games like Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat seems to be a far more life-n egating game, thus earning a lower cultural reputation more akin to gory horror movies. While its industrial position as the brash American upstart taking on the Japanese master sounds like a narrative straight out of Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat gameplay also hails the sort of “cynical and self- interested egotists who fight because they enjoy violence,” in contrast to the values of self- transformation through martial- arts mastery narratively represented by Street Fighter’s iconic Japa- nese hero, Ryu (198). Ludic Precursors and Generic Innovations • 25 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution I agree that Mortal Kombat’s fatalities largely originated as a gimmick, but they are at least consistent with the macabre, gothically tinged tone of its diegesis; this is not the bright, candy-c olored world of Street Fighter but a game that instead exudes a seductive sense of mystery and men- ace. The inclusion of “stage fatalities,” or deaths caused by interactions with some element of the combat arena (such as a floor or ceiling cov- ered with spikes, a nearby vat of acid, etc.), was another popular innova- tion in this regard, tying finishing moves to setting in a more coherent way. Although SFII’s gameplay has mild stage interactions (with barrels, boxes, and statues that can be destroyed by a fighter’s falling body), Mor- tal Kombat’s “Pit” levels are good examples of arenas that prove espe- cially evocative, because their narrow bridges not only diegetically justify the back- and- forth horizontality of 2D gameplay but also transform the visual environment’s background qualities into part of the practical con- sequences for winning or losing the match (fig. 4). The overhead shot of the defeated combatant falling to their death in MKII’s “Pit II” arena also offers the only break from a side-v iew camera perspective in the first three games—h ence its memorably “cinematic” qualities. In my estimation, the sadistic pleasure that critics and moralists have attributed to performing fatalities is rather overstated, since (again) the player arguably has less of an emotional investment in particular rival- ries between characters or second- player opponents than a generalized desire to win. Rather, the fatalities allow the winning player to use the game architecture in momentarily becoming a showperson, potentially dazzling both themself and other viewers by performing brief moments of lurid spectacle. Indeed, the suddenly dimmed backgrounds to spot- light the upcoming gore recall the viewing atmosphere for the fictional recreation of executions that were such a popular subject of the early “cinema of attractions,” offering moments of spectacle wrested free of narrative context to winkingly acknowledge the viewer’s interest in novelty value, trickery, or sensationalism (Rhodes 2018, 222–2 8; Schott 2016, 68–6 9). According to David Surman (2007, 207, 210, 212, 215), the performance of special moves in fighting games produces two reg- isters of pleasure: the visual spectacle of the performed move itself and the player’s sense of reward/gratification in performing it successfully. These hypermediated moments—a s exemplified by the fatality move, I argue— create a carnivalesque merging of player and avatar such that these fleeting spectacles can outweigh the pleasures of simply winning a given match. Moreover, successfully performing the fatalities may well be satisfying in itself, but within the social space of the arcade, these finish- 26 • Mortal Kombat Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Fig. 4. As an elevated arena, “The Pit” in Mortal Kombat justifies the game’s 2D horizontal gameplay while also allowing players to execute the series’ first “stage fatality” with a simple uppercut, as illustrated here. ing moves also demonstrate mastery and provide the winner with a brief moment of collective admiration. Jesper Juul (2014, 7, 21, 122) suggests that the unpleasurable experi- ence of failure within the safely bounded context of video game play (since the most one really loses is a few quarters) often inspires us to play more, rather than less, in order to redeem our previous inadequa- cies and mistakes. Following this idea, I find that one of Mortal Kombat’s most brilliant innovations is the ability to win a match but still “lose” in the sense of failing to successfully perform a finishing move. These mixed emotions, of both triumphing over an opponent yet failing to perform on cue, may generate an especially strong desire to play again, until such “secret” moves can be mastered. While fatalities are not tech- nically required to win the match/game, there may be both internal or external pressure to perform them, based on the presence of specta- tors (including the losing player) or even simply the winning player’s desire to exploit the game’s technological affordances. If “to play a video game is therefore to interact with real rules while imagining a fictional world, and a video game is a set of rules as well as a fictional world” (Juul 2005, 1), then playing Mortal Kombat involves not only playing alongside a human- or AI- controlled opponent but also imaginatively playing with the game’s designers to execute the visual centerpieces encoded into its architecture. Ludic Precursors and Generic Innovations • 27 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution That said, Tobias himself has suggested (somewhat defensively) that the fatalities can get boring and repetitious to watch after some time, so there must be some deeper gameplay elements that keep bringing players back to the series— such as, perhaps, the increasingly complex storyline laid out across the sequels and spin-o ffs (Hollingsworth 1995; Bieniek 1995c, 51). To increase the game’s playability and novelty value, every character received two fatality moves in MKII, but other varieties of finishing moves introduced in MKII never achieved comparable popu- larity, because they were so tonally inconsistent with the series’ overall dark and macabre ambience. “Babalities” (which magically transform the defeated opponent into a crying infant), for instance, can only be performed after winning the final round using just the Kick buttons— thus intended to humiliate the loser by not only mocking their presumed desire to throw a childish tantrum but also by defeating them with one’s hands tied behind one’s back. In addition to the Babalities sending one’s opponent back to the beginning of their life instead of delivering their demise, Tobias claims that the “Friendships” in MKII, in which the win- ner presents the loser with a gift or other sign of amity, were added in anticipation of the December 1993 U.S. Senate hearings on video game violence (see chapter 3) as a means of preemptively offsetting MKII’s doubled number of fatalities per character (Kent 2001, 480). As I will dis- cuss in chapter 4, finishing moves have remained Mortal Kombat’s most indelible contribution to the fighting genre, with many imitator and parody games taking them as de rigueur; however, the influence would begin to move back the other direction, with later Mortal Kombat sequels re-a dapting different types of finishing moves from competing games. And yet this increase in different finishing moves per character also com- plemented the growing incorporation of more and more secrets and hidden features into the games—o ne of Mortal Kombat’s oft- overlooked influences upon the larger genre. Hidden Characters and “Easter Eggs” The centrality of finishing moves as an expected (if not required) part of Mortal Kombat’s gameplay required knowledge of their existence and execution, but Midway’s resistance to publicize such secrets dur- ing the games’ initial coin- op run only added to the series’ mystique. Special moves may have already been conventionalized with SFII, but the secrecy surrounding Mortal Kombat’s tantalizingly macabre fatalities strongly complemented the series’ own dark and gothic tone, especially 28 • Mortal Kombat Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution the occultish Outworld settings created by environment artist Tony Gos- kie for MKII, by literally occulting the game’s most spectacular features. That is, the mysterious quality of the diegesis itself was enhanced by the implication of hidden mysteries within the game’s internal code. Amid the transient social space of the arcade, players with more experience might appear with knowledge of how to perform such moves in a newly released version of the game and only sometimes be willing to share such information with the uninformed. In this regard, much of the games’ initial appeal can be linked to the acquisition of what Mia Consalvo (2007, 184) has termed “gaming capital,” or the subcultural knowledge and competencies around video gaming that are largely social and para- textual in nature, able to build a sense of superiority in relation to their relevant game over time. Gaming magazines would also publicize the finishing moves, even as this did not necessarily quell players’ requests for more information. Chris Bieniek (1995a, 8), executive editor of Video Games, for example, complained that “there are days when it seems as if half of the [read- ers’] letters say, ‘Can you tell me all of the fatalities for Mortal Kombat II?’ and the other half say, “Here are all of the fatalities for Mortal Kombat II!’’ Likewise, a February 1994 issue of GamePro (“Reader Report,” 14) observes that two- thirds of readers’ letters requested information about hidden secrets in home ports of MKI, with particular emphasis on how to perform uncensored fatalities on the Super Nintendo or how to play as hidden or boss characters. As noted in chapter 3, the “blood code” for the uncensored fatalities in the SEGA Genesis (SEGA MegaDrive) port of MKI was already a widespread non- secret, published in gaming mag- azines and also available through a customer service line. Still, reader demand was so great in Midway’s hometown that the Chicago Tribune even began publishing finishing moves and cheat codes for the newly released games (Carter and Carter 1993a; Carter and Carter 1996). Rather than following Capcom’s strategy of releasing updated SFII editions several months apart, Midway released new iterations of the same game as additional tweaks to the game’s code were rolled out, with arcade operators expected to install boards of the latest version in their cabinets. Gaming magazines also tracked and publicized the differences by version number, allowing players to stay informed on such features as new fatalities, hidden characters and games, and other “Easter eggs” (secret messages, tricks, and in-j okes encoded by game designers). Of course, the inclusion of Easter eggs in video games was not a new phe- nomenon in itself—w ith examples dating back to the game designer Ludic Precursors and Generic Innovations • 29 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution credits hidden in Adventure (Atari [U.S.], 1979)—b ut they were not typi- cally associated with the fighting genre before the Mortal Kombat series made them a both promotable and diegetically plausible addition. By the time Mortal Kombat imitators appeared in the mid- 1990s, the inclusion of hidden characters and other layers of secret techniques was highly pro- moted as a means of competing with Midway’s franchise (e.g., “Way of the Warrior” 1994, 172). Most notably, Tobias and Boon created MKI’s hidden non- playable fighter Reptile—w ho would occasionally appear at random before matches and provide clues on how to unlock a fight against him— as an in-j oke referring back to an infamous mistranslation in the American coin- op release of SFII. In Capcom’s game, Ryu’s post- match taunt screen should translate from Japanese as “If you cannot overcome the Shōryūken [his ‘rising dragon punch’ special move], you cannot win!” but through a localization error, this phrase was mistranslated by way of Chinese pin- yin into the English phrase “You must defeat Sheng Long to stand a chance!” After American players began wondering whether there was a secret fighter named Sheng Long hidden within the game, Electronic Gaming Monthly (“Tricks of the Trade” 1992, 60) published a 1992 April Fool’s joke claiming that he could be unlocked through an arcane series of gameplay requirements.10 MKI was in development at the time, so Tobias and Boon decided to again do what SFII did not (Kunkel 1994, 42), deliberately incorporating Reptile into the game as a hidden char- acter (fig. 5), and later making him a playable character in MKII.11 Other hidden NPCs, such as Smoke and Jade, appeared in MKII, peeking out from behind trees in the “Living Forest” arena, and were made playable fighters in sequels. In a nod to video game history, hidden mini-g ames were also included, with players able to play PONG (Atari, 1972) after reaching 250 consecutive matches (or the equivalent of $125 at fifty cents per match!) in MKII’s two- player mode, and Galaga (Namco, 1981; pub- lished in the U.S. by Midway) by reaching 100 matches in MK3. Other rumors originated from deeper in Mortal Kombat’s code, such as MKI’s audit menu (a gameplay log accessible only by arcade operators) listing the number of “ERMACS” (short for “error macros,” or mani- festations of coding bugs) just below the counter for “Reptile Battles” (LaMancha 1994, 34).12 When rumors began circulating that “Ermac” was another hidden character, this became a running joke within the series, with one of MKII’s hidden opponents, Jade, occasionally appear- ing before matches to announce “Ermac Who?” Other red herrings included a “Kano Transformations” counter in MKII and a “Johnny Cage 30 • Mortal Kombat Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Fig. 5. Hidden fighter Reptile appears at random before a round in Mortal Kombat, providing hints about the multiple steps needed to trigger a match against him. Transformations” counter in MK3, to trick players into believing there was a way to unlock characters missing from those sequels—t hough, again, these rumors would have to travel via word of mouth from an arcade operator with access to the audit menu, which ordinary players could not see. Most of these hidden fighters (e.g., Reptile, Smoke, Noob Saibot, Jade, Ermac, Rain, Chameleon, et al.) are “palette swap” char- acters of existing sprites, thus allowing “new” characters to be included with a simple color change instead of burdening the arcade board’s lim- ited memory capacity with a whole new set of character sprites. “A lot of the [secret] things aren’t based on the story,” Tobias admitted; “they’re just random events” (Quan 1994b, 29). Indeed, when many of these fighters were later introduced as playable characters in more completist sequels like Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 (Midway, 1995) and Mortal Kombat Trilogy (Midway, 1996), their gameplay abilities were often poorly bal- anced and their backstories seem tacked onto the increasingly sprawling story world. What we see, then, is Mortal Kombat’s creative team increasingly seed- Ludic Precursors and Generic Innovations • 31 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution ing rumors into the series— and, in many cases, incorporating onetime rumors into later games in a sort of feedback loop driven by players’ and magazine editors’ overactive imaginations. The constant proliferation of rumors, revised iterations, and Easter eggs ultimately proved to be a marketing coup in terms of keeping Mortal Kombat featured in gaming magazines, thereby fueling players’ interest in what might come next. As they previously did with the SFII Sheng Long rumor, gaming magazines often reported on the word-o f- mouth rumors spread in the arcades— such as the “Animality” finishing moves merely rumored in MKII but incorporated into MK3 (“Mortal Kombat III” 1994, 113)— and also helped spread tongue-i n- cheek rumors of their own, such as a hoax about a hid- den MKI character called “Nimbus Terrafaux” (“Tricks of the Trade” 1994, 96). Yet, by the time MK3 was released to arcades in April 1995, the internet had become a more widespread means of “spoiling” the game’s secrets, so Midway initially planned to release different iterations of the game to arcades in different parts of the country with the version numbers delib- erately hidden, thus making it more difficult for players to know which features were or were not present on any given machine (Grossman and Harris 1995, 111). Although this plan was apparently abandoned, MK3 did incorporate a “Kombat Kodes” feature in two-p layer mode, in which players use their buttons to enter six- symbol codes during the pre- match Vs. screen that can trigger a variety of different gameplay variations and hidden battles/games. And when permitted to enter an “Ultimate Kombat Kode” after the Game Over screen, the correct code unlocks Smoke, a cybernetic version of one of MKII’s hidden NPCs, who is now permanently added to the Character Select menu. Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance (Midway, 2002) would also introduce a currency- based system of secrets, with effective gameplay earning “Koins” that can unlock hundreds of bonus features (e.g., new arenas, alternate costumes, hid- den games, cut- scenes, etc.), stored in a repository of unmarked coffins called the “Krypt.” Overall, then, a major (if often underappreciated) part of Mortal Kom- bat’s cult appeal is its heavy focus on Easter eggs and hidden features— some treated more seriously than others—w hich has fueled the series’ fan following by not only deepening the games’ mysterious feel but also foregrounding the game’s designers as auteurs. Whether includ- ing digitized versions of their own skewered heads at the bottom of the Pit in MKI, or in MKII including a hidden character with the reversed surnames of Boon and Tobias (“Noob Saibot”) and an in-r ound cameo 32 • Mortal Kombat Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution of Dan Forden’s head popping up in the corner of the screen to say “Toasty!” the Mortal Kombat design team has often inscribed their own winking signatures into the games. (They would also do so in NBA Jam and its sequels by including themselves among a large roster of hidden playable characters that, in an early release, included playable Mortal Kombat characters before the National Basketball Association nixed that possibility in further revisions, citing Mortal Kombat’s association with vio- lence [Ali 2019, 123– 27, 136].) These Easter eggs and in- jokes may be self- consciously puckish nods to the game’s authorship, helping foster a play- ful sense of connection between designer and gamer, but they also serve an important role in constructing the series’ occult vibe as a marker of difference from its original coin-o p competitors. Pixilated Photorealistic Sprites Aside from the inclusion of blood and gore, perhaps Mortal Kombat’s most apparent aesthetic distinction from its competitors like SFII, at least in Midway’s original trilogy, was the use of character sprites ani- mated in a stop-m otion manner from digitized video still frames of live actors performing the fighters’ movements. Whereas SFII still looks more akin to earlier generations of fighting games in its use of cartoon- ish sprites, it is difficult to overstate just how revolutionary the pho- torealistic quality (however dated by today’s standards) of Mortal Kom- bat’s character sprites seemed in 1992–9 3. But here, again, there were certain predecessors. Recall that Karateka used rotoscoping, or the use of filmed human movements as a visual guide for form-tracing hand- drawn animation (an animation technique dating back to the 1910s), as the basis for its lifelike martial-a rts movements. But rotoscoping, while technically an indexical record (Peirce 1977) of physical movement and timing taken from real- world performances, lacks photography’s overtly indexical quality of an actual connection between sign and signified (e.g., a record of the light that bounced off a real-w orld photographic subject and was captured on film or video) and therefore differs from the techniques used in Mortal Kombat. The indexicality of photorealistic graphics would instead be pio- neered in laserdisc-b ased video games descended from early examples like Quarter Horse (Electro Sport [U.S.], 1981), a betting game featuring prerecorded full- motion video (FMV), and Exterminator (Gottlieb [U.S.], 1989), a shooter featuring photorealistic backgrounds with animated sprites playable in the foreground (Wolf 2008a, 97; Wolf 2008c, 99– Ludic Precursors and Generic Innovations • 33 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution 101). Other games would reverse this equation, using stop-m otion ani- mation techniques to provide photorealistic sprites in the foreground, set against hand- drawn backgrounds. In the fighting game Reikai Doushi (aka Chinese Exorcist) (Home Data [JP], 1988), for example, the charac- ter sprites are derived from stop-m otion animation of big-h eaded dolls resembling something from a Rankin/Bass holiday special, though the head of each demonic opponent bloodlessly falls off when defeated by the protagonist. Inspired by Ray Harryhausen’s pioneering special effects on fantasy films like Jason and the Argonauts (Don Chaffey, 1963), this use of character animation from stop-m otion miniatures would later be used in Mortal Kombat’s monstrous, four-a rmed sub-b osses Goro (MKI) and Kintaro (MKII) and also employed by Mortal Kombat parodies like ClayFighter (Visual Concepts [U.S.], 1993) and imitators like Primal Rage (Atari, 1994). These are all examples, then, of what Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin (1999, 91) term “remediation,” or the interpenetration of one media form by another, with newer media like video games often trying to gain legitimacy by incorporating elements from earlier media forms like photography and film. But using human actors as stop-m otion subjects— an animation tech- nique known as “pixilation”—f or playable sprites would be most nota- bly introduced in NARC (Midway, 1988) and Pit- Fighter (Atari, 1990), although Midway had been toying with the technology as early as 1983 (Ali 2019, 34). Both coin-o p games—a side-s crolling shooter and a fight- ing game, respectively—u se digitized photographs of human actors as sources for simple animation, though both also use such photoreal- ism to enhance the violent feel of each game. Midway would use this technique for the human NPCs in its rail- shooter Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), a merchandising tie- in for James Cameron’s special- effects- heavy 1991 blockbuster movie. Indeed, Bolter and Grusin (1999, 101) note how, rather than creating cinema’s sense of immersion through the immediacy of such imagery, representations of graphic violence in video games tend toward a hypermediated effect, reminding one of the cartoonishness of such excess when filmic elements are transposed into a new medium. Although NARC and Terminator 2 were both successes in the coin- op market, Pit- Fighter’s clunky gameplay and crudely animated sprites made it seem as low- rent as the underground, bare- knuckle fight- ing arenas where the game’s story is set. Midway, then, was already sym- pathetic toward using pixilation to render playable character sprites when Boon and Tobias pitched the idea of an SFII competitor, because “by using the digitizing technique we could achieve a high amount of 34 • Mortal Kombat Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution detail, given the size of the onscreen characters, in an expedited amount of time” (Donovan 2010, 227). By this time, Terminator 2’s commercial success had convinced Midway that coin-o p games with elements licensed from high-p rofile properties could be a lucrative cross- marketing tool (Ali 2019, 71). Once digitizing Van Damme was no longer an option after the Universal Soldier licens- ing deal collapsed, however, Tobias looked for credible martial artists in the Chicago area and recruited some acquaintances from Lakeshore Athletic Club as the game’s original cast.13 About ten years older than the rest of the cast, Daniel Pesina (Johnny Cage, Sub-Z ero, Scorpion) had already trained Richard Divizio (Kano), Ho- Sung Pak (Liu Kang, Shang Tsung), and his younger brother Carlos Pesina (Raiden) in the Chinese martial- arts performance style wushu (see chapter 2) from their teenage years, while latecomer Elizabeth Malecki (Sonya) was trained as a dancer and gymnast, not a martial artist. Several of them also had experience as stunt extras in the Chicago-s hot Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: Secret of the Ooze (Michael Pressman, 1991) by the time Tobias came calling. Daniel Pesina took the lead, performing potential moves for Tobias in test footage shot over three eight- hour days at Midway (fig. 6) and advis- ing on the combat styles that he and his former students could bring to the game (McCarthy 2018). In total, Pesina contributed up to eighty on- camera hours, earning fifty dollars per hour for the first game and seventy-fi ve dollars per hour on the sequel (Leone 2018). Each of the actors is also credited by name in the game’s closing credits as their char- acters jump onto the screen for a final curtain call. Tobias used a Hi8 camera to record the actors holding various still positions as they slowly went through their movements (with ramps and other scaffolding, later edited out, used for the jump kicks and other aerial moves). Because these character movements would not be ren- dered as FMV (except for a two-s econd bit of FMV during each charac- ter’s introduction screen in MKI’s attract mode) but rather as still frames to be edited together in a stop-m otion manner, he used AT&T’s TIPS video-c apture software to import and formally extract the still images of these figures before manually touching up the colors, lighting, and mus- cle definition. These video- captured stills would then be combined with more traditional animation for the game’s more supernatural touches, such as projectiles, character transformations, and gore effects (figs. 7– 8). For instance, Liu Kang’s MKII fatality of morphing into a dragon to bite his opponent in half, or Kung Lao splitting his opponent down the middle with his razor-e dged hat, were products of Tobias’s hand-d rawn Ludic Precursors and Generic Innovations • 35 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Fig. 6. Fight choreographer Daniel Pesina (as Scorpion) and Ho- Sung Pak (as Liu Kang) pose during the motion-c apture process on Mortal Kombat II. Photo courtesy of Daniel Pesina. animation: “I’d have the [actors] fall to the mat and tell them to pretend that they’re like a banana and they’re peeling. I’d go into the images and split them in half and add all the insides and body pieces” (Quan 1994c, 114). As such, the indexicality of the photorealistic character sprites may recall the 3D-n ess of the live actors but is always held in tension with the 2D qualities of the painted backgrounds and other blatantly animated elements (e.g., blood and gore). With Hi8 video recording at the equivalent of thirty frames per sec- ond, Boon and Tobias still had to figure out how to drop from thirty to eight frames per second, for the sake of the MKI arcade board’s limited processing power, while not producing the sort of unnaturally jumpy movements seen in predecessors like Pit- Fighter. To create the illusion of smoother animation, then, each fighter’s pre- move resting stance employed an above-a verage frame rate, making it look more fluid com- pared to the drop- frame frame rate for the combat movements. MKI was designed using a 32-b it Texas Instruments 34010 graphics proces- sor, but the color palette provided by the Hi8 video source still had to be downscaled to accommodate the 24- bit color palette of the cabinet’s 36 • Mortal Kombat Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Figs. 7– 8. In one of the gorier Mortal Kombat II fatalities, Kung Lao splits Jax down the middle with his razor- rimmed hat, showcasing how digitized character sprites are augmented with hand- drawn blood and gore animation. CRT (cathode ray tube) screen (Kunkel 1993b, 43). By MKII, however, a larger production budget meant the design team could invest in a twenty- thousand- dollar, broadcast- quality Sony digital camera for higher- quality image capture, a big step up from the consumer- grade analog quality of Hi8 video. They also used a blue-s creen process on MKII to more easily and efficiently isolate the images of the live actors, while the digital- to- digital workflow of MKII’s image capture permitted much higher graphi- Ludic Precursors and Generic Innovations • 37 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution cal resolution (Quan 1994c, 114). The MKII arcade board itself boasted a 96-m egabit memory capacity, compared to the 48- megabit capacity of MKI, thus allowing more detailed graphics and more space for addi- tional character sprites (LaMancha 1994, 30). Electronic Games called these digitized sprites MKI’s “most appealing aspect,” because “the process has been refined a hundred times over since Pit- Fighter” (Sushi- X 1993, 37). Midway’s success with the pixilation technique inspired them to use it in further games, such as NBA Jam, the Aerosmith- inspired rail-s hooter Revolution X (1994), and WWF Wrestle- mania: The Arcade Game (1995).14 Several of the live actors digitized for MK3 had previously appeared in those other Midway games, including Kerri Hoskins (Sonya), Sal DiVita (Nightwolf, Cyrax, Sektor, Smoke), and Tony Marquez (Kung Lao) (Bieniek 1995b, 46). Mortal Kombat’s use of pixilation was so influential that it became commonly used (to vary- ing effect) in many of the clone games developed during the “Mortal Moment” (see chapter 4). Pixilation’s formal roots arguably extend back as far as the precin- ematic sequential photography used in Eadweard Muybridge’s 1870s-8 0s animal locomotion studies, but as an experimental animation technique it is perhaps better exemplified by the work of Canadian animators Grant Munro and Norman McLaren. McLaren’s Oscar- winning short Neighbours (1952), for instance, bears fascinating visual similarities to Mortal Kombat’s digitized sprites. A darkly funny Cold War allegory, Neigh- bours depicts two suburban men going to war (and soon destroying each other) in a battle of ownership over a beautiful flower that has appeared on their property line. Knocking each other across their lawns with comi- cally exaggerated blows, levitating and spinning in the air, and even tear- ing down their respective opponent’s home to kill their wife and child with brutal efficiency, the combatants in Neighbours move in obviously fantastical ways but are still eerily all too human in appearance. As Laura Ivins-H ulley (2013, 279) says of Czech surrealist Jan Švankmajer’s films, pixilation differs from traditional 2D or puppet-b ased animation because its treatment of actual flesh- and- blood people in an animation technique more commonly associated with frame drawings or inanimate objects “purposefully charges headlong into the space that most animation and visual effects attempt to avoid: the uncanny valley.” Likewise, Lisa Perrott (2015, 124, 132) describes pixilation as producing a sort of spectral effect due to the loss of frames in the stop-m otion process, with human bodies becoming visually rendered in a space somewhere between action and inaction, living and nonliving. 38 • Mortal Kombat Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Grainy, behind-t he- scenes home-v ideo footage of Mortal Kombat’s live actors performing their moves was once the stuff of electronic press kits but is now widely available on YouTube (Neogamer 2018). Looking back at this footage today, those of us who grew up seeing these movements performed in pixilated form in the games themselves are likely to be struck by a sort of inverted “uncanny valley” effect: visually recognizing the once-d igitized movement first and then being struck by the strange déjà vu of retrospectively seeing the same motion performed by the on- set actor as part of a wider range of fluid human movements. And yet it is important to note that the actors’ physical ability to perform a move- ment has more than a purely aesthetic dimension, since any given actor’s range of movement also impinges on their character’s playability; the reach of an uppercut, the length of leg extension on a kick, and so on, must all become part of a player’s strategy, since these movements will help determine the strengths and weaknesses of the characters in differ- ent matchups. (When the same actor portrays different characters across different Mortal Kombat games, or when an earlier character is recast with a new actor in a sequel, the similarities and differences between each actor’s physical abilities come into particular focus.) In this regard, the indexicality of the photorealistic graphics becomes grounded in the overall quality of gameplay, strengthening the sensory linkage between the pixilated image and the performing bodies of actor and gamer alike. Not all critics, however, were so taken by these traits. For Steven Poole (2000, 33), the motion capture of live actors represents the “Achilles’ heel of the [fighting] genre,” because “once an animation has started, it must finish before the next one can start.” With players constrained by whatever movements actors performed in the development studio and how those moves are encoded into the game, more realistic fight- ing strategies like feints cannot be performed, so the player is arguably allowed less control than in later generations of fighting games using 3D physical modeling for sprites (48). However, when using real-l ife people as actors for animation pro- cesses, issues of control can take on unexpectedly complex ramifica- tions. As Ivins-H ulley (2013, 271, 275) and Perrott (2015, 127) both note of pixilation, it can be difficult to discern how much agency and creative authority should be accorded to either the actors or the filmmaker/ani- mator, since the actors bring certain skills to their performances while the animators bring talents for frame selection, timing, and overall manipulation of raw footage. Midway was, in fact, unsuccessfully sued by several former actors from MKI and MKII (including Daniel Pesina, Eliz- Ludic Precursors and Generic Innovations • 39 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution abeth Malecki, Katalin Zamiar, and Philip Ahn) over infringement on their right of publicity, especially over unpaid royalties from the games’ home console ports, despite the fact that the actors had all signed release forms for their per diem labor.15 Although both of these lawsuits stressed the plaintiffs’ athletic abilities as the reason why Midway first cast them, primary authorship was established based on the act of videotaping their choreographed movements into a “fixed” work that was then digitally manipulated by the design team, especially because the resulting sprites can perform aerobatic moves that would be physically impossible for an actual person to perform. Because Midway claimed sole ownership of the underlying game code to make such characters come to life in ani- mated form, the actors’ on- set ideas for particular moves did not qualify as joint authorship: Midway alone decided which portions of plaintiffs’ “performances” to digitalize [sic] and alone transformed the video images into the cartoon- like images in the game. It is apparent to the court, in viewing videotapes of the actual games, that the superhuman gyrations and leaps high into the air of the characters, including plaintiffs’ charac- ters, are fanciful products of the imaginations of the creators of the source codes.16 Despite the plaintiffs in both cases losing their claims against Midway, and their characters becoming subsequently recast with new actors in sequels, the lawyers who represented Midway have since raised questions about the very legal loopholes that benefited their corporate client. Ger- ald O. Sweeney Jr. and John T. Williams (2002, 108–1 0) now caution that, with the increased ease and ubiquity of computer- generated imagery (CGI), unauthorized, digitally created performances may begin infring- ing on celebrities’ right of publicity unless nationally recognized statutes are enacted to prevent such derivative works from digitally manipulat- ing an actor’s appearance enough to qualify as a transformative work. By framing their caution as of special relevance to the movie industry, they also acknowledge the cinematic qualities and influences exploited in Mortal Kombat’s early games, which is the topic to which the following chapter now turns. 40 • Mortal Kombat Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Two Cinematic Influences and Cultural Politics We make movies. The only difference is that ours come in a box. Whether it’s a video- game cabinet or a home machine, we’re creating movies. —R oger Sharpe, director of marketing, Midway Games The genre of fighting games is not typically known for its strong narra- tive content— unlike, say, the deep character immersion and long quests associated with more reputable genres like role- playing games (RPGs)— and fighting games are more often associated with the quick and largely disposable thrills of each matchup. Although the post- match taunt screens of the Street Fighter games might offer some small glimpse into particular characters’ personalities, for example, players are far more likely “to know our on-s creen equal through the expressive range of their movements (the iconic language of animation)” during in- match gameplay and the overall investment in mastering a given character’s special moves (Surman 2007, 215). While the challenges of two- player competition depend on the respective skill of one’s human opponent, the single-p layer mode of most fighting games is typically arranged as a series of bouts against either a representative selection or a full roster of computer- controlled opponents, with the AI difficulty ratcheting up as one approaches a final “boss” character(s). As Chris Goto- Jones (2016b, 45) argues, then, most game genres make mastery of the control scheme an instrumental starting point for exploring a larger virtual world, but 41 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution fighting games rehearse incrementally more difficult battles in order to make mastery of the control scheme the game’s overall goal. And as Nicholas Ware (2016, 159) adds, the “repetition of the fight-t hrough- the- tournament structure of storytelling is a patterning that frames not only the individual narratives of the playable characters but also the experi- ence of the player.” Rachael Hutchinson (2007, 286) notes that broadly sketched char- acters, especially ones that embody certain cultural stereotypes, may be “much easier to write and create than complex realistic characters,” in addition to allowing players “to quickly and easily distinguish char- acters from one another, so players can recognize their opponent and adjust their fighting style appropriately.” The storytelling limitations of fighting games are thus largely generic in nature but also contingent on technological and design limitations. The character roster in early Mortal Kombat games was partly determined by memory constraints, for instance—h ence why separate storylines for each character might be a convenient justification for including so many “palette swap” characters (e.g., Scorpion/Sub- Zero/Reptile, Kitana/Mileena/Jade) (Begy 2012, 211). In other cases, new characters in sequels evolved from unused character designs that time or space did not allow in previous games, such as MKII’s Jax having initially been planned in place of Mortal Kom- bat’s Sonya, before the designers elected to replace him with MKI’s sole female character; or Baraka’s (MKII) original character design as a fighter armed with hook swords, which later became the basis of MK3’s Kabal. Moreover, an MKII subplot involving MKI characters Kano and Sonya being captured by the evil emperor Shao Kahn (and shown held in chains in one of the MKII arena backgrounds) was solely invented due to memory constraints, since there was not enough space for all MKI characters to return alongside the newly introduced character sprites, and the audit menus in MKI machines had already shown Sonya and Kano as the first game’s least- selected characters (Quan 1994c, 118). Mortal Kombat’s cocreator John Tobias admitted, “It’s difficult to set up a storyline with an arcade fighting game,” because “you’re pretty much limited to the Attract Mode” (Kunkel 1994, 38). Hence, comic books, strategy guides, and other paratexts can provide extra narrative informa- tion that cannot be conveyed through in-r ound gameplay alone (Wolf 2001, 101). Indeed, MKI’s attract mode offers not only a brief justifica- tion for the titular tournament and short character biographies of each selectable fighter but also Midway’s mail-o rder offer for a Mortal Kombat Collector’s Edition comic book (Tobias 1992), which provides additional 42 • Mortal Kombat Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution backstory. Even before the first game’s success was a sure thing, then, comic books were already a crucial part of the world-b uilding process that would become all the more apparent across the sequels, especially in the increasingly baroque cosmology introduced in conjunction with Mortal Kombat 4. The backstory established in the attract mode and comic book for MKI begins five hundred years ago, when the mysterious sorcerer Shang Tsung emerges as the unexpected winner of a Shaolin martial-a rts tour- nament. After being bested by a Shaolin master, the Great Kung Lao, Shang enlists a secret weapon— a four- armed demigod named Goro, prince of a desolate parallel dimension called the Outworld— to defeat Kung Lao and maintain indefinite control over the tournament. Relo- cating the once- a-g eneration tournament to his island stronghold in the East China Sea, Shang uses Goro’s ensuing five centuries of victory for turning the onetime Shaolin- hosted tournament into a death match and absorbing the souls of dispatched combatants to ensure Shang’s own immortality. Among the newest challengers at the Mortal Kombat tour- nament are Liu Kang, a Shaolin monk intent on restoring the tourna- ment to its former glory; Johnny Cage, a Hollywood martial- arts star join- ing the tournament out of egotism; Kano, a wanted member of the Black Dragon Society criminal organization; Sonya Blade, a U.S. Special Forces lieutenant in pursuit of Kano; Raiden, a thunder god guiding the human combatants in their challenge to the forces of evil; Sub- Zero, a mysteri- ous member of a Chinese assassin group, the Lin Kuei; and the revenant Scorpion, formerly a member of a rival assassin group (the Shirai Ryu), now returned from Hell (or the “Netherrealm”) to exact revenge on Sub- Zero for the (apparent) murders of his family and himself. According to the MKII attract mode and Collector’s Edition comic book (Tobias 1993), Liu Kang kills Goro and defeats Shang Tsung dur- ing MKI’s tournament, while Scorpion kills Sub-Z ero, and both Kano and Sonya are drawn through a dimensional portal when Shang retreats to the Outworld to beg a second chance from the evil emperor Shao Kahn. The emperor devises a plan to win ownership over the Earth (or “Earthrealm”) through a new winner- takes-a ll tournament held in the Outworld, headed by the newly revivified Shang and another monstrous four-a rmed warrior, Kintaro. Liu Kang returns home to find the Shao- lin Temple destroyed by Baraka’s band of Outworld warriors at Shang’s command, but there he reunites with an eponymously named descen- dant of Kung Lao (a fellow member of the secretive White Lotus Society, founded by Raiden). Two factions of combatants form—t he evil Out- Cinematic Influences and Cultural Politics • 43 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution worlders led by Shao Kahn (Shang, Kintaro, Kitana, Mileena, Baraka, Reptile) and the Earthrealm warriors led by Raiden (Liu Kang, Kung Lao, Johnny Cage, Sub- Zero, Scorpion, and Sonya’s former teammate Jax)— and we eventually learn that, by dint of the Elder Gods, the victor of ten Mortal Kombat Grand Championships in a row entitles their rep- resented realm to gain possession of an adjacent realm. Goro had been defeated by Liu Kang short of one remaining victory, thus holding off the interdimensional takeover, but regardless of the newly announced tournament’s outcome, it is merely a distraction from the Outworld’s impending invasion of Earth.1 Although Liu Kang is again victorious in this second tournament, the invasion finally occurs in MK3, in spite of the Elder Gods’ prohibitions, via a dimensional rift opened when Shang reincarnates Shao Kahn’s long-d eceased wife, Sindel (former queen of the realm of Edenia), on Earth and crosses over to retrieve her, with much of the action occurring in a postapocalyptic Chicago. Yes, if this all sounds rather arcane, it still pales in comparison to the inordinately expanded story through which later sequel/prequel games and paratexts would “retcon” (i.e., establish retroactive continuity with) the original trilogy’s narrative events via a plethora of additional sub- plots, characters, and alternate timelines (see chapter 4). Whereas video games tend to allow the player’s imagination to fill in the gaps left by general nods toward world-b uilding (Wolf 2012; Aranda 2016, 419), even from this simplified overview we can see that the series contains far more narrative cues than the average fighting game, thus complementing the games’ aforementioned inclusion of hidden characters and other “Eas- ter eggs” as clues to a much larger implied diegesis than can be con- veyed through gameplay itself. Although Mortal Kombat was arguably the first fighting game series to develop “lore,” fighting games are a decep- tively complicated genre for maintaining a coherent series-l ong narra- tive, because each playable character likely has some (small) degree of backstory, and winning the game as a given character typically reveals a character- specific ending that bookends their competition (Hutchinson 2019, 72–7 3). As Ware (2016, 160) posits, the fighting between different characters thus implies a fighting of different narratives for supremacy, but it is difficult to tell which of these character endings is “canon” until a sequel game confirms who actually won the previous tournament. Consequently, a garden of forking paths is retroactively shoehorned into a serialized framing narrative whose potentially clumsy convolutions bespeak the various narrative fragments that are either confirmed or denied in each subsequent game.2 44 • Mortal Kombat Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution And yet I argue that in addition to clarifying this overarching frame narrative through Midway’s authorized paratexts, a web of cinematic allusions and other cultural touchpoints also serve as important extradi- egetic fabric for the Mortal Kombat series. Much as Janet Staiger (1992) notes that early tableau-b ased films like Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Edwin S. Por- ter, 1903) may look very “primitive” and narratively confusing to mod- ern viewers because we lack the close familiarity with Harriet Beecher Stowe’s then- popular 1852 novel that period viewers would have already gained through that cultural moment’s intertextual surround, we might see a variety of films and other references as helping to flesh out the story world in Mortal Kombat’s many tableaux of hand-t o- hand combat. This is not to say, of course, that all Mortal Kombat players (especially given their youth demographic) would have recognized the many films that John Tobias has cited as either direct or indirect inspiration on the series. Still, the games’ overall narrative has far more coherence when one has some familiarity with both the wuxia and kung fu strands of Hong Kong martial- arts cinema, plus the Jean- Claude Van Damme films that had initially brought that star to Midway’s attention before the failed Universal Soldier licensing deal. A number of earlier martial- arts- themed video games had at least superficial links to movies, especially when tied to particular stars: from Chuck Norris Superkicks, to Kung- Fu Master’s Japanese reissue as an unli- censed tie- in with Jackie Chan’s martial- arts comedy Meals on Wheels (Sammo Hung, 1984), to Datasoft’s (U.S.) 1984 Bruce Lee platform game. But few fighting games possess Mortal Kombat’s dense indebtedness to specific films and cultural mythologies previously transmitted through cinema. By tracing the history and influence of Hong Kong martial- arts cinema up through the popularity of Bruce Lee in the 1970s, the Ameri- canization of such films via rising stars like Van Damme in the 1980s, and the wuxia revival in pre-r eunification Hong Kong’s “New Wave” films, we will find a mélange of historical signifiers that may indeed have been cobbled together from an orientalist cultural imaginary among an all- white team of American game designers but whose very transnational circulation also complicates some of the more one-s ided accusations of racism and sexism leveled at the early Mortal Kombat games. From Wuxia to Kung Fu Films The history of Chinese martial-a rts cinema extends back to the long- running Shanghai-m ade serial Torching the Red Lotus Temple (1928– 31), Cinematic Influences and Cultural Politics • 45 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution also considered the first masterpiece of wuxia pian (chivalric swordplay films). Wuxia films are typically set in a fantastical version of China’s pre- modern past, featuring sword- wielding heroes (both male and female) with superhuman abilities to fly weightlessly through the air and unleash energy bursts (dubbed “palm power”) from their hands or weapons. Over half of all Shanghai film production from 1928 to 1931 consisted of wuxia films, but government censors cracked down on their production in 1931, fearing not only that their supernatural elements might promote superstition but also that their mix of old folk culture with new cinematic special effects might slow China’s path toward modernization (Desser 2000, 31; Cheuk 2008, 86– 87; Hunt 2003, 6– 7; Zhen 2001, 55– 57). After World War II and the 1949 Communist Revolution, much of this produc- tion shifted to Hong Kong, from which companies like Shaw Brothers could more easily distribute films across the Asia- Pacific region (Chung 2007, 671– 75). Wuxia films made intermittent comebacks over subse- quent decades, especially once the success of Japanese chanbara films like the Zatoichi series (1962– 89) led Hong Kong studios to send aspiring filmmakers to train in Japan and come back ready to revive wuxia films as a homegrown Chinese form of swordplay cinema. But wuxia films were largely considered passé after the box-o ffice failure of King Hu’s A Touch of Zen (1971) (Hunt 2003, 3; Teo 1997, 98; Teo 2009, 143). Kung fu films, by contrast, emphasize the variety of empty-h anded combat styles that, according to legend, were developed in Bodhidhar- ma’s time at the Shaolin Temple in Henan Province during the Northern and Southern dynasties (420–5 89 CE), though the films themselves are typically set in somewhat more contemporary settings. Shaw Brothers’ The Chinese Boxer (Jimmy Wang, 1970) is often credited as the first break- through kung fu film, with its success and the following year’s Bruce Lee vehicle The Big Boss (aka Fists of Fury, Lo Wei, 1971) helping displace the wuxia film’s popularity by 1972 (Teo 1997, 103). Whereas wuxia films relied heavily on montage and special effects like wirework to depict their heroes’ superhuman attributes, kung fu films increasingly high- lighted the pro- filmic authenticity of martial artistry, with stars like Lee effectively “re- masculinizing” martial-a rts cinema by displacing wuxia’s frequent female heroes and elevating masculine spectacles of bodily mastery (Tasker 1997, 322–3 8; Hunt 2003, 46, 53, 119; Bowman 2011, 64). Warner Brothers, meanwhile, helped popularize kung fu with Western audiences by first distributing the Shaw Brothers’ King Boxer (aka Five Fingers of Death, Jeong Chang- hwa, 1972), producing the television series Kung Fu (1972–7 5; starring David Carradine as a former Shaolin monk 46 • Mortal Kombat Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution in a role originally considered for Lee), and finally coproducing Lee’s crossover vehicle Enter the Dragon (Robert Clouse, 1973). With many kung fu films deliberately made for export, and distributed by exploita- tion film companies to inner- city grindhouse theaters on double bills with horror and blaxploitation films, kung fu became so popular that Hong Kong– made films outgrossed Hollywood films at the box office for much of 1973 (Desser 2000, 20, 22– 26, 34– 35).3 Meanwhile, within the realm of martial arts itself, a series of govern- mental initiatives— first during China’s Republican era and then follow- ing the 1949 Revolution (A. Morris 2004)— formulated wushu in order to consolidate China’s many disparate fighting styles beneath the ban- ner of a state- approved, competitive gymnastics style increasingly dis- tanced from the practicalities of hand- to- hand combat. Although there are no hard- and- fast distinctions between regional styles (Kennedy and Guo 2005, 80– 83), wushu is more indebted to the kicks and lower body strikes commonly associated with Northern Chinese martial-a rts styles, as opposed to the fists and upper body strikes from the Southern styles later associated with “kung fu.”4 With acrobatic movements derived from Chinese opera traditions and the associated spectacle of long kicks, wushu became more closely aligned in the popular imagination with the realm of myth, fantasy, and pastness also seen in wuxia films, as opposed to the relatively more modern, realistic, and historically spe- cific connotations of kung fu films. Overall, Chinese viewers discerned wushu and kung fu as very different styles during the 1960s and 1970s, with the former seen as more of a gymnastic sport than the latter’s association as a web of practical combat styles (Hunt 2003, 29– 31; Teo 1997, 98; Bordwell 2000, 201). This distinction is significant for my purposes because many of Mortal Kombat’s live actors, such as its original martial- arts consultant Daniel Pesina and his students, used their wushu training to develop the game’s moves. This fact helps explain not only the series’ emphasis on jump kicks and other long leg attacks; the popular linkage between wushu and wuxia’s fantastical elements also helps justify the series’ use of energy projectiles and other forms of “palm power” (already popularized by Ryu’s Hadōken in the Street Fighter series). The dropped frames of its pix- ilated sprites additionally recall the use of “undercranking” to artificially speed up the filmed movements in kung fu films— a controversial prac- tice among purist fans of martial-a rts movies, for supposedly “cheating” the authenticity of the filmed martial artist’s speed. (Many of the Mortal Kombat clones discussed in chapter 4 are marked by inferior pixilation Cinematic Influences and Cultural Politics • 47 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution techniques, recalling the campier aspects of sloppy undercranking in some low- budget kung fu movies.) The successful double- billing of kung fu and horror movies certainly resonates with Mortal Kombat’s supernatural characters and gory fatali- ties. The carnivalesque, gross-o ut quality of the latter—w hich prevents players from ever taking such winkingly outlandish deaths too seriously— provides another link between the sense of lowbrow vulgarity that courses through much of Hong Kong genre cinema (e.g., grotesque forms of abjection, slapstick tomfoolery, ribald bodily functions) and also finds a home in the culturally “lower” end of the horror genre (Bordwell 2000, 7, 97). Take, for instance, Jeffrey Sconce’s (1994, 112– 13) discussion of the “highly self- reflexive and comic mediation on the spectator” in Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare (Rachel Talalay, 1991), when Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) sucks a stoned teenager into a video game, toying with the teen before killing him off with a nod to the tagline for Nin- tendo’s 1989 Power Glove peripheral (“Now I’m playing with power!”). This moment arguably looks ahead to the Mortal Kombat games in its temporary suspension of framing narrative and character identification alike to foreground the film’s central appeal: “incredible spectacles of death” delivered by an impishly effective showman. Krueger himself would become a playable character (available as a premium download) in the rebooted Mortal Kombat (NetherRealm Studios, 2011), while Mortal Kombat X (NetherRealm Studios, 2015) would offer other downloadable horror avatars, such as Jason Voorhees (Friday the 13th [Sean Cunning- ham, 1980]), Leatherface (The Texas Chain Saw Massacre [Tobe Hooper, 1974]), and the titular monsters of Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979) and Predator (John McTiernan, 1987)—t hus indicating the horror genre’s easy over- lap into Mortal Kombat’s own generic territory. Of course, a major difference between kung fu movies and fighting games is that, regardless of the long-t ake aesthetic privileged by martial- arts purists, many kung fu films still rely on montage and other quick editing tricks to depict spectacular combat moves, whereas each round of a fighting game constitutes a single long take within which all the action unfolds, even as combos still recall the precision of Hong Kong fight choreography (Hunt 2003, 2, 36, 39, 193). Aaron Anderson (1998) observes that watching cinematic martial-a rts fights feels closer to expe- riencing music or dance than actual real- world fights, and the combat tends to fall on a spectrum between depicting characters as rarely seri- ously injured (e.g., the slapstick combat of Jackie Chan) and depicting characters as sustaining graphic and painful-l ooking injuries. And unlike 48 • Mortal Kombat Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution many martial-a rts films, where the visible accumulation of fatigue and bodily damage signals the approaching end of a fight, the health meters in fighting games invisibly monitor the character’s remaining vitality. That is, the combatants in most fighting games (with notable excep- tions like the “body damage system” in Bushido Blade [Lightweight [JP], 1997]) do not realistically slow down or lose their abilities to inflict dam- age across the course of a given round, regardless of the rather unreal- istic degree of damage their bodies should have suffered throughout. Much like exploitation movies, fighting games are also full of fast, cheap thrills and forms of readymade spectacle (e.g., special moves) that are geared for quick player turnover more appropriate to the coin- op market than long- play games designed for home consoles. And unlike the long training sequences, romantic and political subplots, and other extended backstory in martial- arts films, the gameplay of fighting games is largely confined to the actual fights themselves (Poole 2000, 56–5 7, 188)—m ore like engaging with the trailer for a martial- arts film (i.e., all the most sensationalistic “good parts”) than the film as a whole. The Mortal Kombat games, then, would seem to operate at both ends of Anderson’s (1998) spectrum, with combatants’ fighting abilities vis- ibly unaffected, despite the many spurts of blood they may lose during each round, but with the end- of- match fatalities serving as a sudden shift toward graphic mutilation that reinforces the severity of the loss. The overall gameplay in the early Mortal Kombat games combines the empty- handed combat of kung fu movies with the more supernatu- ral elements of wuxia films (e.g., “palm power”), thus representing a combination of what were once considered distinctly different fighting aesthetics. Swordplay itself did not become a major factor in the series until MK4 allowed each playable character to draw and wield their own distinctive weapon during combat, while more “authentic” combat styles were added as playable options in Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance (2002), albeit with the menu interface flattening these culturally localized fight- ing traditions into just one of many toggleable choices. Although some allusions to Japanese mythology were included (e.g., “Raiden” from Raijin, a mythological god of thunder), Pesina argued for including more Chinese cultural influences in the games, including not just the influence of wushu itself but also related weapon techniques like the rope dart (sheng biao), originally a medieval Chinese weapon that here became the basis for Scorpion’s spear. Pesina likewise pushed for characters such as Sub- Zero to be depicted not as Japanese “nin- jas” (a trope cinematically popularized in the United States by Cannon Cinematic Influences and Cultural Politics • 49 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Films’ Enter the Ninja [Menahem Golan, 1981]) but rather as part of the mythical Lin Kuei (“forest ghosts”), a nomadic clan of secretive Chinese warriors who supposedly date back to the Shang dynasty (ca. 1600–1 046 BCE) and later crossed into Korea and Japan, becoming a formative influence on Japanese ninjutsu (McCarthy 2018).5 The Lin Kuei were actually the invention of American martial artist Randall Brown (1984), writing in the mid-1 980s under the pseudonym Li Hsing (1984; 1986), who dubiously describes having been trained by the last surviving Lin Kuei master, an émigré to the United States who had since bequeathed this secret history in an effort to keep the clan alive in America. According to John Tobias’s original concept art, Liu Kang was initially going to be a Japanese character named “Minamoto Yoshitsune” (after Minamoto no Yoshitsune, a military commander immortalized in the twelfth- century epic Heike monogatari), before he was later made a Shao- lin monk and thus more clearly tied to the mytho-h istorical origins of Chinese martial arts. The actual Shaolin Temple in Henan Province had been destroyed multiple times over the centuries— albeit, and contrary to legend, not by the Qing dynasty— though Qing authorities did suspect the monks of harboring anti- Qing rebels due to the temple’s past sup- port of the Ming dynasty (1368–1 644). Nevertheless, this legend about a late seventeenth- or early eighteenth-c entury temple burning— which supposedly scattered fugitive priests with martial- arts expertise through- out China—s pread through popular martial-a rts fiction (and, later, mov- ies) (Shahar 2008, 184– 85, 190– 96). Leon Hunt (2003, 48– 52, 58, 69, 71) observes that the Shaolin Temple mythos was not popularized in martial- arts cinema until the television show Kung Fu and a concurrent series of films including, among many others, Shaolin Martial Arts (Chang Cheh, 1974), Five Shaolin Masters (Chang Cheh, 1974), Shaolin Temple (Chang Cheh, 1976), Executioners from Shaolin (Lau Kar- leung, 1977), and The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (Liu Chia- liang, 1978). Another mytho- historical allusion is Liu Kang’s supposed neglect of the Shaolin Temple (as implied in the MKII comic book [Tobias 1993]) in favor of the “White Lotus Society,” which in sequels is described as an ancient sect cofounded by Raiden and Shaolin Temple elders. The actual White Lotus religion (Bailian jiao) was a loosely organized sect dating back to the Eastern Jin dynasty (317–4 20 CE), whose millenarian beliefs “took on violent and rebellious characteristics as it incorporated elements of Daoist magical techniques, Manichean theologies, and folk shamanism” by the time of the Ming dynasty (Wang 2014, 42). Due to its millenarian beliefs, White Lotus adherents were allegedly involved in 50 • Mortal Kombat Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution many anti- dynastic uprisings, with the very name “White Lotus” becom- ing a catchall label for stereotyping and persecuting heterodox sects and political dissidents during the Ming and Qing dynasties (ter Haar 1992, 244– 45, 249). Much as Qing authorities falsely blamed the Heaven and Earth Society (Tiandihui), a secret society rumored to date back to the same fugitive Shaolin priests, for helping foment the Boxer Rebellion (1899–1 901), the White Lotus Society was scapegoated for their seem- ingly magical beliefs and intense secrecy (ter Haar 1992, 281; Shahar 2008, 184; Murray and Baoqi 1994, 82, 152). Indeed, orientalist scholars turned to Pu Songling’s 1740 book Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, a collection of supernatural tales about ancient China, as a reference point for attempting to link the White Lotus Society’s “magic” to mod- ern imperial struggles like the Boxer Rebellion (Goto- Jones 2016a, 163– 64). Like the story of the Shaolin Temple itself, then, kung fu films such as Intruder at White Lotus Temple (Chi Lo, 1971) and Clan of the White Lotus (Lo Lieh, 1980) would mix myth and history in dubiously verifiable ways. The Bruce Lee Influence Such mixtures of historical facts and legends primarily descend to Mortal Kombat by way of Enter the Dragon, the 1973 Bruce Lee film upon which MKI’s narrative is most closely modeled. In this transnational coproduc- tion between Warner Brothers and Raymond Chow (founder of Golden Harvest, the largest producer of martial-a rts films aside from the Shaws), Lee plays a Shaolin monk who must restore the temple’s honor and avenge his sister’s death by fighting in an invitation- only tournament held on a private island by Han (Shih Kien), a former Shaolin student who has turned his martial- arts training toward evil. Because Han’s island occupies international waters off the coast of Hong Kong, over which the British colonial powers have no authority, a British spy agency tasks Lee with digging up dirt on Han’s criminal enterprises during the tournament, with the assistance of two American combatants, Roper (John Saxon) and Williams (Jim Kelly). As Leon Hunt (2000, 76, 78, 80– 81) argues, the film was deliberately made as a transnationally traveling text. Its espionage plot and orientalist archvillain recall Dr. No (Terence Young, 1962), many of the Asian actors’ dialogue is post- dubbed into English, and Kelly’s casting as Williams was deliberately meant to appeal to the Black crossover market between blaxploitation and martial-a rts films. Hence, the film leans heavily toward orientalist kitsch, evincing a tension between “Asiaphilia” and “Asiaphobia” by both “fetishiz[ing] Cinematic Influences and Cultural Politics • 51 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution the ‘Orient’ and replay[ing] ‘Yellow Peril’ archetypes” (Hunt 2003, 158; see also Frayling 2014). Although Enter the Dragon’s modern setting means that it does not share the mythical temple- burning story presented in so many Shaw Brothers films, Han’s name conflates the Han Chinese with the Qing (Manchu) ethnic minority who conquered them in founding the Qing dynasty. This helps justify why Han so closely resembles Sax Rohm- er’s infamous archvillain, Fu Manchu, a Qing loyalist who would have opposed Shaolin rebels against the dynasty. As Hunt (2000, 81) notes, Williams’s rebuke that Han “come[s] right out of a comic book” is even a reference to Marvel Comics’ deal with the Rohmer estate to revive the Fu Manchu character in their Master of Kung Fu series (1973–8 3).6 In MKI, then, Enter the Dragon’s conflict between Lee and Han becomes reworked into Liu Kang’s battle against the Fu Manchu– inspired Shang Tsung, another usurper of the Shaolin Temple’s former glory. While hardly the only fighting game character to be modeled after Lee, Liu Kang’s high-p itched vocalizations— an example of the “expres- sive amplification” of sound effects that David Bordwell (2000, 232– 33) finds so endemic to Hong Kong genre cinema— are another obvious allusion to his cinematic inspiration, as further confirmed by Liu Kang’s Dragon Transformation fatality in MKII and explicit use of Jeet Kune Do (the martial-a rts system developed by Lee in 1967) in MK: Deadly Alli- ance. From Han’s and Shang’s private junks sailing the combatants to the island (as depicted in the MKI Collector’s Edition comic), to both Han and Shang sitting on golden dragon–d ecorated thrones as they watch the tournament unfold, to characters like Roper prefiguring the money- driven egotist Johnny Cage, MKI’s setting and framing narrative share many inspirations from Enter the Dragon. Yet, as Paul Bowman (2011, 78– 79) observes, the supposed “Shaolin kung fu” that Lee uses in Enter the Dragon is an exaggerated fantasy of “kung fu,” not an authentic represen- tation of actual styles—i n part because Lee’s self-d eveloped Jeet Kune Do was itself a cultural hybrid of different styles, not unlike how his charac- ter mixes the mytho-h istorical Shaolin monk with the Cold War– era spy. Lee’s fighting style, however, would become the crux of another cin- ematic influence on Mortal Kombat: his unfinished original production, The Game of Death. Lee began filming Game of Death for Golden Harvest in 1972, shooting about one hundred minutes of footage before agree- ing to pause production to star in Enter the Dragon, but his untimely 1973 death meant that the project was aborted. (Enter the Dragon’s director, Robert Clouse, would later cobble together eleven minutes of Lee’s 1972 52 • Mortal Kombat Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution footage into a ridiculous framing story featuring a handful of Lee looka- likes, but this 1978 Game of Death bears little resemblance to Lee’s origi- nal concept and is better considered one of the many “Brucesploitation” films released to cash in on Lee’s death.) In Lee’s original version, he would have starred as martial artist Hai Tien, whose family is being held for ransom by Korean mobsters until Hai battles his way to the top of a wooden pagoda to acquire a treasure for the mob, with each of the pago- da’s five stories guarded by a master of a different martial art. Joined by several accomplices, each step in Hai’s vertical ascent is meant to show- case Jeet Kune Do’s ability to adapt to and overcome the best of compet- ing styles (Goto-J ones 2016b, 47).7 If this sounds familiar, recall that the 1984 beat- em- up game Kung- Fu Master was directly based on a similar ascent through five levels of a temple to rescue the avatar’s wife. For our purposes, though, we can see the vertical ascent through a series of fighters with different styles and skill sets as inherited by Mortal Kombat’s “Battle Plan” screens (renamed “Ladders” in later sequels), which visu- ally represent the sequence of upcoming fights as, for example, climb- ing a mountain (MKII) or a derelict skyscraper (MK3), with the bosses positioned at the top. And much like Jeet Kune Do’s goal of becoming so adaptable to an opponent’s style that it becomes a sort of “non- style,” MKI’s “Mirror Match” requires one’s avatar to fight against their doppel- ganger before continuing on to the bosses, as if overcoming the weak- nesses of one’s own style is a prerequisite for reaching the top. Mortal Kombat’s status as a “game of death” in its own right, then, arguably owes a major debt to several of Bruce Lee’s posthumously released works. Tsui Hark and the Return to Wuxia Although John Tobias cites Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest kung fu films, plus the obvious influence of Enter the Dragon, as inspirations for Mortal Kombat, he recalls, “My biggest influences came from Tsui Hark films— Zu Warriors [sic] & The Swordsman. We had to get them from boot- leggers in [Chicago’s] Chinatown” (@therealsaibot, September 1, 2011). As one of the leading lights of Hong Kong New Wave cinema (ca. 1979– 90), Tsui Hark’s energetic, genre-b ending films are credited with reviving the wuxia film in the 1990s, with The Swordsman (1990) and the Once Upon a Time in China trilogy (1991–9 4) depicting ancient Chinese mysticism confronting (and eventually adopting) Western weapons and science during the late Qing dynasty. Critics disagree whether the mythicized pasts in Tsui’s wuxia films nostalgically recall a period of national(ist) Cinematic Influences and Cultural Politics • 53 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution unity or instead signal a more postcolonial/transnational awareness of the arbitrariness of borders, but they tend to concur that his films serve as loose allegories for Hong Kong’s impending 1997 handover to China (Sarkar 2001, 163–7 1; Teo 2009, 148, 162; See- Kam 2010, 45, 48– 49). Born in Vietnam but relocating to Hong Kong during the war, Tsui later studied filmmaking in the United States at a time when optical spe- cial effects in big- budget films like Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977) were starting to dominate the global film market. Upon returning to Hong Kong, Tsui prefigured the later wuxia revival with his early film Zu: War- riors from the Magic Mountain (1983), an ambitious attempt to combine Hong Kong– style wirework with Hollywood-s tyle optical effects overseen by an imported team of U.S. special- effects artists. Aspiring to compete in the global market, this Golden Harvest production returned only HK$3 million on its $30 million budget, with its narrative about unlikely heroes striving but perhaps failing to restore national stability thus shar- ing an ironic resonance with the film’s own costly gamble (Schroeder 2004, 3, 10, 12, 32– 33, 41– 43). Set in the enchanted Zu Mountains during an ancient period of intertribal warfare, West Zu army scout Ti Ming-c hi (Yuen Biao) des- erts with an East Zu soldier (Sammo Hung), and they adventure to a cave where they are rescued from flying humanoid creatures by itinerant swordsman Ting Yin (Adam Cheng). They are soon united with several warrior-m onks on a journey to destroy the Blood Demon, an evil entity temporarily held at bay by the magician Long Brows (Sammo Hung). Reeling from their first encounter with the Blood Demon, the team takes refuge at the Ice Countess’s (Brigitte Lin) fort. Although Ting Yin remains possessed by the Blood Demon’s magic, the rest of the team scales Heaven’s Blade Peak to retrieve the Twin Swords, the only weapon that can defeat the demon. They manage to vanquish the demon just as Long Brows’ magical hold loosens, but despite achieving victory through unlikely teamwork, the two original soldiers finally return to their respec- tive armies to find them engaged in perpetual combat. With its gloomy and fantastical diegesis, the mystical world of Zu bears a closer resemblance to MKII’s Outworld than anything in the first game, complete with haunted temples and dark forests and wastelands. The shadowy presence of Shao Kahn as an evil emperor was inspired by Star Wars’ Darth Vader (Mick-L ucifer 2012), but the horn-c overed Blood Demon also bears a fascinating similarity to Shao Kahn: both characters attempt to overrun borders but are held off by a Raiden- like figure’s (inadequate) magical boundaries (Schroeder 2004, 34). Some of the 54 • Mortal Kombat Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution “palm power” elements in Zu closely prefigure certain moves in the Mor- tal Kombat games: from the Ice Countess’s ability to freeze her opponents with bursts of blue ice energy (à la Sub-Z ero), to the warrior-m onks using their blade- rimmed hats as throwable metal discs (à la Kung Lao), to Ting Yin’s sword blade spreading out into a spinning array like Kitana’s fan. The projectile moves in Mortal Kombat—i n which characters do not throw actual weapons so much as energy projections from those weap- ons (e.g., Kano’s knife, Mileena’s sais)— are a convention straight out of wuxia films like Zu. And we might even see Bhaskar Sarkar’s (2001, 169– 70) argument about the “tropes of physical amputation” in Hong Kong New Wave films, allegorically reflecting hysteria over the prospects of Hong Kong’s post-r eunification body politic, rendered into an apolitical visual trope in Mortal Kombat’s over- the- top fatalities. Zu was also John Carpenter’s biggest inspiration for his martial- arts fantasy Big Trouble in Little China (1986), a secondary inspiration for Mortal Kombat (Swires 1986, 13). Much as the influence of kung fu films descended by way of Enter the Dragon, this Americanized take on Tsui’s attempted wuxia revival finds cocky Anglo-A merican trucker Jack Bur- ton (Kurt Russell) teaming with San Francisco restaurant owner Wang Chi (Dennis Dun) and magician Egg Shen (Victor Wong) to infiltrate the Chinatown underworld, battling rival gangs and a Fu Manchu–e sque sorcerer in order to save several kidnapped women. Throughout, magic is depicted as a dark and wondrous force transplanted from the Orient, much as Western stage magicians during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries invoked and perpetuated orientalist stereotypes in order to “conjure” entertainingly mysterious images of Asia for their patrons (Goto-J ones 2016a). Across Carpenter’s oeuvre, “the [western genre’s] frontier mythol- ogy lingers, but its trajectory is reversed. . . . The primitive forces of wild places are not so much to be overcome as survived, and it is often those forces that seem inevitable and overwhelming, reclaiming the spaces abandoned by an American culture in retreat” (Phillips 2014, 125). In this regard, the orientalist mise- en-s cène in Carpenter’s film— also shared by Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), whose main villain gave us Kano’s MKI Heart Rip fatality—t akes on even more racialized “Yellow Peril” overtones by locating an “unassimilated” core of ancient Chinese magic amid an ethnic enclave within one of America’s largest cities. Sylvia Shin Huey Chong (2012, 272) observes that the 1980s saw multi- ple films about Chinatowns as sites where “good Asian Americans” might Cinematic Influences and Cultural Politics • 55 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Figs. 9– 10. Lightning (James Pax) shoots electricity from his hands in Big Trouble in Little China, an inspiration for Mortal Kombat’s Raiden. be separated out from “bad Orientals,” as part of wider post-V ietnam concerns about the extent of Asian American assimilation.8 In Carpen- ter’s film, the sorcerer, posing as elderly and reclusive Chinatown banker David Lo Pan (James Hong), must appease the evil God of the East by sacrificing the kidnapped women to regain his youth, not unlike Shang’s reprieve from Shao Kahn in MKII. Meanwhile, three demigod figures loyal to Lo Pan— Thunder, Lightning, and Rain— provide obvious inspi- ration for Raiden by wearing conical bamboo hats, shooting lightning from their hands, and flying through the air (figs. 9– 10), although the death of one such character, blowing up like a balloon until he pops, also prefigures Kitana’s MKII Kiss of Death fatality (figs. 11–1 2). There 56 • Mortal Kombat Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Figs. 11– 12. One of the Three Storms blows up like a balloon and explodes in Big Trouble in Little China, much like Kitana’s Kiss of Death fatality in Mortal Kombat II. is even a moment at the film’s climax where Lo Pan and Egg Shen use “palm power” to conjure battling avatars, connected to their hands by long strings of energy, as if playing their avatars with home console controllers! Films like Big Trouble in Little China illustrate how Chinatowns and other East Asian diasporic communities within the United States can serve as convenient backdrops for non- Asians’ fantasies about cultural slumming in “exotic” and “edgy” locales, even as these same locations may also be sites of more authentic transnational exchange. As Tobias recalls, venturing into Chicago’s Chinatown was necessary to acquire bootlegs of the Tsui films at a time when they were not yet officially dis- tributed in the States, since diasporic video stores filled this gap.9 More- over, the Mortal Kombat design team photographed examples of orna- Cinematic Influences and Cultural Politics • 57 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution mental Chinatown architecture— including the main Chinatown gate and a smaller “Welcome to Chinatown” display at the intersection of Wentworth Avenue and Cermak Road—t o be mapped into the back- grounds of several MKI arenas (such as the “Courtyard” scene depicted in fig. 10). Both filmic and real Chinatowns, then, were sources of Mortal Kombat’s inspiration in multiple ways, albeit largely as a means of supply- ing the games with orientalist texture. The Van Damme Connection Finally, we can return to the game’s aborted origins as a vehicle for Jean- Claude Van Damme, since his films—a nd, more specifically, how his films narrativize the appropriation of East Asian martial arts for Ameri- can sensibilities— were a major early influence on the Mortal Kombat series. Tobias clearly went back to Van Damme’s low-b udget Cannon Films releases like Bloodsport (Newt Arnold, 1988) and Kickboxer (Mark DiSalle, 1989) as inspiration once the Universal Soldier tie- in deal fell through. By Tobias’s own admission, the character of cocky movie star Johnny Cage “ended up being a spoof on the whole Van Damme situ- ation” (Quan 1994b, 26), with Cage’s initials and splits-p unch move as allusions to the real-l ife star. As several scholars have argued, Bruce Lee’s Vietnam-e ra crossover fame among American audiences led to the popu- larity of 1980s- era white action stars like Van Damme, who appropriated East Asian martial arts as a means of rendering them racially “closer” for American viewers to comfortably appreciate (especially when those skills were turned back against “Oriental” villains), while also fitting into wider Reagan- era attempts to redeem America’s past involvement in Vietnam. Military- colonial encounters had provided the context for such cultural appropriation even before the Vietnam War, with American servicemen bringing martial-a rts knowledge back to the United States after World War II, the Occupation, and the Korean War (Desser 2000, 38– 39; Hunt 2003, 9– 10, 12; Chong 2012, 178– 79, 186, 251). Take, for instance, the plot of Universal Soldier itself, which opens during the Vietnam War in 1969 as American soldier Deveraux (Van Damme) and his commanding officer Scott (Dolph Lundgren) kill each other when Deveraux attempts to prevent the mad Scott from execut- ing innocent Vietnamese civilians. Frozen and later reanimated as part of a secret team of cyborg- zombie soldiers remotely controlled by the military (a premise that seems readily adaptable to a video game), Deve- raux eventually regains his autonomy and goes rogue after flashing back 58 • Mortal Kombat Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution to what happened in Vietnam; Scott is sent to take him out in a replay of their past conflict. The film clearly frames Deveraux’s rediscovery of his past moral fiber as a means of redeeming America’s culpability for the war; as if to cement the point, Deveraux even realizes his past iden- tity while watching a TV interview of Richard Nixon explaining how he had accepted Gerald Ford’s pardon for the crimes committed during his presidency. Although the plot of Universal Soldier is, compared to Van Damme’s earlier movies, more of an attempt to replicate the success of RoboCop (Paul Verhoeven, 1987) and Terminator 2: Judgment Day, its link- age of Van Damme’s star image with redeeming the war tells us some- thing about his previous martial-a rts films set in places like Hong Kong and Bangkok. Based on Frank Dux’s dubious account of winning the Kumite, a secretive martial- arts tournament held by the International Fighting Arts Association (Stewart 1980),10 Bloodsport’s Hollywoodized narrative of Dux (Van Damme) deserting the army to compete in the Hong Kong– based tournament in memory of his mentor Senzo Tanaka (Roy Chiao) adds a fictional backstory that nicely allegorizes Dux/Van Damme’s own appro- priative relationship to East Asian martial arts. During a flashback, we see young Dux and his friends break into his future mentor’s home to steal a Japanese katana sword, but when caught in the act, Dux begs for the chance to earn the sword by training alongside Tanaka’s son. After Tanaka’s son unexpectedly dies, Dux convinces Tanaka to finish training him so that Dux can fulfill the father’s desire for a new famil- ial generation of Kumite competitors. Despite Tanaka’s initial resistance (due to Dux’s non-J apanese ethnicity), the now- grown Dux completes his training and effectively becomes Tanaka’s surrogate son. In this story of a white man “redeeming” himself by earning his right to the Asian martial arts that he initially attempted to steal—a nd later confirmed by Dux’s climactic defeat of the murderous (Asian) champ Chong Li (Bolo Yeung)— Bloodsport presents the Euro- American appropriation of martial-arts traditions as justified, much as Van Damme’s own star image inherited Lee’s cinematic legacy. The film even draws a clear contrast between the serenely meditative Dux (depicted, like Tanaka himself, as a first- generation immigrant, though likely a convenient excuse for Van Damme’s thick Belgian accent) and the more stereotypical American represented by his friend and fellow Kumite combatant, Ray Jackson (Donald Gibb), a boorish biker who is not far off in characterization from Big Trouble’s cowboy- like Jack Burton. In light of the fact that “Ultimate Kumite” was a working title for Mortal Cinematic Influences and Cultural Politics • 59 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Figs. 13– 14. Frank Dux (Jean-C laude Van Damme) proves unexpectedly talented at playing Karate Champ on his way to compete in the Kumite in Bloodsport. Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Kombat (Mick- Lucifer 2012), Dux and Jackson’s initial scene of Ameri- cans bonding abroad, with Dux defeating the boastful Jackson at several coin- op rounds of Karate Champ in their hotel lobby (figs. 13– 14), is ret- rospectively all too appropriate: JACKSON: You like this kind of fighting, huh? You want to see some real fighting, you can see me fight at the Kumite. DUX: I’m here, too, for the Kumite. JACKSON: Aren’t you a little young for full contact? DUX: Aren’t you a little old for video games? In this playful exchange, the conflation of the Kumite with a canonical fighting game looks ahead to Bloodsport’s influence on Mortal Kombat via its no-h olds-b arred tournament setting in a shadowy Hong Kong under- world, depicted not unlike the Chinatown underworld in Big Trouble in Little China. Bloodsport’s main villain, Chong Li, is even played by the hulking Bolo Yeung, who had a similar role as one of Han’s murder- ous enforcers in Enter the Dragon. Both Chong Li and the similar, long- queued villain Tong Po (Michel Qissi) in Van Damme’s Kickboxer pro- vided visual inspiration for MKI’s four-a rmed monster Goro—a deeply problematic linkage of Asian- ness with monstrosity that, in a more feminized form, again stretches back to Fu Manchu. As Eric Lichtenfeld (2007, 111– 15) notes, Van Damme’s early films for Cannon tended to fol- low this formula of a shadowy tournament milieu with racially marked villains, and his contract to keep making low- budget exploitation films for Cannon prevented him from achieving the same level of breakout mainstream success as another European expatriate with whom he was initially compared, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Yet, whereas many of the so- called hardbody action films of the 1980s featured their stars’ pas- sively displayed muscularity, Van Damme’s films combined images of his overdeveloped physique with the kinesthetic bodily movement that has been the primary appeal of martial-a rts movies and fighting games alike (Anderson 1998).11 Another notable connection between Bloodsport and Mortal Kombat is its allusion to the Black Dragon Society (Kokuryūkai) as the supposed founders of the Kumite. The real- life Black Dragon Society was founded in 1901 by Uchida Ryōhei, and despite its demonization as a secret fas- cist society during the anti-J apanese xenophobia of World War II, its shadowy influence and criminal powers have been vastly overstated. In actuality, Sven Saaler (2014, 126, 128–3 2, 134, 136, 153) explains that the Kokuryūkai was more of an open political pressure group than a Cinematic Influences and Cultural Politics • 61 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution secret society or criminal organization, reaching its peak in the late 1910s and early 1920s but largely defunct by the rise of Japanese fascism in the 1930s. After World War I, the group promoted the Japanese annexa- tion of Korea and parts of Siberia, and fostered right- wing opposition to Japan’s conciliatory relationship with Western imperial powers dur- ing the Taishō democracy (1912– 26). The Kokuryūkai’s early origins also derived in part from Uchida’s judo training alongside future members of the group (Adams 1969, 46), including Jigoro Kano, a possible name- sake for the Mortal Kombat character who is described as belonging to a “Black Dragon Society” criminal organization. The Japanese group’s infamous name was later appropriated by American ex- GIs like Count Dante (née John Keehan), a Chicago-b ased karate expert who founded the Black Dragon Fighting Society (BDFS) in 1969 as a fraternal organization of martial-a rts specialists who held peri- odic Kumite tournaments. A ruthless self-p romoter, Dante’s mail- order ads for the 1968 pamphlet World’s Deadliest Fighting Secrets appeared in Marvel comics like Master of Kung Fu and other pulp publications dur- ing the early-1970s kung fu craze, promising a free BDFS membership card with every order (Taylor 2018). Although Dux, another member of the BDFS, would claim that the “real- life” Senzo Tanaka (also rumored to have been one of Dux’s inventions, much like Randall Brown’s sup- posed Lin Kuei master) was formerly a member of the Kokuryūkai before his emigration, and thus a sort of generational bridge to the later BDFS, much of the fraternity’s actual history remains shrouded in self- aggrandizing myths. The underlying point here, though, is how the BDFS and its associated Kumite events— their membership largely peopled by white Americans—t rade in the cultural appropriation of Asian martial arts under the orientalist aegis of the Kokuryūkai’s disrepute, which was itself more a product of wartime B movies like Black Dragons (William Nigh, 1942) than a reflection of the actual Kokuryūkai. In this regard, Bloodsport’s own mytho-h istorical backstory helps shed light on not just more of the mélange of East Asian references thrown into Mortal Kom- bat’s diegesis but also the very process of cultural appropriation involved in doing so, including the one that originally made Van Damme a star. Playing with Race and Gender Up to this point, I have described the Mortal Kombat games as drawing upon a mishmash of cultural reference points, primarily drawn from China and Hong Kong, albeit filtered through second- or third- hand 62 • Mortal Kombat Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution derivations like martial-a rts films. It seems quite clear from the mise- en- scène (e.g., the ubiquitous dragon symbol, yin- yangs, Buddhist statues, etc.) and music of these games that Mortal Kombat’s blender of influences is the orientalist imaginary— a generalized sense of nationless exoticism vaguely located in “the Asiatic” as “forms, spaces, and personages that many players will find similar to Asia but that are never exclusively Asian” (Patterson 2020, 58). As John Tobias himself admits, the game’s world derives from “a balance between fantasy—w hich in this case is repre- sented by [E]astern influences—a nd reality, which is represented by [W]estern influences” (Mick- Lucifer 2012). The Outworld and its deni- zens are especially infused by orientalist visuals, as if the Orient itself is a sort of dark and mysterious alternate dimension that shares far more with the supernatural Outworld than the comparatively staid back- grounds seen when the Outworld invades Chicago in MK3. Still, without denying that these American game designers created a blatantly orientalist diegesis, I argue that simply castigating the series as “racist” requires overlooking some important nuance. On one hand, the transnational travel of martial-a rts films means they are seldom “pure” national- cultural products to begin with, but rather products of cross- cultural influence. Recall that the 1960s popularity of wuxia films in China and Hong Kong was partly modeled after Japanese chanbara films and that many of the later 1970s kung fu films were deliberately made for export to the United States and elsewhere. Hunt (2003, 13) notes that exported kung fu films are more likely to flirt with (self-) orientalist imag- ery, in part because they are already the product of pan- Asian influences aiming for broader Asia-P acific circulation. Much as “Shaolin” continues to circulate in and beyond China as more of a dubious brand name than historical fact (Burton- Rose 2017), Enter the Dragon as a U.S.– Hong Kong coproduction exemplifies this tendency toward “self-o rientalism” for for- eign marketability, opening the likelihood that, in Bowman’s (2011, 79) words, “many of the subjects called, hailed, or interpellated into position by ‘Asian’ martial arts did not (and do not) necessarily know about, care about, or feel any need to distinguish or discriminate between, say, (Chi- nese) ‘kung fu’ and (Japanese) ‘Samurai.’” At the same time, though, the immense popularity of Enter the Dragon and other East Asian martial-a rts films among Black viewers during the 1970s (and beyond)— often rooted in their identification with underdog heroes fighting against cultural imperialists— demonstrates that this transnational exchange is not simply a tension between white versus nonwhite cultures and that some varieties of cultural appropriation can produce more politically ambivalent ends. Cinematic Influences and Cultural Politics • 63 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution On the other hand, American-b ased mini-m ajors like Cannon Films (itself founded and run by two Israelis) relied heavily on presales of inter- national distribution rights (especially for home video sales) in order to finance a large production slate of low- to- medium- budget exploita- tion films like the early Van Damme vehicles (Wasser 2001, 121– 25, 176). This meant that many of the white hardbody action stars—i ncluding Van Damme, Steven Seagal, and Chuck Norris— whose 1980s popular- ity partly stemmed from embodying appropriated martial-a rts spectacle, also became popular stars in East Asia. (Van Damme’s reputation as “the muscles from Brussels” further complicates this picture, since his heav- ily accented star image is nominally less “American” than most of his generic peers.) Consequently, small Hong Kong producers would begin copying the kickboxing-t ype films popularized by Van Damme, making their own homegrown variants in an attempt to stay competitive in the transnational market for martial- arts cinema (Yip 2018, 87). The Mortal Kombat series coincidentally predated the late- 1990s period when Hollywood itself began importing filmmaking talent from post- reunification Hong Kong, from directors (John Woo and Tsui Hark) to fight choreographers (Yuen Woo-p ing), to stars (Jackie Chan and Jet Li). Meanwhile, American- made films like The Matrix (Lana and Lilly Wachowski, 1999) and Kill Bill (Quentin Tarantino, 2003–2 004) were joined by successful wuxia films by Ang Lee (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon [2000]) and Zhang Yimou (Hero [2002]). As Andrew Schroeder (2004, 52, 55) observes, this flow of talent from “East” to “West” reverses the trajectory that Tsui had attempted years earlier when bringing over American special- effects expertise for Zu, with Hollywood now adapt- ing effects like wirework and visual morphs that had been pioneered in Hong Kong. Tsui himself would direct several Hollywood films star- ring Van Damme during this period, including Double Team (1997) and Knock Off (1998), but neither is seen as a high point in either’s careers. Indeed, in recounting Mortal Kombat’s origins as a planned Van Damme tie- in, the Chicago Tribune ironically observed, “In the long run, MK’s pixel- ized blood sport [has] proved to have greater staying power than Van Damme’s recent celluloid offerings” (Hollingsworth 1995). What we find, then, is that martial-a rts films have typically constituted a “minor” sector of the transnational film market where staying competitive means quickly exploiting a two- way flow of cross- border inspiration from one (often low-b udget) variant to another (M. Morris 2004), creating a sort of international contest for one-u pmanship not unlike the battling world warriors of Street Fighter II and so many other fighting games. 64 • Mortal Kombat Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Much as the opening credits of Bloodsport prefigure SFII by depicting a training montage of different fighters from around the world prepar- ing for the Kumite, I argue that the characters in SFII are more crudely stereotypical than most characters seen in the first few Mortal Kombat games, since each SFII character is explicitly depicted as representing a different country rather than framed as a combatant within Mortal Kom- bat’s more escapist world of fantastical lore. That is, Mortal Kombat’s over- all diegesis still evinces a problematically orientalist vibe, but because most of its characters and character-s pecific arenas are not blatantly framed as caricatures of real- world nations or cultures, the white Ameri- can designers’ broad deployment of orientalism operates somewhat dif- ferently from Capcom’s more specifically Japanese deployment of stereo- type. Nicholas Ware (2016, 161), for example, notes that SFII’s Blanka, a Brazilian beast- man, reflects Japanese racism toward “ethnically Japanese Brazilian immigrants coming to Japan during the economic boom years to work factory jobs,” whose “Japanese ethnicity gave them easy access to work visas” but whose “Brazilian culture and Portuguese language use . . . threatened the perceived homogeneity of Japanese cultural iden- tity.” Rachael Hutchinson (2019, 77–7 8, 82– 83) likewise explains that SFII was the product of a period when Nihonjinron, an essentialist “theory of the Japanese people,” was a cultural buzzword, helping explain the cultural caricatures posited as various “Others,” positioned against the normative Japanese male who serves as the default protagonist in most Japanese- made fighting games. SFII’s rather stereotypical characters may seem more difficult to take seriously, however, because the candy-c olored sprites themselves are so cartoonish in style, perhaps encouraging us to read their “diverse” cast of reductive cultural representations as more campy than outright offen- sive (Patterson 2020, 54–5 5). By contrast, Mortal Kombat’s sprites gener- ally rely on the indexicality of real- world actors and are thus more open to casting critiques. Indeed, the portrayal of some Asian characters, such as Sub-Z ero and Scorpion, by white actors like Pesina was a questionable choice, but the sprites’ low resolution and the actors’ full body costum- ing at least obscures their most racially identifying features (with notable exceptions like Ho-S ung Pak’s portrayal of the semi-c lothed Liu Kang). Hence, Josh Tsui, a Chinese American employee at Midway, substituted for the unmasked Sub-Z ero, revealed in medium close-u p in that char- acter’s MKII ending screens. As noted above, the series’ first Black char- acter, Jackson “Jax” Briggs, was originally planned for inclusion in MKI, but Midway decided to create Sonya as a female character with the same Cinematic Influences and Cultural Politics • 65 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Kano-h unting storyline; Jax was instead introduced in MKII as a Special Forces major attempting to rescue Sonya from captivity by Shao Kahn. Although Sonya and Kano ironically proved the least- selected char- acters in MKI, Midway’s decision to include a sexualized female char- acter (likely inspired by SFII’s Chun-L i) over a heavily muscled Black character— effectively treating femaleness and Blackness as superficially interchangeable nods to “diversity”—m ay have been motivated as a broader appeal to heterosexual male gamers than to the smaller contin- gent of nonwhite American gamers. Meanwhile, some early critics of Mortal Kombat claimed that the games reinforced stereotypes of nonwhite (and especially East Asian) ethnicities. During his U.S. Senate hearing testimony (C-S PAN 1993) over video game violence (see chapter 3), for example, psychologist Eugene Provenzo claimed that video games depict Asians as violent or evil. However, his own published research (1991, 126) cites only one anec- dotal quote, from a fourth- grade boy who “wasn’t sure if the Ninja were Chinese or Japanese, but that the Chinese and the Japanese were the enemies because ‘just because they are from Japan they might want to do something different from you. And they are dangerous because they might want to fight with you.’”12 More specifically, Guy Aoki, president of the Media Action Network for Asian Americans (MANAA), argued that games like SFII and MKI potentially reinforced “existing stereotypes of Asians as martial arts experts,” but he admitted that if Asian characters were simply omitted from such games, “then the [Asian] community would feel that the origins of martial arts are belittled and inaccurate.” In the same article, Asianweek writer May Lam (1994) was less concerned, noting that “players can choose to be an Asian or non- Asian character, thereby not automatically restricting Asian characters to the ‘enemy’ role,” and even Aoki concurred that a multiracial cast of characters could demonstrate that “not only Asians know kung fu.” When the first Mortal Kombat live-a ction film (Paul W. S. Anderson, 1995) was released the following year, Aoki (1995) criticized Japanese American actor Cary Hiroyuki-T agawa for playing the villainous Shang Tsung, arguing that it reinforced the same anti- Japanese xenophobia seen in his earlier Rising Sun (Philip Kaufman, 1993) role, but Aoki would grudgingly admit that Liu Kang’s (Robin Shou) emergence as the film’s “funny, hip-t alking” hero helped balance out the film’s racial politics. Much as SFII’s Blanka reflected Japanese xenophobia against Brazilian immigrants, the resur- gence of “Yellow Peril” rhetoric around the rumored Japanese corporate buyout of late-1 980s America (which was rhetorically linked to Japan’s 66 • Mortal Kombat Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution 1980s success with exporting cars, computers, and video games to the States) was indeed a justifiable concern on Aoki’s part. The fact that so many of the Mortal Kombat imitator games of 1994–9 5 (see chapter 4) relied on crude, undeniably racist stereotypes implies that competing designers perceived such broad characterizations as a potentially copy- able element of Midway’s success. Still, much as Bloodsport’s Frank Dux supposedly earns the right to appropriate Tanaka’s knowledge/sword through a perseverance that “transcends” race, many American gamers mistook the Mortal Kombat games for a Japanese franchise, based on its overall gameplay quality. This was due to the predominant (if reductive) association between Asians and martial- arts mastery, both on- and offscreen—t o the extent that being said to have “Asian hands” is an orientalist compliment among white fighting gamers (Harper 2014, 113–1 4; Goto-J ones 2016b, 113–1 4). Indeed, the popular association between Japan and martial-a rts fighting games is a notable example of a specific game genre that, unlike many other genres, retains its “cultural odor” when released outside Japan (Iwabuchi 2002, 27). Nevertheless, Mortal Kombat’s inclusion of blood and gore marked the games as American products in a different way, to the extent that they were censored (either banned outright or toned down with green “blood” sprites) in Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and other East Asian nations (Ng 2008, 220).13 Rachael Hutchinson (2007, 287) notes that fighting games that use blatant stereotypes may offend and thereby detract from a game’s enjoyment for some minority players. Meanwhile, some white male play- ers might reinforce existing racial or gender prejudices by, say, always choosing white avatars when pitted against nonwhite characters or tak- ing special pleasure in defeating female characters (289–9 1). Yet, much as I suggested in the previous chapter that players are far more likely to select characters based on respective skill sets (also see Hutchinson 2015) or the desire to see certain finishing moves, and not out of a strong investment in a character’s backstory, Hutchinson (2007, 295) compel- lingly argues that most players are far likelier to hone their skills across a demographically diverse variety of characters over time, with the sheer diversity of playable characters undercutting the potential for racial and gender stereotyping. Were imbalances built into gameplay through weakening the skills of nonwhite or female characters relative to other combatants, that would indicate bias on the part of game designers, but the fact that MKII’s top-t ier characters (including Mileena, Jax, Kitana, Liu Kang, and Cinematic Influences and Cultural Politics • 67 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Kung Lao) are all female or nonwhite (Cureton 1994; Char- Li, Vega, and Guzman 1994, 82) suggests that this was not the case here. Unlike a martial-a rts film, where the viewer is given one or more sympathetic pro- tagonists with which to identify, the fighting game continually returns to the Character Select screen, since one is not obliged to remain the same character after each two- player match or after suffering a defeat in one- player mode. Following Hutchinson (2007), then, this means that moral or political alignments between player and avatar are often frag- mentary or tenuous at best. Still, a loud contingent of racist gamers led an online backlash against Jax’s Mortal Kombat 11 (NetherRealm Studios, 2019) character ending— wherein the victorious Black character, having gained the magical power to control time itself, travels centuries into the past to prevent transatlantic chattel slavery altogether. Whether accusing the game’s creators of injecting Black Lives Matter– era identity politics into the game or deploying the white- supremacist canard that the game promotes “white genocide” (Fahey 2019), this outsize response to a com- mon trope of alternate-h istory speculative fiction supports Hutchinson’s (2007) caveat that racist attitudes brought into the game’s reception by a subgroup of angry gamers may be a stronger force than in- game repre- sentations themselves. The social contexts for playing fighting games have never been politi- cally neutral zones, since American coin- op arcades have long been seen as a homosocial “boyzone,” where female players were less common or located at different games than many of the adolescent male players— the latter often silently “cruising” each other to ascertain potential play partners with whom to express male homosocial intimacy via the gender- appropriate means of (the avatar’s) fists. As Carly A. Kocurek (2015a, 181, 196) observes, present-d ay (male) players’ memories of arcades as male- dominated spaces may be rather selective, with the recently expanding demographic of female gamers and the overall decline of the coin- op market producing a politically regressive nostalgia for the arcade as a gender-s egregated space. This regressive nostalgia among a gamer sub- culture whose cultural reputation for “nerdiness” already compromises their (self- )perceived masculinity helps account for the politically reac- tionary defense of eroticized female characters, homophobic insults, and the sexual harassment of female game players and designers that is perhaps more common within the fandom of fighting and first-p erson- shooter games than in less violent genres (Skolnik and Conway 2017, 12– 16).14 Indeed, despite the comparisons that professional e-s ports gamers make between themselves and professional athletes training for more tra- 68 • Mortal Kombat Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution ditional sports, fighting games foreground the sheer disjunction between actual and virtual performances of physical and athletic prowess. Despite the title of their oft- cited anthology From Barbie to Mortal Kom- bat: Gender and Computer Games, Justine Cassell and Henry Jenkins (1998, 8– 9) have very little to say about Mortal Kombat itself, apart from briefly citing male gamers’ gravitation toward fighting games as emblematic of gendered differences in gameplay, thus positing Mortal Kombat as a cultural “bad object.” These gendered tastes may be roughly analogous to those also seen among female fans of horror cinema, who predomi- nantly (but not exclusively) dislike more violent and gory subgenres (Cherry 2002), but it is important to note that exceptions will always exist. Among recorded examples that would complicate selective nos- talgia about arcades, for instance, consider the nine- year-o ld girl who wrote to a Chicago Tribune advice column asking how she could make new friends, since all of the girls at her school made fun of her for lik- ing video games, “especially Mortal Kombat II” (Wendi 1995). Such com- ments suggest that, even if minimized in the discourse, female Mortal Kombat fans have always been present, especially once ports for home consoles allowed the games to travel beyond the traditional boyzones of American arcades. As a more recent example, Lisa Nakamura (2019, 135– 36) cites a Black female gamer who professionally competes in Mor- tal Kombat tournaments but often receives both racist and sexist abuse from her online opponents under the guise of “trash talk.” For some critics, the Mortal Kombat games became unfettered cel- ebrations of masculinity, with female characters supposedly depicted as castrating dragon ladies (Kinder 1996, 34; Hunt 2003, 121, 132) whose challenge to phallic power aligned them with the “monstrous- feminine” (Creed 1993), not unlike the villainous female roles in some martial- arts films and Japanese “pinky violence” films. Although not as scantily clad as, say, the female combatants in the Dead or Alive series (Tecmo [JP], 1996– ), I agree that Mortal Kombat’s female characters are visually framed for their sex appeal as well as their fighting prowess. Examples include their sexualized Kiss of Death fatalities, Kitana’s fan as a coquettish prop- of- femininity- turned- deadly- weapon, or Mileena’s vagina dentata–i nspired MKII fatality (leaning in to kiss her defeated opponent but instead suck- ing them into her sharp-t oothed mouth and spitting out a pile of bones). Long-r unning rumors about “nudalities” for these female characters were yet another product of the arcades as an adolescent male hothouse, growing from the same linkage between sexuality and death already seen in the Kiss of Death fatalities (see fig. 12). As John Tobias admits: Cinematic Influences and Cultural Politics • 69 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Our player demographic was primarily a hardcore male audience and so the look and design of our female characters pandered to them back then just as they do today. I have no problem being apologetic for that. The only solace I can offer is that . . . those characters had very strong, atypical female archetypes . . . and at the very least could kick the hell out of their male counterparts. (Mick-L ucifer 2012) This more optimistic take gained an unlikely echo of legitimation in Judge Richard Posner’s majority ruling in a 2001 case striking down an Indianapolis ordinance that would limit minors’ access to violent video games, in which Posner describes Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 as, “surpris- ingly, a feminist violent video game.” Even as a female character’s “suc- cess depends on the player’s skill,” he suggests that “the game is feminist in depicting a woman as fully capable of holding her own in violent com- bat with heavily armed men.”15 As noted earlier, game balance is indeed one important measure of parity between characters of different races or genders, yet this hardly explains why, by the series’ third game, most of the female characters were increasingly attired like BDSM dommes, their cleavage prominently displayed in precariously low-c ut vinyl outfits. The wuxia influence on Mortal Kombat may be significant here, since unlike kung fu films, women are often as powerful as men in wuxia films, although there are plenty of more recent examples of powerful women in action cinema as well, some of whom are more blatantly sexualized than others (see Tasker 1993; Schubart 2007). Because female players are more likely to feel alienated from such hypersexualized characters (Hutchinson 2015), the use of flesh-a nd- blood actors to indexically depict Mortal Kombat’s increasingly sexualized female characters only raises the political stakes of such male- dominated design choices. Even Elizabeth Malecki, who played Sonya (one of the series’ more conserva- tively attired women) in MKI, recalls wanting her character “to be a posi- tive influence for girls, and especially to both be fit and to be confident and strong.” But when the controversy over the game’s violence broke out in late 1993, she found that no teachers or principals would accept her offer to visit school classrooms with her positive message (McCarthy 2018). The wider implications of this politically charged moment, espe- cially as the Mortal Kombat games migrated from the boyzone of arcades into the comparatively mixed- gender space of the family home, is the subject of the next chapter. 70 • Mortal Kombat Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution three Mortal Kontroversy; or, Dispatches from the Console Wars [It’s] Not blood, [it’s the color] red. —J ean-L uc Godard, on the violence in Pierrot le fou (1965) C’mon, it’s red color on your computer screen. How real is that? — Brad Weir, Mortal Kombat fan, age 14 (1995) Anxieties over video game violence stretch back to the golden age of the coin- operated arcade market, with Exidy’s Death Race (1976)—a n unau- thorized spin-o ff of the New World Pictures exploitation movie Death Race 2000 (Paul Bartel, 1975)—r epresenting perhaps the most notable early case (Kocurek 2015a). However, as Ian Bogost (2015, 47, 49) notes, when games could make more reasonable claims to realism, and there- fore inspire similar anxieties as film and television violence, such con- tent’s entry into the home became increasingly targeted by moral entre- preneurs. Carly A. Kocurek (2015a, 14) suggests it is important not to flatly dismiss the arguments of “would- be moral reformers,” since “to argue that video games are not a legitimate source for serious social con- cern would be to argue against their cultural significance.” The crisis moment that specifically developed around Mortal Kombat and several other video games— reaching its height between the former’s September 1993 release to home consoles and the United States Congress’ July 1994 71 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution endorsement of the industry’s self-a pplied ratings system—h as been previously chronicled by Steven L. Kent (2001), Blake J. Harris (2014), and others cited in this chapter. Since video of the full Senate hearings on video game violence is readily available in the C-S PAN (1993; 1994) online archives for the benefit of people with a few hours to kill, I will not rehash these hearings at length. Instead I will focus on their major rhetorical threads and how they resonated with voices that have been less explored in the wider debate, such as critics and readers of major gaming magazines. In particular, I will posit that Mortal Kombat became the poster child for video game violence not only because its cinematic qualities cor- responded with its huge popularity, but also because the game repre- sented the related “threat” of disreputable arcade content’s entry into the private family sphere at a moment when an emerging generation of 16- bit home consoles like the SEGA Genesis (released in 1988– 89) and the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES; released in 1990– 91) achieved widespread market penetration. The domestic infiltration of photorealistic violence that more closely approximated—b ut did not wholly reproduce—t he audiovisual quality of arcade machines allowed home ports of the first two Mortal Kombat games to serve as a referendum on the technological capacities of the newly popular 16- bit consoles. The arcade war between MKI and SFII thus mapped onto the growing indus- trial battle between SEGA and Nintendo for dominance of the home market, while reviews of their respective ports weighed in on whether Mortal Kombat’s blood and gore was a mere gimmick or an integral part of gameplay quality. Furthermore, psychologists used Mortal Kombat in a panoply of media- effects studies that set the stage for later debates over first- person- shooter (FPS) games and other violent genres. Revisiting this controversy from multiple angles therefore reveals a set of anxieties over technological change that continue to have timely resonances to this day. Arcade Violence Comes Home The three video games singled out in the December 9, 1993, joint hearings of the U.S. Senate Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Government Regulation and Information and the Judiciary Subcommittee on Juve- nile Justice—M KI, Night Trap, and Lethal Enforcers— had all premiered in October 1992, although only MKI and Lethal Enforcers began life in the coin- op market, where they generated little controversy. SEGA of Amer- ica president Tom Kalinske recalls that parents had begun complain- 72 • Mortal Kombat Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution ing about Genesis game content in March/April of 1992 and that there had been rumblings about supposed “subliminal messages” in SEGA’s rapidly edited television commercials (Kunkel 1993c, 35; Harris 2014, 405). But it was the impending Genesis port of MKI that led SEGA to create the Videogame Ratings Council (VRC) in May 1993, which would self-a pply ratings to SEGA’s games and presumably serve as a model for wider industry adoption. Headed by Arthur Pober, former director of the Children’s Advertising Review Unit of the Council for Better Busi- ness Bureaus, the VRC created parental advisory labels modeled after the Motion Picture Association of America’s (MPAA) age- based classi- fications: GA (General Audiences), MA- 13 (Mature Audiences over 13), and MA-1 7 (Mature Audiences over 17). The MPAA had, in fact, refused Kalinske’s initial request to include video games under their existing rat- ings system, as the movie industry did not want to take oversight of an additional medium outside their purview, and even threatened to sue SEGA for copyright infringement if they self-a pplied the extant MPAA ratings (Kunkel 1993c, 35; Harris 2014, 404– 5, 423, 428– 29). As I note below, however, it was the increasingly cinematic qualities of these video games that raised such concerns in the first place—a nd the fact that, much like the legal status of movies prior to Burstyn v. Wilson (1952),1 video games were not yet considered a form of “protected speech” under the First Amendment and therefore still subject to prior restraint. It was not until the home console release of MKI on September 13, 1993 (dubbed “Mortal Monday” in publicity materials), that major pub- lications began widely reporting on its violent content— with Sub-Z ero’s Spine Rip and Kano’s Heart Rip fatalities earning the most notoriety in such coverage (see Gruson 1993; Cohen 1993; Elmer-D ewitt and Dickerson 1993). Because the blood and uncensored fatalities could be unlocked on SEGA ports only by inputting a not- so- secret “blood code,” this created a loophole for the default gameplay to get away with an MA- 13 rating, not unlike the arcade cabinets’ DIP switch option for family- friendly locales. Nevertheless, on November 16, California’s attorney general, Daniel Lungren, held a press conference warning game compa- nies to either clean up their content or face state bans from store shelves (Glionna 1993). The following day, U.S. senators Joseph Lieberman and Herbert Kohl announced their plans to introduce legislation that would force the industry to regulate itself or else face federal interven- tion within a year’s time, spurred into action after the nine-y ear-o ld son of Bill Andresen, Lieberman’s chief of staff, asked his father to buy him a copy of MKI (Kent 2001, 466– 69; Harris 2014, 472– 75). Mortal Kontroversy • 73 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution SEGA responded by agreeing with Lungren’s concerns and pro- moting its proactive establishment of the VRC as a guidance tool for parents— all talking points that SEGA’s vice president of marketing, Bill White, would repeat in his Senate testimony (C- SPAN 1993). But the editors and readers of Electronic Gaming Monthly were skeptical whether SEGA had done enough to educate the public about what its ratings meant, even in its own in-h ouse magazine, SEGA Visions (Semrad 1994, 6; Wormdahl 1994, 16; “Sega Responds” 1994, 16, 18). Other readers hoped that the new ratings system would allow video games to incorpo- rate more mature content beyond violence, such as sexual themes, but the editors of Electronic Games doubted that video games would be able to shake their predominant association with children’s entertainment, even alluding to Ralph Bakshi’s X-r ated animated films (such as Fritz the Cat [1972]) as an example of how cartoonish forms and mature content had previously proved an awkward fit in another medium (Powell 1993, 8). Meanwhile, the irony that Mortal Kombat and its kin had not inspired outrage until brought beneath the roof of the family home, and the eyes of parents who didn’t frequent arcades, was not lost on some commenta- tors: “Where were Mom and Dad and the Anti-V iolence Coalition when Junior was slipping off to the arcade and spending dozens of dollars to rip out someone’s spinal cord?” (Carter and Carter 1993c; also see Kunkel 1993d, 46). Some skeptics thought that going after video games was little more than a convenient target to distract from the fact that other gov- ernment efforts to curb violence, both in the media and on the streets, had largely failed (“Ratings” 1994; Harrington 1994; Kinder 1996, 26).2 Coming only a few years after the Parents Music Resource Center had convinced the Recording Industry Association of America to include “Parental Advisory” stickers on offending albums, and amid other out- cries over the perceived raunchiness of early-1 990s pop culture (e.g., The Simpsons [FOX, 1989– ], Beavis & Butt-h ead [MTV, 1993– 97], shock jock Howard Stern, and innumerable rock and hip- hop artists), Mortal Kombat and friends were easy objects for parental-c um-p olitical outrage. Despite (or perhaps because of) the lack of adult supervision associ- ated with such sites, American video arcades have long had a culturally “low” status as disreputable spaces, although these associations extend back to earlier sites of public gaming like pool halls and card rooms, and to sites of coin-o perated entertainment like nickelodeons and casi- nos. According to Michael Ryan Skolnik and Steven Conway (2017, 4–9 ), these spaces all threatened social norms because they mixed diverse demographics of people, while the meritocracy of skilled gameplay could 74 • Mortal Kombat Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution subvert many (but not all) existing social hierarchies. In mid-t wentieth- century America, coin-o perated businesses also had associations of being run by the mob, but by the rise of video game arcades in the recession- era 1970s, fears about economic precarity blamed arcades for enticing young men into wasting their time and money on frivolous leisure activities. Suspicions that arcades would drive youth toward petty crime to fund their video game habits were enjoined by fears that these spaces set apart from adult supervision would encourage child abductions and worse. Consequently, many arcades attempted to positively rebrand themselves as “family fun centers” to draw in a younger and more respectable cli- entele (Skolnik and Conway 2017, 5– 6; Kocurek 2015a, 18, 26, 60, 94, 99, 106). Although the U.S. Supreme Court, in City of Mesquite v. Alad- din’s Castle, Inc. (1982), would strike down local efforts to restrict youth from entering arcades without adult supervision, arguing that young people’s freedom to consume video games was a (purchasable) form of free speech,3 lingering anxieties about the overall safety of such spaces encouraged arcade games to be ported onto consoles where children could play them under adult supervision, within the safety of the private home (Kocurek 2015a, 32, 113; Newman 2017, 99, 107, 158). Small won- der, then, that Craig Johnson of the Amusement and Music Operators Association was easily the most nonchalant of the industry representa- tives testifying at the December 1993 Senate hearing. He argued that the coin- op industry had no control over youth access to violent games, so arcade operators should not be held responsible for game designers’ bad taste; his only major objection was correcting the senators that Night Trap was never available in arcades to begin with (C-S PAN 1993). Whereas earlier electronic technologies like radio and television had been gradually incorporated into the domestic sphere (long gen- dered as a more “feminine” space than the “masculine” public sphere) through a focus on leisure as family bonding time (Spigel 1992), Berna- dette Flynn (2003, 557– 60, 565, 569) observes that most advertisements for home game consoles figured them as masculine “dream machines” whose associations with the boyzones of public play invaded the home to create a “third space” of exciting escapism from the domestic status quo (also see Newman 2017, 77, 80, 87). By the 1990s, earlier fears about video games as a uniquely dangerous medium in their own right had given way to comparisons between video games and other violent media, including media already common in the family home, such as movies and television (McKernan 2013, 317). Nevertheless, a recurring belief held that, unlike the “passively” consumed imagery of film and televi- Mortal Kontroversy • 75 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution sion, video games’ interactivity made their violent content particularly harmful to young gamers. In their deeply alarmist Senate testimonies (C- SPAN 1993), for example, psychologist Eugene Provenzo predicted that video games and television would soon converge into a “new type of television” verging on virtual reality, wherein interactive violence would become a ubiquitous part of the family home; while Marilyn Droz of the National Coalition Against Television Violence argued that rather than tallying the number of violent acts per hour, as the coalition did with tele- vision shows, video games required tallying acts of violence per minute. It was therefore the longtime convention of video game interactivity, combined with a new generation of 16-b it consoles flooding the home market with increasingly arcade-q uality graphics, that set the stage for this particular crisis moment. In other words, when the disreputable spaces of arcades threatened to collapse into the home via forms of violent con- tent that had otherwise passed under parents’ radar, magical thinking about suspected media effects became that much more likely. One such seeming incitement to imitative violence, which was not already found in arcades, was the SEGA Activator peripheral (1993), an infrared full- body controller allowing the player to stand within an octagonal ring while real-l ife punches and kicks performed in their living room reg- istered onscreen. Marketed for use with fighting games, the Options menu on the Genesis MKII port even lists the Activator as its default setting, though the device’s notoriously unresponsive interface meant it was never widely adopted. Worse still for parents concerned about ver- boten games entering their homes, new initiatives like the SEGA Chan- nel (1994– 98) and competing subscription- based services allowed games to be downloaded or played online via a household’s cable or phone modem (Harris 2014, 340, 423; Markoff 1994), potentially circumvent- ing parental restrictions (at least until SEGA eventually introduced a ratings- based parental lock).4 Much like the 1980s “video nasties” moral panic and resulting censor- ship laws in Britain (Egan 2007; McKenna 2020), then, the growing adop- tion of a new home entertainment technology created the illusion that a sudden wave of filth and corruption, once restricted to urban spaces, was sweeping into “safe” family homes, with loudly voiced concerns over taboo content often superseding the underlying concerns over techno- logical accessibility. And yet, despite this predominant focus on content, game designers were not directly called before the Senate subcommit- tees. Digital Pictures cofounder Tom Zito, for instance, attended the December hearing, but despite speaking up from the gallery to correct 76 • Mortal Kombat Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Senator Byron Dorgan’s mistaken impression that Zito was in absentia, he was still not called to submit a statement in defense of Night Trap (C- SPAN 1993). Because the senators had mistakenly conflated the major console makers with the developers of these third- party games, it was instead SEGA and Nintendo, the distributors of such games into the home, who were called to answer for their supposed sins. Whereas mem- bers of the gaming community certainly knew and celebrated designers like Mortal Kombat’s John Tobias and Ed Boon as auteurs responsible for the spectacular inclusion of playable violence, the non- gaming senators were ignorant of such distinctions between third-p arty game creators and first- party console creators. Cinematic Qualities and Moral Alignments Before delving into how SEGA’s and Nintendo’s respective corporate ethos inspired their responses to this controversy, we need to briefly examine the most salient trait that united the three most frequently targeted games. “Gone are the days when video games were just Pac- Man and other quaint characters,” Lieberman wrote to other members of Congress. “Advances in technology permit the latest video games to use real actors and actresses to depict murder, mutilation, and disfig- urement in an extremely graphic manner.  .  .  . Today’s graphic games may seem mild compared to the CD-R OM and virtual reality systems, which will change the market very soon” (Harris 2014, 474). Compari- sons between cinema and the new photorealism of digital game violence were a common rhetorical means of arguing that these games were “not your father’s Pac-M an,” although the president of Acclaim Entertain- ment, which produced the Mortal Kombat home ports, downplayed such concerns: “We’re certainly not in the realm of creating film-q uality real- ism” (Gruson 1993). These games were all released during the 1989– 95 period that Michele Pierson (2002, 48, 128) has called “the wonder years” of Hol- lywood special effects, when films like The Abyss (James Cameron, 1989), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), and Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg, 1993) all combined the plasticity of computer-g enerated effects with the indexicality of photorealism, dazzling viewers with such new technologi- cal advances. While Mortal Kombat itself used more antiquated animation techniques (pixilation in combination with hand-d rawn effects for the gore and supernatural elements), and would not rely on actual 3D mod- eling until MK4, its graphics rode a fine line between generating wonder Mortal Kontroversy • 77 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution and fear among those on opposite sides of what Gareth Schott (2016, 6) terms the “experience divide.” For Schott, this is the significant disparity between people’s opinions in whether video games can cause real-w orld violence; those with the least amount of experience playing video games are far more likely to ascribe harmful media effects to violent games than players who are intimately familiar with such games. I argue that the very uncanniness of Mortal Kombat’s pixilated sprites registered as that much more disturbing to moral reformers because pixilation’s treat- ment of live actors as posable objects, and its illusion of movement via dropped frames, create a “dehumanizing” effect that might also comple- ment a game’s disturbing or dehumanizing themes (Ivins- Hulley 2013, 281; Perrott 2015, 124). It is no coincidence that violent games with more cartoonish sprites (such as the anime-i nspired SFII) went barely men- tioned during the Senate hearings, but some gamers were dismayed that footage from less violent games and genres was starting to be included in carelessly assembled news coverage of the controversy, seemingly made guilty by association (Raposa 1994, 12). Although Mortal Kombat’s photorealistic sprites have already been discussed in earlier chapters, Konami’s rail-s hooter Lethal Enforcers used more rudimentary pixilation of photographed actors and backgrounds to provide realistic settings and enemies for its Dirty Harry–i nspired (Don Siegel, 1971) light-g un action. Positioned as a Chicago cop, the player must shoot a seemingly endless series of weapon-t oting enemies, and avoid hitting innocent bystanders, across several different shootout scenes: a bank holdup, a car chase, and so on (fig. 15). Lethal Enforcers inherited many of its movie- like traits from the coin- op laserdisc game Mad Dog McCree (American Laser Games, 1990), a rail- shooter using full-m otion video to present the first-p erson-p erspective story of a gun- slinger cleaning up an Old West town. But whereas Mad Dog McCree has long, non- interactive periods of watching the FMV setup for each brief moment of actual gameplay, Lethal Enforcers uses its blocky and relatively unsophisticated animated sprites to create near-c onstant shooting action, a convention graphically improved upon in later rail- shooters like Atari’s Area 51 (1995). This may be why Lethal Enforcers earned an MA- 17 rating when released on SEGA CD, while Mad Dog McCree’s port earned only an MA-1 3. The editor of Electronic Games also hypothesized that Mad Dog McCree’s Old West setting made its violence more palatable than Lethal Enforcers’ present- day urban settings (Kunkel 1993d, 46).5 Much like subsequent controversies over FPS games, critics singled out Lethal Enforcers for encouraging gun violence, although the game’s 78 • Mortal Kombat Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Fig. 15. Simple pixilated sprites, featuring photorealistic images of Asian stereotypes, in the “Chinatown Assault” level of the rail-s hooter Lethal Enforcers. rough-e dged law enforcement theme is more consistent with Dirty Har- ry’s right- wing gun fetishism and reworking of Old West–s tyle justice in a modern guise. “As was the case with Kombat, nobody said a word about the arcade version of the game,” but now it is “guaranteed to be the next big hit on Capitol Hill,” the Washington Post opined (Carter and Carter 1993b). Whereas peripherals like the Lethal Enforcers light gun (“The Justifier”) were once attached to arcade cabinets, now this life-s ize plastic “weapon” was advertised for SEGA’s home consoles under the tagline “You won’t find a toy like this in any Cracker Jack box”—a shame- less appeal to children, according to Herbert Kohl (C-S PAN 1993). Yet, I argue that rail- shooters are more properly “cinematic” than FPS games because players cannot actually control the camera movement as it moves along the predetermined “hard rail” like an amusement park ride, much as movie viewers are passively subject to the changes in angle and per- spective determined by the director. With forward momentum along the rail permitted only by successfully clearing the screen of enemies, it is little surprise that the player’s trigger- happy progression seemed to out- weigh any potentially redeeming themes of killing bad guys and making quick judgments to avoid shooting innocent civilians. The most notorious game of the scandal, however, was Night Trap, an “interactive movie” originally developed by Digital Pictures for Hasbro’s NEMO (later renamed Control- Vision), an abandoned con- Mortal Kontroversy • 79 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution sole that would have used VHS tapes as cartridges for FMV gameplay. Designed to separate an ordinary VHS cassette’s magnetic tape into mul- tiple video tracks through which the player could toggle (as compared to the random-a ccess memory of laserdiscs and later CD-R OMs), this meant that gameplay was very limited beyond toggling between differ- ent, parallel- running audiovisual tracks. A spoof of already tongue- in- cheek horror movies such as the Slumber Party Massacre series (1982– 90), Night Trap frames the player as an operative remotely conducting surveillance upon different rooms of a house where young women are endangered by black- clad, humanoid aliens attempting to harvest their blood. The player toggles between different camera feeds and remotely triggers traps to prevent the intruding aliens from catching the women, but because of the technological limitations of linear video, players can make only a few choices and must then passively watch the FMV action play out for long periods. Much like Mad Dog McCree’s FMV format, Night Trap lacks the constant interactivity of most games and thus made for an unsatisfying hybrid of cinema and video game. Filmed over three weeks in 1987 on a $1 million budget, Night Trap is far more hokey than horrific, but Sony nevertheless purchased the rights to it and three other “interactive movies” when the NEMO was abandoned. The 1991– 92 introduction of the SEGA CD peripheral as an add- on to the 16-b it Genesis allowed Sony to finally bring Night Trap to market in fall 1992. But the fact that the Genesis base console could not run FMV at full screen, was limited to a 16-c olor palette vastly inferior to even VHS, and whose CD- ROM peripheral required long loading times, all added up to a title that would have quickly vanished were it not for the controversy ginned up by moralists who clearly had not even played the game (Perron 2008, 129– 31; Donovan 2010, 184; Russell 2012, 73– 75; Kocurek 2019). During the Senate hearings, for example, Byron Dor- gan posited that Night Trap’s gameplay has a goal of killing women and should qualify as “child abuse” if minors were allowed to play it, while Marilyn Droz was convinced that the game trains young boys to commit sexual violence (C- SPAN 1993). But even some critics who recognized that the game’s goal was to actually save the women and stop the aliens still complained that it encouraged young men to take chauvinistic plea- sure in rescuing scantily clad damsels in distress (Kinder 1996, 34– 35). Although Night Trap was arguably the most controversial (and most lit- erally cinematic) game of the three targeted titles, in the end it simply did not have Mortal Kombat’s wide reach, because it was only available on the relatively unpopular SEGA CD and Panasonic’s then- new 3DO 80 • Mortal Kombat Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution console (1993). Unsurprisingly, then, when major retailers like Toys “R” Us, Kmart, Walmart, and Kay- Bee Toys all removed Night Trap from their shelves, Mortal Kombat remained on sale, under the excuse that it did not contain a comparable level of violence against “real female images” (“2 Toy” 1993). Ironically, though, both Lethal Enforcers and Night Trap have prosocial narratives beneath their lurid spectacles of violence, with stopping crime or other evil as the main gameplay goals. The Mortal Kombat games, by contrast, may have Manichean framing narratives about the forces of good fighting against evil figures like Shang Tsung and Shao Kahn, but the fact that one can also choose to play and win the game as an “evil” character means that moral values are less narratively ingrained in game- play itself. Again, it is possible to win Mortal Kombat without performing fatalities—a nd even the most nominally heroic character, Liu Kang, has a gore- free fatality move in each of the first two games (the screen does not go dark when he performs his Uppercut fatality in MKI, suggest- ing his moral righteousness). Moreover, in Mortal Kombat vs. DC Uni- verse (Midway, 2008), the crossover between Midway’s amoral universe and DC’s morally bound superheroes means that characters like Super- man, Batman, and Wonder Woman cannot perform fatalities, but rather “Heroic Brutality” finishing moves that beat the defeated opponent into submission while keeping them alive to face justice. The intersection of these two preexisting story worlds, then, highlights the different moral alignments in each and the fact that the Mortal Kombat games permit players the choice to engage in antisocial values but still remain victori- ous, unlike either Lethal Enforcers or Night Trap. Moral reformers may have accused video game designers of cynically peddling violence to children for the sake of industry profits, but many young gamers were far less convinced about Mortal Kombat’s potential to harm. While some youth were appalled by the violence, or angry that fighting games threatened to give all video games a bad name, oth- ers excused the games as harmless fantasy or as merely a symptom of wider trends in media violence (see “Youth Opinion” 1993; “Violence in Games” 1993, 12; “Video Violence” 1994, 12). John Tobias has since described Mortal Kombat as the product of an era when video games them- selves were growing up and gaining older players (Hickey 2018, 178), although this metaphor of gaining maturity is undercut by the game’s own advertisements, such as one featuring the Raiden and Kano live actors emerging from the MKI cabinet’s screen to menace two children, beneath the tagline “So Real It Hurts!” The senators who convened the Mortal Kontroversy • 81 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution hearings repeatedly expressed concern that, even with the VRC ratings system, age- inappropriate games might still be advertised to children in magazines and on television, especially if third-p arty advertisers were not required to prominently display the ratings (C-S PAN 1993). Meanwhile, some Mortal Kombat fans were furious at the government’s censorship threats, but their responses did not help their own case. Elec- tronic Gaming Monthly’s envelope art contest, for instance, asked readers to illustrate “what would happen if video game characters attended the video game violence hearing,” and the resulting submissions of blood- soaked fan art depict Mortal Kombat characters gloating over the sena- tors’ headless corpses (“EGM!” 1994, 20). Several of the fighting games attempting to cash in on Mortal Kombat’s success went a step further, with a photo of Lieberman’s head superimposed onto one of the character sprites as a hidden fighter in BloodStorm (Incredible Technologies [U.S.], 1994), and Eternal Champions: Challenge from the Dark Side (SEGA [U.S.], 1995) including a hidden character named “The Senator,” whose special moves include throwing “red tape” and whose finishing moves include impaling his opponent atop the Washington Monument. Overall, the controversy predictably backfired by heightening sales of all three games, especially in the case of Night Trap, whose sales were pre- viously very low due to its lack of engaging gameplay, limited availability on unpopular consoles, and absence of an in- built audience from a coin- op run. As Michel Foucault (1990, 18, 84, 104–5 ) has demonstrated, wide- spread public anxieties over supposedly deviant behavior, and attendant efforts to censor or repress offending material, usually incite a boom in public discourse that makes such behavior all the more likely. During the Victorian era, this included hysteria over the supposed “threat” of mas- turbation, and it is not difficult to see the heavily policed figure of the masturbating child inherited by the similarly nonproductive, onanistic finger-t widdling of the juvenile video gamer. Of course, one doesn’t have to be a Foucauldian to understand this logic; one needs only to have been a preteen gamer reacting to adult/parental pronouncements with greater curiosity and desire to engage with taboo materials than if such games had simply been left alone. Industrial Bloodsport: SEGA vs. Nintendo Put on the congressional hot seat for disseminating such material into the home, industry leaders SEGA and Nintendo responded to the charges in ways reflecting their own increasing battle for market supremacy. Recall 82 • Mortal Kombat Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution that SFII and MKI were already positioned as dueling warriors in the coin- op market even before this rivalry spilled over into the respective contest between 16-b it home consoles, which became open animosity during the December 1993 Senate hearings. SFII had been ported to the SNES in summer 1992, quickly becoming a best seller and acclaimed as perhaps the best fighting game yet released on the then- new console. Capcom’s licensing deal with Nintendo prevented a SEGA port from appearing until SFII: Champion Edition was released for Genesis in September 1993, several weeks after the home console release of MKI. This effectively meant that SFII became more closely associated with the SNES while MKI was more strongly linked to the Genesis, since SEGA’s inclusion of blood and gore meant that its ports were closer to the arcade experience than Nintendo’s ports. Even when the 1993 coin-o p sequels MKII and Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers were ported in mid- 1994, gam- ing magazines framed their release as a “war” for “crown[ing] the king of home fighting games” (“Special  .  .  . Challengers” 1994, 128; also see Tummynator 1993, 56). “Both MKII and SSFII Turbo are machines from the same family, but they’re two different beasts,” read another meta- phor. “While SSFII can be considered the roadster of fighting games, MKII is the muscle car” (Constant 1994, 10). Both franchises remained for many months at or near the top of 1993–9 4 best-s eller charts for home consoles and would receive gaming magazine accolades as among those years’ best games. As Kevin Flanagan (2017, 448– 49) observes, technological limitations and third-p arty development mean that porting from arcade machine to home console is inevitably a process of adaptation and one that adheres to what adaptation studies terms the “fidelity paradigm.” For example, a given port’s closeness to “arcade- perfect” quality often receives supe- rior reviews, and typically becomes the biggest selling iteration. In the battle between Nintendo and SEGA, however, Mortal Kombat tested not only the technical capacities of each 16- bit console but also each com- pany’s corporate standards. Rather than following Capcom’s strategy of brand loyalty to Nintendo via delayed license, Acclaim, Mortal Kombat’s publisher for its home ports, licensed the game to both Nintendo and SEGA for the widely hyped “Mortal Monday” simultaneous release, fol- lowing a blockbuster release strategy that SEGA had previously used for its Genesis release of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (SEGA, 1992). According to Blake J. Harris (2014, 88, 227, 274, 357– 58, 447, 469), Acclaim’s deci- sion set up the MKI release as a head- to- head contest over the technical merits of each console, especially at a time when Sonic 2’s success had Mortal Kontroversy • 83 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution already allowed SEGA to pull even with Nintendo’s market share. Having beaten Nintendo’s own 16- bit system to market by about two years, SEGA had touted the Genesis as a far more advanced system than the 8- bit NES, even as the Genesis’ faster processing capabilities were eventually outdone by the SNES’ greater graphical capabilities. Much as an earlier proprietary battle between Mike Tyson’s Punch- Out!! (Nintendo, 1987) for the 8- bit NES versus James “Buster” Douglas Knockout Boxing (Taito [JP], 1990) for the 16-b it Genesis had attempted to frame Douglas’s real-l ife defeat of Tyson as what SEGA would soon do to Nintendo, the simultane- ous release of MKI on both the Genesis and SNES, backed by Acclaim’s $10 million advertising budget, would test each 16-b it console’s might. And yet Nintendo had already handicapped itself in this fight, as its company policy since 1985 had been to ensure not only effective game- play design on its systems (the Nintendo “Seal of Quality” sported on game boxes) but also a family- friendly experience for its core gaming demographic of children. By contrast, SEGA’s move into the 16- bit era was promoted via a rebranded corporate image as a more rebellious and technologically advanced company with an older but hipper demo- graphic of teens and young adults. As Harris (2014, 98, 142, 280, 310) notes, SEGA’s corporate ethos represented “freedom” as opposed to Nintendo’s tight control over its licensees, even if that meant that the quality of games released on SEGA consoles might be more mixed and could contain potentially risqué content. During the December 1993 Senate hearings, for example, Nintendo’s senior vice president Howard Lincoln forcefully asserted that games like Night Trap “will never appear on a Nintendo system” because children under fourteen remained its core users, whereas SEGA’s Bill White noted that the average Genesis user was nineteen years old and that 60 percent of SEGA CD owners were adults— hence the need for a voluntary ratings system that would do for video games what the MPAA ratings system had done for expanding per- missible movie content (C- SPAN 1993). SEGA and Digital Pictures even suspected Nintendo of conspiracy to disrupt SEGA’s rising market share (Kent 2001, 466– 67), to which Perrin Kaplan, Nintendo of America’s vice president of marketing and corporate affairs, has since admitted: “We actually leaked Night Trap to some press ahead of time. . . . It was basically to get more attention off of us because we wanted to remain as that wholesome company” (Klepek 2016). Acclaim had subcontracted development of the MKI home ports to Probe Software— with the exception of the SNES port being handled by Sculptured Software because of their greater familiarity with the SNES— 84 • Mortal Kombat Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution and both studios consulted with each other over the challenges of port- ing a game whose photorealistic sprites rendered its overall size larger than normal for 16- bit cartridges (Kunkel 1993a, 54– 55). (Due to their far smaller cartridge capacities, the 8-b it Nintendo Game Boy and SEGA Game Gear ports each lost a playable character.) Because these home consoles had only a fraction of the arcade board’s processing power, Probe and Sculptured were given access to the arcade assembly code, converting as much as possible for the 16-b it systems “while creating and optimizing the rest by hand, based on frame- by- frame analysis of the arcade game” (Myers 2018). Based on unfinished demos, advance word from the Winter 1993 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) suggested that the only major qualitative difference between the SNES and Gen- esis ports would be the lack of blood and gore in Nintendo’s versions, while also suggesting that a new controller might have to be developed to properly translate the game’s five- button coin-o p interface (“Mortal Kombat” 1993, EGM, 88–8 9). In the SNES port, the blood sprites would be rendered gray for “sweat” instead of blood (though the Game Boy’s monochromatic display made this moot), and its gorier fatalities would be reanimated to less bloody effect. The company’s in-h ouse magazine Nintendo Power attempted to positively spin these changes as “exclusive extra Finishing Moves”; for instance, instead of Raiden electrocuting his opponent’s head until it bursts in a fountain of blood, he now fries their body into a tastefully discrete pile of ash (“Mortal . . . Dangerous Conflict” 1993, 18). Sculptured Software—m any of whose Utah-b ased employees were social conservatives who flatly refused to work on the project—w ould sketch out ideas for these bloodless finishing moves, send them to both Midway and Nintendo for approval, and then develop the animation by primarily adapting from existing sprites (Myers 2018). With the threat of censorship marking MKI’s move into the suppos- edly “feminine” realm of domesticity, disgruntled (male) fans worried that “without the violence, MK will just be another poor Street Fighter clone” (Masui 1993, 12). They began writing thousands of letters, unsuc- cessfully trying to convince Nintendo to reconsider its stance, while Electronic Gaming Monthly editor Ed Semrad lambasted Nintendo for “playing God again” by delivering a game that would satisfy no one: still inherently violent in concept, and thus liable to offend parents, but sani- tized to an extent that fans clearly knew what they were missing (Semrad 1993, 4). Lincoln indeed conceded in his Senate testimony that the deci- sion to hold firm had come at significant cost (C-S PAN 1993). Although published estimates vary, the Genesis port of MKI is said to have outsold Mortal Kontroversy • 85 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution the SNES port by margins ranging from two- or five-t o- one, and SEGA subsequently pulled ahead with 55 percent of total market share in home consoles (until later overtaken after the SNES hit Donkey Kong Country [Rare, 1994]) (Harris 2014, 472, 522). All fighting games for SEGA consoles automatically received an MA- 13 rating under the VRC, but as noted above, the Genesis and Game Gear ports of MKI would have likely received an MA-1 7 rating were it not for the absence of blood and fatalities in their default modes. Unlike most cheat codes, the Genesis port not- so-s ubtly teases the existence of the blood code in a pre-t itle screen alluding to the Shaolin martial-a rts tournament’s “ethical code,” the combatants’ shared “code of honor,” and finally how “another type of code could be defined as an arbitrary system of symbols or letters . . . a secret code. Mortal Kombat adheres to many codes, but does it contain one?” The port’s co-p ublisher Arena Entertainment made the blood code available through their customer service line (much as SNK did with its first two Samurai Shodown [1993– 94] ports for the Neo●Geo home console), and all of the major gaming magazines published it as well (“Mortal Kombat” 1993, SEGA Visions, 15, 23; Lee 1995, 14). It became so widely known that entering the blood code (ABACABB) to unlock what was also dubbed “Mode A” became nearly as second nature for Genesis players of my generation as switching on the console itself. One desperate fan who missed out, however, wrote in to Electronic Games requesting either the code itself or the price tag for an MKI coin- op cabinet (an estimated $1,200–3 ,000) (“Game Doctor” 1993, 28). MKI reviews thus framed the underlying differences between SNES and Genesis ports via questions about whether faithfully reproducing the arcade experience was linked to more closely emulating the qual- ity of gameplay (a debate framed by each console’s technical capabili- ties) or the gimmickry of gore (a debate over the cultural value of Mid- way’s original coin-o p game). Electronic Gaming Monthly’s reviewers, for example, gave higher scores to the Genesis port for being closer to the arcade’s overall gameplay (“Review . .  . Genesis” 1993, 34), even if the SNES version looked graphically superior. The SNES port, meanwhile, was “an excellent reproduction in both looks and sounds,” but “the only thing this game really had going for it was the blood and fatalities,” therefore qualitatively paling in comparison to the SNES port of SFII (“Review . . . SNES” 1993, 26). Other reviews concurred that the Genesis port was faster and its controls more responsive— even if the need for a six-b utton controller was a common refrain—w hile the SNES version 86 • Mortal Kombat Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution sported more faithfully reproduced character sprites and a richer color palette, albeit one where the color red was conspicuously absent. Dissenting views suggested that the SNES port’s superior audiovisual quality would compensate for the lack of blood and noted that some of the arcade version’s combos and other gameplay strategies were missing from the Genesis port— partly due to the ports being rushed to market in time for the much-h yped “Mortal Monday” release date (“Video Game Gallery” 1993, 58–5 9; Larry 1993, 54–5 5; “Special  .  .  . Kombat II” 1994, EGM2, 144). A reader letter to GamePro, for instance, argued that MKI’s fatalities became boring over time, so the SNES port’s audiovisual supe- riority ultimately made it the better game in the long run (Fielder 1994, 12). Meanwhile, an adjacent letter asks about the strange gray object that Kano holds in his hand (a crude censoring of the extracted heart from the imported animation) when performing his finishing move on the SNES; the editors coyly reply that the reader is “reading more into the image than what’s there . . . his closed fist” (Mendez 1994, 12). Reviews thus evinced a tension between reproducing the arcade version’s in- round gameplay or its gory, end-o f- match spectacles, and although most gamers tended to veer toward the gore (as confirmed by respective sales numbers), many professional reviewers hedged on the side of overall gameplay (“Special . . . Kombat II” 1994, Electronic, 118). The recurrent criticism of trying to play Mortal Kombat with the stan- dard controllers for each 16-b it console further highlighted the function- ality of each system. Some button combinations for special moves and fatalities were slightly different on the MKII Genesis port, for instance, since both the High Punch and Low Punch controls were conflated into a single button on the standard three- button controller, and the Genesis port of MK3 in fact requires a six- button controller to accommodate the added Run button. Meanwhile, third-p arty developers advertised new controllers aimed at either skilled gamers (e.g., arcade pads with a joy- stick and six full- size buttons) or novices (e.g., Innovation’s Mortal Kom- bat II Kontroller, with preprogrammed special moves “sure to give entry- level players a fighting chance against seasoned veterans”) (“Walking” 1994, 62). I would go so far as to suggest that the immense popularity of fighting games during the 16- bit era influenced the number of buttons on standard controllers for the subsequent generation of consoles, since the potential loss of functionality in the translation from arcade to home ports was acutely noticeable with this particular genre. Part of the hype over MKII’s home release concerned how much gore would survive its porting, and even two months before its release, gaming Mortal Kontroversy • 87 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution magazines were still speculating that a blood code would be required for the Genesis port and that fatalities would be altered for the SNES version (“Special . . . Kombat II” 1994, Electronic, 118).6 But when, under the cover of a new industry- wide ratings system, Nintendo released an uncensored SNES port of MKII in September 1994, the console-s uperiority debate was largely settled in favor of Nintendo (Harris 2014, 518–1 9). Hailed as a “near-p erfect translation” from the arcade version, in terms of not only audiovisual quality but also the faithful inclusion of blood and gore, the SNES earned higher review scores than the Genesis port. The latter was still acclaimed as probably the best fighting game yet released on SEGA’s console, sporting better graphics than MKI, but technical limitations still meant a reduced palette of colors and sounds (“Review . . . Kombat II” 1994, 32). And in an inadvertent twist, the Genesis port of MKII is actually less gory than the SNES port, since the Genesis’ limited memory capacity meant that its version needed to sacrifice not only some charac- ter animation but also some of the gorier sprites. In fatalities where the defeated opponent is blown apart, for instance, there are less elaborate bursts of flesh, bones, and entrails, and these sprites vanish upon hit- ting the ground instead of remaining where they fall, as in the arcade and SNES versions. As a passing concession to the company’s old family- friendly policy, Nintendo Power now merely noted that MKII’s “Depictions of violence may turn off some players” (“Now Playing” 1994, 110). The Birth of the ESRB and Other Media Effects Even if Nintendo had not yet rendered SEGA a comparable pile of bones and entrails, the stakes of the console war were clearly altered by Nin- tendo’s belated policy shift toward allowing more mature game content. During the December 1993 hearings, senators Lieberman, Kohl, and Dorgan had been more sympathetic to Nintendo’s internal censorship policy than to SEGA’s VRC initiative, with both Joseph Lieberman and Howard Lincoln agreeing that a ratings system could encourage unscru- pulous designers to incorporate even more extreme content into their games under the “fig leaf” of corporate responsibility (C- SPAN 1993). Whereas SEGA was convinced to “leave content calls up to the ‘good judgment’ of game developers” and let the VRC do the rest (“Editorial” 1993, 8), Nintendo preemptively provided third-p arty developers and licensees with guidelines about ten content- related “Don’ts” in order to avoid wasting their time and money creating a game that would not gain Nintendo’s approval (Kunkel 1993e, 38). But chinks in Nintendo’s 88 • Mortal Kombat Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution armor became all too visible when Bill White accused Lincoln of hypoc- risy for selling the Nintendo Super Scope light- gun peripheral (which Lieberman said resembled “an assault weapon of some kind”) for use with unrated SNES games, including a home port of Midway’s Termina- tor 2 rail- shooter. The audience burst into incredulous laughter when Lincoln, attempting to contrast the Super Scope with Lethal Enforcers’ Justifier, referred to the SNES peripheral as simply for “target shooting and whatnot” (C- SPAN 1993). Following the Senate hearing, SEGA, Nintendo, and other companies began drafting an industry- wide ratings system at the January 1994 CES, but animosity between different companies and industry sectors delayed the process. Because of their tight competition, Nintendo did not want to adopt the existing VRC ratings developed by rival SEGA and initially walked away from the table. The Software Publishers Association also split from the console- based companies over disagreements about how to rate desktop computer games. As a compromise, the industry’s emer- gent lobbying group, the Interactive Digital Software Association (IDSA; renamed the Entertainment Software Association in 2003), announced a new age-b ased ratings system to be administered by the Electronic Soft- ware Rating Board (ESRB). Game designers were now required to sub- mit video, storyboards, or scripts containing a game’s most objectionable content, plus a questionnaire asking developers to identify any content falling into potentially problematic categories, which would form the basis of the assigned rating (“Ratings” 1994; Leeds 1994; Kent 2001, 479– 80; Harris 2014, 502).7 The need for an industry-w ide system was made more acute by Panasonic’s creation of its own in- house rating system for its 3DO console, to say nothing of the rating systems concurrently being developed in Canada, Australia, and Europe— all major markets for SEGA, Nintendo, and other industry leaders (“Editorial” 1994, 8).8 In a follow- up Senate hearing on March 4, 1994, Jack Heistand, senior vice president of marketing at major game developer Electronic Arts, spoke on behalf of what would soon become the IDSA, updating the senators on the industry’s rapid progress in responding to their one- year timetable. According to Lieberman and Kohl, it was important that neither SEGA nor Nintendo should head the new ratings system out of potential conflicts of interest, whereas a coalition of independent game developers and informed citizens would be more impartial. Due to its steady sales numbers, Lieberman continued to single out MKI as a game that should be re- rated according to the new classifications (C-S PAN 1994). In fact, while the home port of MKI had moved SEGA to preemp- Mortal Kontroversy • 89 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Fig. 16. Front cover of the SEGA Genesis port of Mortal Kombat II, one of the final games rated MA-1 7 by the VRC and released to overlap with the newly implemented ESRB system in September 1994. Author’s collection. Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution tively launch the VRC, Lieberman admitted that the announced Septem- ber 1994 home release of MKII specifically motivated the timetable for the new industry- wide mandate (Harrington 1994). Unlike the December hearing, representatives from major retailers Toys “R” Us, Walmart, and Babbage’s were present at the March hearing to testify that they would not carry unrated games and would enforce age restrictions at point of sale, much as major movie theater chains sel- dom release unrated films or circumvent the MPAA’s recommendations for underage ticket buyers (C-S PAN 1994). Satisfied that commitments from these other points in the distribution chain would increase the pro- posed rating system’s efficacy, Congress endorsed the IDSA’s proposal in July 1994 and the ESRB went into full effect that September. Again, it was no coincidence that the ESRB and MKII’s home ports premiered the same month; the Genesis port of MKII, in fact, would be one of the few (and final) SEGA games awarded an MA-1 7 rating (fig. 16) by the newly defunct VRC. Yet, even after the ESRB took effect, SEGA briefly introduced a new “mature- oriented label, Deep Water,” whose logo of an ominously circling shark would appear on select SEGA products in addition to the ESRB’s M rating. The SEGA CD fighting game Eternal Champions: Challenge from the Dark Side, which features many elaborate fatalities (including “Cinekills,” or fatalities rendered as animated FMV cut-s cenes), would be the first title with that short- lived designation (“Press Start” 1995, 50). Although the ESRB’s establishment would temporarily sate threats of government intervention, debates about Mortal Kombat remained alive in the pages of psychology and social science journals, with the series’ vio- lence seemingly ready- made for use in media- effects studies—a nd thus setting up serious potential for confirmation bias. Wading through the voluminous media-e ffects research about video game violence is beyond the scope of this chapter,9 but I suggest that Mortal Kombat’s prominence in such research is due less to its inherent degree of violence than the preceding controversy and the games’ unintended utility for conducting such studies in the first place. Despite how the blood code in SEGA’s MKI port was intended to assuage parental concerns, the fact that the same game could be played with or without blood and gore ironically meant that these two modes could be used as experimental variables (Ballard and Wiest 1996; also see Kirsh 1998). Christopher Ferguson and John Kilburn (2010, 175) also suggest that the politicization of video game violence led to publication bias among social science journals toward printing studies that confirmed existing suspicions. Mortal Kontroversy • 91 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Among critics of such research, one recurring concern is ambiguity over what sort of gameplay constitutes “violence” in the first place, with everything from Mortal Kombat and DOOM (id Software [U.S.], 1993) to Pac- Man (Namco, 1980) and Missile Command (Atari, 1980) having been deemed “violent” games in media-e ffects studies. This inconsistency means that “violent” content can become so broadly defined as to signify everything and nothing (Schott 2016, 21, 48; Markey and Ferguson 2017, 52– 53, 76). Take, for instance, Eugene Provenzo’s surety at the Decem- ber 1993 hearings that research on television violence could be logically extended to video games (C- SPAN 1993), even as his own published work (Provenzo 1991, 89) on video game violence’s potential effect on chil- dren is far more ambivalent. Compared to the variety of 8-b it NES games cited in his prior study, the more graphic violence of MKI and Night Trap had seemingly tipped his hand, even as the promise of high- profile television coverage perhaps produced its own “media effects” on his sub- sequent testimony. Regardless, so many past crisis moments have dem- onstrated how alarmism of the “Think of the children!” variety tends toward supplanting scientific rigor with emotional urgency, as was also the case here. Another major problem with media- effects studies is the use of clini- cal or laboratory settings and protocols that bear little resemblance to actual gameplay contexts. At the risk of sounding flippant, it is not dif- ficult to see how asking children, adolescents, or college students to play video games under the watchful eye of a psychologist—p erhaps while hooked up to biometric sensors or with exit surveys looming—w ould potentially increase players’ “aggressive” thoughts! Measured “aggres- sion” is, in fact, often mistakenly attributed to test subjects’ frustration over the artificiality of experimental protocols, such as being asked to play a game with which one is not already familiar and therefore not particularly skilled (Markey and Ferguson 2017, 66). Likewise, Gareth Schott (2016, 175–7 6) observes that the forward momentum built into game objectives, such as overcoming progressively difficult obstacles (e.g., AI-c ontrolled opponents), is often mistaken for non- ludic, real- world aggression, despite the fact that the former is positively adaptive to the ludic system while the latter entails a maladaptive breaching of social norms. These biased interpretations help account for why, depending on the individual study, increased sensitization to violence (i.e., hostility) and desensitization to violence (i.e., lack of empathy) have both been observed— a paradox that had nevertheless left moral reformers with the impression that video game violence could only be harmful either way. 92 • Mortal Kombat Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution As Amanda Phillips (2018, 138) argues, video games frequently com- bine whimsical ludic goals with images of death and dying, therefore creating a “mechropolitical” tension between “honoring the serious- ness of death and the impulsion to play with and become its master.” Although some games thus invite the player and game to work in tandem to make death “fun,” even nonviolent games motivate players by provid- ing opportunities for demonstrating their competence, autonomy, and other skills. Using Mortal Kombat as one such example, Andrew Przybyl- ski, Richard Ryan, and C. Scott Rigby (2009) describe how the affects that are often mistaken for “aggression” actually reflect a given player’s desire for success within a prescribed ludic context, such as successfully defeating opponents, performing fatalities, or other goals that have no real- world value outside the intrinsic value of gameplay for its own sake. They go so far as to suggest that even as violent content can provide a slightly greater sense of immersion during the heat of gameplay, the presence of violent content does not correlate with one’s overall enjoy- ment of a given game and can, in fact, detract from one’s enjoyment if such violence outweighs the quality of underlying gameplay.10 Here we find echoes of the aforementioned critical debates about whether Mortal Kombat’s intrinsic gameplay outweighed the sheer spectacle of gore, but I suggest that the failure of so many Mortal Kombat clones (described in the following chapter) demonstrates how merely upping the ante on extreme violence failed to compensate players for the frustrations of inferior game design. Even with a player’s defeat, however, we can still find potential com- plications to media-e ffects arguments, since Rachael Hutchinson (2007, 295– 96) observes that the fighting-g ame convention of returning to the Character Select screen after a loss works against long-t erm immersion. The repeated return to oneself as the pre- match, extradiegetic entity responsible for avatar selection creates a sense of aesthetic distance that may certainly run afoul of the latter- day games- as- art discourse by break- ing the sensation of deep play. Yet this blatant interruption of in-m atch intensity also pushes back on claims about the supposedly imitative effects of video game violence, because such aesthetic distance repeat- edly breaks the player’s transitory linkage with their violent avatar (also see Wenz 2014, 316). Nevertheless, Mortal Kombat’s publicly controversial status had made the series’ increasing numbers of fans into alternate figures of anxiety and mockery. For every “Mortal Monday” television commercial fea- turing a chanting army of (pre)teens spontaneously assembling in the Mortal Kontroversy • 93 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution streets, there were tongue-i n-c heek jokes like the May 1994 letter to Elec- tronic Gaming Monthly that reproduces many stereotypes about deranged media fandom: When the arcade closes and I go home, my mom says I should “fatal- ity” myself because I’m failing in high school. Ha! She doesn’t even know that I quit high school so that I could play Mortal Kombat more! I weigh 55 pounds and my Mortal Kombat buddies say I should eat more but I don’t have enough money because I spend it all on Mortal Kombat. I figured out this new fatality with Scorpion where he rips out your eyeballs and eats them, shoves his hand up your nose, and pulls out your brain. I have decided that when I’m older, I want to be a po- liceman so I can do that to people. (Chernicky 1994, 16) In a more popular vein, a December 1995 episode of The Simpsons (Moore 1995) depicts Bart, America’s favorite preteen delinquent, caught shoplifting a cartridge of “Bonestorm”—a n ultraviolent fighting game whose hulking, six- armed combatants and constant rain of blood and severed hands are obvious nods to Mortal Kombat (to say nothing of its titular allusion to the Mortal Kombat imitator BloodStorm [Incred- ible Technologies, 1994])—a fter his mother, Marge, deems it too violent to purchase for him. Playing upon older fears about arcades and video game addiction as supposed causes of petty crime, the episode crystal- lizes a lineage of anxieties about the corrupting influence of games with seemingly little to offer but extreme gore. Ultimately, however, fighting games like Mortal Kombat would soon be displaced in the national conversation by the rise of FPS games— one of the most notorious of which, id Software’s DOOM, was released the very day after the December 1993 Senate hearings. In the immediate wake of the 1999 Columbine massacre and other school shootings, earlier con- cerns about rail- shooters like Lethal Enforcers shifted to FPS, whose 3D capacities and fully controllable avatars made them more easily scape- goated as “killing simulators” during a revived series of Senate hearings about video game violence. With video games again an easier political target than the underlying issues of unrestricted gun access and toxic masculinity, high- profile mass shootings obscured the underlying fact that, since 1992, violent crime in the United States has dropped by 42 percent while video game sales have increased 267 percent. According to Patrick Markey and Christopher Ferguson (2017, 99), this decline in real- world violence is less likely due to violent games providing already- violent people with a cathartic release of aggression and more likely 94 • Mortal Kombat Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution attributable to increased video game usage keeping more young people preoccupied and out of trouble in the first place. Although such debates would continue, reframed around more recent “sandbox”- style action titles by U.S.- based studio Rockstar Games (e.g., the Grand Theft Auto [1997–] series) and others, the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association (2011) finally extended First Amendment protection to video games.11 Unlike the 1982 City of Mesquite v. Aladdin’s Castle ruling, this case focused less on youth access to games than on establishing the underlying game con- tent as a form of protected speech. With the ESRB firmly in place as the industry’s voluntary (but de facto required) classification board, even extreme violence would no longer necessarily trigger government inter- vention. The very cinematic qualities that had made Mortal Kombat, Night Trap, and other video games so controversial in the early 1990s now had a ratings system and legal protection akin to that of cinema itself. And yet, even as a plethora of imitator games attempted to challenge Mortal Kombat’s crown with even more exaggerated violence and appeals to bad taste, the Mortal Kombat franchise itself went in increasingly transmedial directions that were tame enough not to run afoul of the very standards it had previously flouted— as we shall see in the final chapter. Mortal Kontroversy • 95 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution four Imitation, Derivation, and Reinvention With the newly formed ESRB having thrown down the gauntlet for including more violent game content— particularly at a time when 16- bit consoles were reaching wide market penetration and hardware design- ers were already looking toward the next console generation— it is little surprise that Mortal Kombat’s notoriety-c um- success spawned plenty of imitators. At the same time, Midway was in the process of separating itself from this growing competition by riding the series’ wave of popularity into other media, even at the expense of alienating some of its most loyal audience by dialing down the gore in various transmedia spin- offs. Mortal Kombat’s dragon logo became almost ubiquitous during the “Mor- tal Moment” of 1992–9 5, the series’ peak period of mainstream success. Yet the threat of brand oversaturation coincided with the technological and generic rise of 3D fighting games, leading to the series’ awkward attempts to reinvent itself by either exaggerating or abandoning formal elements that previously allowed it to stand apart from the SFII formula. MKI and MKII had helped popularize the fighting game as one of the breakout genres of the 1990s, but as the genre’s overall popularity began to contract by decade’s end, the franchise returned to something closer to cult status. This final chapter concludes with a brief look at the most recent Mortal Kombat games to date and how their attempts to reboot the series increasingly look back at the series’ heyday for inspiration. The Clone Wars In previous chapters, I have explained how Mortal Kombat’s content drew significant inspiration from low-b udget exploitation films, such as 97 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution martial- arts movies, but the “Mortal Moment” also recalls the industrial strategies used by exploitation filmmakers in developing short-l ived film cycles within or between existing genres. Richard Nowell’s (2011) work on the late 1970s/early 1980s slasher film cycle as a brief production spike within the larger horror genre provides a model for thinking about how Mortal Kombat–i nspired games suddenly swelled the ranks of the fighting genre. Capcom’s first Street Fighter is an example of what Nowell calls a “pioneer production”— or a game that drew upon previous generic material in such innovative ways that it seemed uniquely different from fighting games that came before—b ut one that did not make nearly as much market impact in either financial success or overall influence as its sequel. As an attempt to drastically revamp the genre, however, SFII rep- resents more of a “speculator production”— or a higher-r isk attempt to revisit an existing text by putting a new spin on a game that had proven only a modest success. When SFII then became a “trailblazer hit” that spawned various imitators, Midway used MKI as a “prospector cash-i n,” attempting to capitalize on SFII’s success by combining certain aspects of its now- proven formula with less proven attempts at product differentia- tion. When Midway’s gamble paid off and MKI became the “reinforcing hit” that confirmed the fighting genre’s early-1990s viability, a variety of “carpetbagger cash- in” games followed as cynical attempts to imitate its success. This led to the relatively quick boom and exhaustion of a cycle of Mortal Kombat clones as MKI’s most distinctive traits were emulated to varying effect. Although most of the carpetbagger cash-i n games appeared in 1994– 95, exploiting MKI’s late 1993 home console release and MKII’s coin- op release, one of the first imitators had appeared in arcades only two months after MKI’s coin-o p premiere. Rushed to market in November 1992 by Chicago- based developer Incredible Technologies and its pub- lisher Strata, Time Killers sports cartoonish graphics closer to SFII’s aes- thetic but attempts to amplify MKI’s blood and gore by allowing its time- traveling, weapon- wielding combatants to execute decapitations and dismemberments at almost any time during a round. Because each of the five control buttons corresponds to a different appendage, part of the game’s strategy includes the ability to sever an opponent’s limbs dur- ing in-r ound action, forcing one’s opponent to adjust to the suddenly restricted control interface. Widely panned for its clumsy and unrespon- sive gameplay, its creative team later attempted to improve upon Time Killers with an unofficial sequel, BloodStorm, but the gore quotient again did not compensate for players’ frustration when abruptly chopped apart 98 • Mortal Kombat Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution mid- round by an AI opponent. Indeed, Incredible Technologies’ found- ers directly compared their market strategy to trying to cash in on a hit movie, arguing that they were simply following consumer demand by making ultraviolent games, while also disingenuously claiming that kids were more interested in the secret moves and hidden characters than the gore (Lauer 1994). Time Killers was belatedly ported to the SEGA Genesis in 1994, but reviewers savaged the gameplay as even worse than the coin- op version, with exaggerated gore as its only distinguishing fea- ture, indirectly lending credence to reviews claiming that MKI’s overall gameplay quality outweighed the gimmickry of its fatalities (“Review . . . Killers” 1994, 46).1 Finishing moves were a common denominator in nearly all Mortal Kombat clones— from the stage fatalities in Eternal Cham- pions (SEGA, 1993) to over two thousand(!) finishing moves rumored for the never-r eleased game Tattoo Assassins (Data East, 1994)—a nd they are arguably the series’ most lasting influence on the fighting genre to this day. The most blatant attempts to imitate Mortal Kombat, however, aped its pixilation of live actors as character sprites, but frequently with clunkier animation, even in games made for 32- and 64- bit consoles. Examples include Survival Arts (Scarab [JP], 1993), Blood Warrior (Atop [JP], 1993), Kasumi Ninja (Hand Made Software [U.S.], 1994), Way of the Warrior (Naughty Dog [U.S.], 1994), Shadow: War of Succession (Tribeca Digital Studios [U.S.], 1994), Ultra Vortek (Beyond Games [U.S.], 1995), and Kung- Fu Master Jackie Chan (Kaneko [JP], 1995). Whereas the latter game included digitized versions of Chan and other martial- arts actors from his concurrently filmed Golden Harvest movie, Thunderbolt (Gor- don Chan, 1995), perhaps the most ironic imitator was the game Street Fighter: The Movie (Incredible Technologies, 1995). Designed by the same company as Time Killers and BloodStorm, and distributed by Capcom as a tie- in with the Street Fighter live- action film (Steven de Souza, 1994), pixilation’s uncanny effect was that much stronger when characters best known from their cartoonish SFII sprites were now played by the same live actors from the film adaptation, including its star Jean- Claude Van Damme as Guile. Even as Van Damme was now digitally rendered in a Mortal Kombat competitor, in much the way Midway had originally intended to use Van Damme for their planned Universal Soldier tie-i n, several of Midway’s own Mortal Kombat veterans parlayed their cult status into competing games around the time of their aforementioned lawsuits against Midway. Daniel Pesina, for example, posed with a BloodStorm cabinet in a July 1994 adver- Imitation, Derivation, and Reinvention • 99 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution tisement (fig. 17)— reading “Daniel Pesina, who played Johnny Cage™ in Mortal Kombat™[,] has switched to BloodStorm!”—f or a gaming magazine contest (“Win” 1994, 96). Although Pesina had already parted ways with Midway before the ad appeared, it was long (incorrectly) rumored that, because Cage’s tombstone was visible in MK3’s “Graveyard” arena, Cage had been killed off before the events of MK3 as retribution for Pesina’s supposed betrayal (Leone 2018). Pesina was then recruited to play Cage- like fighters for two games that stalled at the prototype phase, Data East’s Tattoo Assassins and High Voltage Software’s (U.S.) Thea Realm Fighters. Thea Realm Fighters was to also feature Mortal Kombat actors Ho-S ung Pak, who served as the game’s choreographer, and Katalin Zamiar, who later appeared in the critically savaged Catfight (Phantom Card [U.S.], 1996). Aside from these obvious imitators, MKI earned its first parody with Visual Concepts’ ClayFighter, released on the SNES in November 1993. Featuring character sprites animated from clay models (much like the stop- motion dolls in 1988’s Reikai Doushi), the game combines the juve- nile connotations of Claymation with intentionally silly characters (e.g., a Gumby- like piece of taffy, an evil snowman, an Elvis impersonator) set in a circus- themed diegesis, and its sequels feature “Claytality” finishing moves. ClayFighter’s magazine ads also parodied the visual design of MKI’s “Mortal Monday” ads by replacing Midway’s logo and characters with its own, with Midway’s tagline “Prepare Yourself” now defaced with the line “No, Prepare For This!” While not a fully 3D fighting game like SEGA’s Virtua Fighter, Ballz 3D (PF Magic [U.S.], 1994) is another semi-p arody that uses character sprites formed from prerendered spheres who fight in 2.5D arenas (in which backgrounds zoom in and out and rotate, but combat itself retains a 2D horizontal linearity) and whose finishing moves render the losing combatant a loose array of balls. ClayFighter and Ballz 3D turn Mortal Kombat’s finishing moves into bloodless slapstick between clearly nonhuman opponents, but more cynical Mortal Kombat imitators like Tattoo Assassins, Way of the Warrior, and Ultra Vortek verge on self-p arody by leaning on adolescent scatologi- cal humor (e.g., Ultra Vortek’s “Poopality” finishing move, Tattoo Assas- sins’ finishing moves involving foodstuffs and flaming flatulence) and more of the broadly offensive ethnic stereotypes found in many fighting and boxing games (see Everett 2009)—t hough even the Mortal Kombat series would not be immune to these tendencies, as can be seen in the characters of Bo’ Rai Cho and Nightwolf. Ironically, many of the worst Mortal Kombat clones were rushed through development precisely so that the emerging generation of graphically advanced 32- bit consoles like the 100 • Mortal Kombat Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Fig. 17. “Daniel Pesina, who starred as Johnny Cage™ in Mortal Kombat™ has switched to BloodStorm,” reads the EGM2 (July 1994) magazine contest ad for one of the Mortal Kombat clone games. Courtesy of Incredible Technologies and EGM Media. Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Panasonic 3DO and Atari Jaguar (both introduced in late 1993) would have a foothold in the fighting genre. But technological affordances alone clearly did not result in better-q uality games, compounding these consoles’ short shelf lives. Although it would soon introduce its own original 3D fighting games, Sony played it safer by merely porting MK3 in time for the 1995 U.S. launch of the PlayStation, the first new home console to genuinely challenge Nintendo and SEGA’s lock on the mar- ket. There were initial reports that Sony had purchased the rights to port MK3 exclusively to the PlayStation for six months, as an opening shot in a new console war, but in the end, it premiered only two weeks ahead of MK3’s port for the aging 16- bit consoles, in October 1995 (“Special Feature” 1995, 95; Gore 1995, 16). Much as gaming magazines had hyped the ongoing battle between the Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat franchises, industry journalists began speculating on which upcoming coin- op game would dethrone Mortal Kombat’s much-b uzzed- about centrality in the fighting genre (see LeFe- bvre 1994, 90; “Special . . . Rage” 1994). Two of the most successful were Rare’s Killer Instinct and Atari’s Primal Rage, although Midway published both of these arcade games, so they served as less of a direct threat to Midway’s business than as inspired examples of product differentiation. Whereas the kaiju- inspired Primal Rage features stop-m otion models of dinosaurs and giant apes (much like the models used for Goro and Kin- taro) for its smoothly animated monster fights amid a postapocalyptic milieu, Killer Instinct features 32- bit, pre-r endered (non- pixilated) char- acter sprites and an influential “dial- a- combo”– based fighting system instead of Primal Rage’s juggle-b ased system. Both games are very vio- lent and feature fatalities indebted to Mortal Kombat, but each also com- bined graphical advances with either a conceptual hook or an exciting new style of gameplay to stand apart from the crowd of Mortal Kombat imitators. Unlike many of the one- off clones that bypassed the coin- op market and went straight to home consoles, Killer Instinct and Primal Rage parlayed skilled game development into new blood for the fighting genre while proving successful enough to justify their own sequels and merchandising. According to the International Arcade Museum’s Killer List of Video- games (n.d.), coin-o p fighting games had grown from eight new releases in 1991, rising to approximately twenty-fi ve titles per year in 1992– 93, peaking at thirty-s even new titles per year in 1995–9 6, and falling back into single digits by the early 2000s. This generic boom corresponded with a similar surge in fighting games directly produced for home con- 102 • Mortal Kombat Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution soles. Even successful beat-e m-u p franchises jumped on the one- on- one fighting game bandwagon with games like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters (Konami, 1993) and Double Dragon V: The Shadow Falls (Leland Interactive Media [U.S.], 1994). Meanwhile, MKI was ported to SEGA’s short- lived, Genesis-u pscaling peripherals like SEGA CD and 32X, while both MKII and MK3 were ported to later consoles like the SEGA Saturn and Sony PlayStation. Still, most of these later ports did not significantly improve on earlier 16-b it iterations and were deemed too little, too late— especially when a more innovative variety of fully 3D fighting games was being introduced to take advantage of 32-b it and 64-b it consoles’ new capabilities.2 The same magazine issues promoting new coin-o p challengers often featured letters to the editor complaining about either the market oversaturation of increasingly formulaic fight- ing games or the amount of page space devoted to fighting games (e.g., Lewis 1994, 16). Other readers simply wanted fighting games with game- play strategies that were different from the ones popularized by SFII and MKI, such as more realistic close-r ange combat, without special moves like long- range projectiles (e.g., Kirt S. 1994, 12; Andrew 1995, 20). Although commercially successful in both its coin- op and home ver- sions, MK3’s reviews were more mixed than its immediate predecessor, indicating a growing franchise fatigue among professional reviewers as well. “When MK2 was released, the improvements made over the origi- nal were so vast, you couldn’t help notice the difference. MK3, however, adds little to the series,” said IGN’s reviewer (Douglas 1996). Next Genera- tion added that the “newer characters .  .  . don’t show the same appeal and strength of design as their predecessors,” and, “with the addition of a Killer Instinct– type combo system, there is less and less strategy” (“Bloody” 1995, 117; “Finished?” 1995, 185). Whereas MKII had been critically praised for its new narrative and characters, in contrast to the “expansion pack” approach (i.e., a handful of new characters and arenas added to the existing game engine) seen in Super SFII: The New Challeng- ers, MK3 itself represented more of a plateau for Midway’s flagship series at a time when its main rival had just released Street Fighter Alpha (Cap- com, 1995), its first true sequel to the many SFII iterations. Much like Capcom’s strategy of releasing new editions to arcades sev- eral months apart, Midway released Ultimate MK3— featuring the return of fan-f avorite characters like Scorpion, Kitana, and Reptile (plus the hidden playable characters Classic Sub-Z ero, Mileena, and Ermac)—t o the coin- op market in November 1995, as a concession to arcade own- ers upset by the short duration between MK3’s coin-o p premiere and its Imitation, Derivation, and Reinvention • 103 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution home console release a mere six months later (Mick- Lucifer 2012). These additional playable characters were also intended to help answer fans’ criticism that MK3’s initial roster contained too many imbalanced charac- ters, with some characters (e.g., Sub- Zero, Smoke) far stronger than oth- ers (e.g., Stryker, Nightwolf), but the new additions bore similar issues. As a compendium of the first three games, Mortal Kombat Trilogy appeared exclusively on home consoles one year later, in October 1996, but like Ultimate MK3, it essentially replicated MK3’s story and engine, with the inclusion of playable boss characters, “classic” versions of original char- acters and arenas, and a few other minor gameplay tweaks. “We pretty much hit a brick wall with MK3,” Ed Boon later admitted (Sushi-X and Hain 1997, 82), with the Shang Tsung/Shao Kahn plotline now exhausted and the looming shift to 3D modeling as the genre’s apparent future. Even by the time MK3 was in preproduction in early 1995, the editors of Electronic Gaming Monthly (Grossman and Harris 1995, 111) had devel- oped a wish list for new gameplay variations in Midway’s flagship series, many of which would appear in later sequels, such as “a way to sidestep projectiles” (introduced in the 2.5D arenas of MK4) and “suicide moves that kill yourself before the other player” (the “Hara-K iri” moves intro- duced in MK: Deception). MK3 and its updated editions did, however, adopt the “more realistic combos” and “combo meter” suggested by Elec- tronic Gaming Monthly, even as this major new feature also made for bug- gier gameplay. MK3’s dial- a- combo system was clearly inspired by Killer Instinct’s success, while MK Trilogy’s “Brutality” finishing moves recall Killer Instinct’s climactic “Ultra Combos,” and MK Trilogy’s “Aggressor” meter (allowing one’s avatar to temporarily deliver faster and stronger combos when fully charged) was a variation on the “Super” meter from Super SFII Turbo (1994). Even as later entries in the Mortal Kombat series increasingly absorbed inspiration from the franchise’s one-t ime competi- tors, then, many desired generic developments—s uch as the projectile- free combat of the Tekken games, or the “fatality moves that can be used during battle” used to elegantly minimalistic effect in Bushido Blade— were found in other rising franchises within a new generation of 3D fighting games. Transmedia Kombat There is little doubt that the growing backlash against fighting games was also related to the inescapability of Mortal Kombat’s transmedia spin- offs during the “Mortal Moment.” In the summer of 1993, film producer 104 • Mortal Kombat Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Larry Kasanoff, who had previously worked with Midway on their Ter- minator 2 arcade game, approached the company with plans to expand Mortal Kombat into a multimedia franchise, including live- action films. Midway first balked at the idea that a fighting game could translate to the big screen, but Kasanoff soon convinced them, founding the company Threshold Entertainment to franchise derivative works from the series (Russell 2012, 146–4 7; Couch 2015). By the time MK3 was released to arcades in April 1995, over one hundred licensed Mortal Kombat products had appeared, many of which had little creative input by the Midway team, who had been preoccupied with finishing the third game. These spin-o ffs included a novelization, an animated movie, several Malibu Comics series (1994–9 5), two soundtrack albums, a line of Hasbro action figures, a trading card game, and a line of branded clothing (Crisafulli 1995; Dretzka 1995). Much as MKI’s coin-o p premiere lagged a year behind SFII, Paul W. S. Anderson’s Mortal Kombat movie appeared in 1995, a year after the live- action Street Fighter movie. Both films were largely written off as juvenile fare, yet critics were generally kinder to them than they had been to Double Dragon (James Yukich, 1994), Hollywood’s first attempt to adapt a fighting-t hemed (beat-e m-u p) game for the big screen. However, Mor- tal Kombat did have far stronger box-o ffice receipts than Street Fighter, with New Line Cinema’s $20 million production topping the opening- week charts in September 1995 and eventually grossing over $122 mil- lion worldwide. It finally proved the big- screen viability of a video game adaptation, a feat that Anderson would later attempt to repeat with the Resident Evil (2002–2 016) films (Russell 2012, 150– 53; Couch 2015). Although some of its special effects were decidedly old-s chool— Goro was portrayed by a life-s ize animatronic figure instead of a min- iature model, and Hong Kong–s tyle wirework was used in the fight choreography— its producers claimed that its computer- generated spe- cial effects and near- constant martial- arts action would help compensate for its tamed- down violence. While some gamers complained that the PG- 13 film was akin to the MA-1 3 Genesis port without the blood code entered, some parents argued that the sheer amount of largely bloodless fighting merited more than a PG-1 3 rating (Harrington 1995; Riemen- schneider 1995; Smith 1995). Kasanoff defended the film by stating, “If we put in all the blood and gore, it would look like something you’ve seen 100 times before in Friday the 13th or Nightmare on Elm Street”— apparently ignoring the fact that New Line’s fortunes had been made by the Elm Street series (1984– 94)— whereas the novelty of CGI allegedly Imitation, Derivation, and Reinvention • 105 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution allowed the filmmakers to “make our finishing moves cooler than gore” (Griest 1995). Kasanoff and theatrical producer David Fishof doubled down on this strategy with the Mortal Kombat: Live Tour (written and directed by Drew MacIver), a theatrical show featuring choreographed fights, techno music, and enough stage effects to hopefully distract kids from the lack of fatalities. First premiering a month after the live- action film, the two- hundred-d ate tour was postponed an additional month to add more laser effects and to tie in a coupon deal around the October 1995 home console release of MK3 (“Mortal Kombat Tour” 1995). Kasanoff then followed Anderson’s live- action film with the animated television series Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm (1996); a live- action sequel, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (John R. Leonetti, 1997); and a live-a ction television series, Mortal Kombat: Konquest (1998–9 9), but all were released after the “Mortal Moment” had already peaked. If the remediation of cinematic qualities into Mortal Kombat’s pho- torealistic sprites had once allowed the games to seem especially dis- tinctive, now the forces of remediation were traveling in the opposite direction, from video games to films and other media formats, with so many spin- offs threatening to water down the games’ gruesome menace into family- friendly cash-i ns. As Danny Simon, the franchise’s head of merchandising, humorously stated, these assorted re- adaptations could be “the perfect divorced-f ather and son activity” (Jefferson 1995). Even during the leadup to MK3’s coin- op release, WMS Industries president Neil Nicastro suggested, “If kids want to score big on Mortal Kombat III, they’ll need to know certain joystick moves. And guess how they’ll learn them? They’ll have to find those combinations from a variety of sources: from the movie, from the TV ads, from other licensees, from the live- action tour” (Jefferson 1995). Although this plan to require basic game- play acquisition through buying into ancillary paratexts did not wholly come to pass— especially since gaming magazines and websites publish- ing the moves would have no doubt thwarted such a cynical attempt to monetize core gameplay principles—M K3 print ads did tease some of the “Kombat Kodes” that could be entered before two- player matches, thereby incentivizing double the coin drop. Collectible comic books had already been part of the series’ paratex- tual world- building process since MKI, but Threshold Entertainment’s merchandising increasingly moved in the direction of transmedial storytelling— or the dispersal of important narrative content to build fictional worlds across different media platforms. Much as Henry Jen- 106 • Mortal Kombat Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution kins (2006, 97–9 8) discusses The Matrix (1999) as a film whose sequels baffled critics and frustrated viewers who had not closely followed the secondary characters and plotlines introduced across the ancillary paratexts (e.g., animated shorts, video games, comic books, etc.), the “Mortal Moment’s” transmedial spread attempted to deepen the over- all story world but at the expense of alienating fans primarily interested in the games themselves. Many of Threshold’s spin- offs, such as the various animated stories and the Live Tour, exemplify Jenkins’s warning that poorly done attempts at transmedial storytelling— especially those without significant creative involvement by series creators—w ill prove largely redundant to the core media experience that created said fans in the first place (98, 107). The direct-t o- video animated movie Mortal Kombat: The Journey Begins (1995), for instance, functions as a lead-i n to the live-a ction film released later that year, covering much of the same territory as the MKI collectible comic book but also fleshing out additional character backstories, much as the later Malibu Comics series would do for individual characters. Con- taining both traditional hand-d rawn animation and wholly CGI-c reated sequences, the limited CGI in The Journey Begins is notable for prefiguring MK4’s 3D- animated aesthetic. Moreover, the kid-f riendly MK: Defenders of the Realm animated TV series introduces the character of Quan Chi, who would not only become one of the series’ major new villains in MK4 (which had its own collectible comic book, available only to purchasers of an MK4 home port), but who would also feature heavily in Midway’s side- scrolling platform game Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Z ero (1997). As I have previously suggested, however, much of a fighting game’s appeal derives from the affordances of in- match gameplay, not from a player’s deep investment in a given character’s backstory. Consequently, as the series shifted toward a needlessly convoluted cosmology full of magical artifacts, warring factions, and other lore, some former fans were reluc- tant to follow along as the series amplified its diegetic scale in an appar- ent attempt to compensate for its awkward shift toward a 3D model in MK4 and its move into other generic directions in spin- off games. Mark J. P. Wolf (2016, 234) argues that when a game franchise grows significantly larger, it is all the more likely to cross generic boundar- ies and introduce other varieties of gameplay. This tendency was first demonstrated within the Mortal Kombat series by MK Mythologies, which, despite being a platform game, the gaming press had originally rumored to be a role-p laying game (RPG) (“Gaming Gossip” 1997, 28). This rumor is especially telling because RPGs are more closely associated with Imitation, Derivation, and Reinvention • 107 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution the narrative depth of long quests and sprawling worlds, a quality that MK Mythologies indeed introduces as a prequel predating the events of MKI. MK Mythologies elaborates on the characters of Shinnok, a fallen Elder God who Raiden banished to the Netherrealm thousands of years ago for attempting to gain control of the universe through a magical amulet, and his sorcerer sidekick, Quan Chi, who hires a human proxy to trespass upon the Shaolin Temple, where the amulet resides. These char- acters would be playable fighters in MK4, which depicts how Shinnok has used Shao Kahn’s second defeat as an opportunity to break free from the Netherrealm and invade Edenia. In Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance, the story continues with Quan Chi teaming with Shang Tsung to defeat both Shao Kahn and Liu Kang using magical powers inherited from Onaga, an ancient Outworld king. The two sorcerers turn on each other in Mor- tal Kombat: Deception, but many old foes must reluctantly unite to save the universe from the newly resurrected Onaga, now occupying the “big bad” role previously held by Shao Kahn.3 In the games following the original Mortal Kombat trilogy, we thus find a series of plotlines— largely conveyed through cut- scenes that would not have been technologically possible in the early games— that overlap from one game to the next, even as the game designers (and fans trying to keep up) struggled to reconcile so many previous character endings into a semi- coherent “hyperdiegesis.”4 As such, the “retconning” of major characters became a predominant feature in the post-1 996 games. For example, the revenant Scorpion takes revenge on Sub- Zero (née Bi- Han) at the end of MKI’s events for having killed his human form (née Hanzo Hasashi) during the events of the prequel game, MK Mythologies, despite Quan Chi having actually framed Sub- Zero by killing Scorpion’s Shirai Ryu clan himself. Bi-H an is later reincarnated as the evil spirit Noob Saibot. Meanwhile, Bi- Han’s younger brother, Kuai Liang, assumes his murdered brother’s nickname during the MKII tournament, but by the events of MK3, he has gone rogue and left the Lin Kuei clan to avoid being transformed into a cybernetic assassin like Sektor, Cyrax, and Smoke. The younger Sub-Z ero gradually evolves into a less ruthless character over the post- 1996 sequels, later fighting on behalf of Earthrealm’s preservation. And yet these are just a few of the many character reversals seen during the later games, with some characters previously thought dead (Shao Khan) having survived through the use of doppelgangers, other characters (Liu Kang, Raiden) reversing their moral alignments through magical acts of possession, and so on. In keeping track of these narrative developments, series loyalists have confirmed Jenkins’s (2006, 27, 97) 108 • Mortal Kombat Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution argument that many forms of transmedial storytelling rely on the “col- lective intelligence” exercised by fan communities who use online discus- sion boards and wiki-b ased websites to compile and fact- check the pleth- ora of narrative minutiae elaborated across different spin-o ff games and generic modes. Nevertheless, even across its many iterations, the fran- chise has maintained the contours of a shared transmedial world (Tosca and Klastrup 2020, 33– 40), including foundational characters (e.g., all of the first game’s combatants), plus an overarching mythos (the martial- arts tournament as eternal supernatural battle), topos (Earthrealm versus Outworld), and ethos (good versus evil, though performing fatalities is always free of moral consequences). Even though former comics artist John Tobias had left the franchise after MK4 to form his own company, Studio Gigante, fellow MKI cocreator John Vogel expanded the series’ overall lore into these narratively Byzan- tine directions that bear an even stronger debt to the torturous machi- nations of long-r unning comic book series. Mortal Kombat: Armageddon (2006), for instance, offers the completism of MK Trilogy by reuniting all previous combatants in a battle royale against each other, albeit largely eschewing the almost impossibly unwieldy task of untangling the narra- tive justification for how and why they have all returned. The winning fighters must go up against Blaze, a powerful fire entity summoned by the Elder Gods, to finally put an end to all of this nonsense. Nearly all of the series’ past characters perish in the ensuing tumult, with Shao Kahn and Raiden emerging as the last standing fighters upon Blaze’s defeat. But just before losing to Shao Kahn, Raiden uses a magical amulet to send a message (“He must win!”) back in time to himself during the MKI tournament, thus allowing his past self to potentially alter the future. Much as DC Comics’ limited series Crisis on Infinite Earths (1985– 86) attempted to “reset” its sprawling multiverse by destroying all but one newly canonical version of Earth, Mortal Kombat thus eliminated many of its narrative tangents via the creation of a new timeline, to be carried on in the “rebooted” series described below. The series’ indebtedness to comic books was made even more blatant with Midway’s Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe spin-o ff fighting game, foreshadowing the $33 million acquisition of Midway in 2009 by Warner Bros. Entertainment (who had previously purchased DC Comics in 1989). This game takes advantage of MK: Armageddon’s climactic break in narrative continuity to pit Midway’s creations against DC’s storied superheroes and villains, much as Cap- com’s less story- driven franchise had done a decade earlier with Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter (1997). Imitation, Derivation, and Reinvention • 109 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Although Midway’s joint release of MK Mythologies and MK4 in 1997 had marked a major reinvention of the series’ storyline, several other freestanding spin- offs in other genres—s uch as the poorly reviewed RPG Mortal Kombat: Special Forces (2000) and the beat-e m-u p Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks (2005)— added little crucial backstory to specific characters and events from the first four games. The increased mem- ory and processing power of sixth- generation home consoles like the Sony PlayStation 2 and Microsoft Xbox (introduced in 2000 and 2001, respectively), however, meant that side games in other genres increas- ingly became internalized under the imprimatur of each new fighting sequel—t hat is, transformed from paratexts into intratexts contained on the same disc as the primary fighting game. Perhaps the best example of this tendency is “Konquest Mode,” a single-p layer RPG mode first included in MK: Deadly Alliance as little more than an elaborate training mode, but used to more integrated effect in MK: Deception. In the latter game, Konquest Mode introduces the prequel story of Shujinko, a generic young man (in Japanese, shu- jinko literally translates as “protagonist”) tracking down various magi- cal relics on behalf of the disguised Onaga as part of the latter’s titular ruse to become reincarnated. (In another example of Midway’s ongoing competition with Japanese game designers, Shujinko’s quest to find all the relics conspicuously apes the RPG- style bonus modes introduced two years earlier in Namco’s Soulcalibur II [2002], in which the player’s series of fights constitutes a hunt for fragments of a mystical sword.) The end of the Konquest Mode RPG coincides with the start of MK: Deception’s fight- based narrative, wherein Shujinko has since become an elderly White Lotus monk, a playable character during the battle to stop the Outworld king he had inadvertently set free. Recalling the hidden PONG and Galaga games in MKII and MK3, far less substantial mini- games appear in later sequels as well, such as the nostalgic- but- goofy throwbacks “Chess Kombat” (à la Battle Chess [Interplay Productions, 1988]), “Puzzle Kombat” (à la Tetris [Alexey Pajitnov, 1984]), and “Motor Kombat” (à la Mario Kart [Nintendo, 1992]). Overall, though, as the series turned its attention from the core fighting experience to a plethora of cut-s cenes, new gameplay modes, and side stories about characters questing for shards of magical amu- lets, diversions such as Konquest Mode also suggested that the Mortal Kombat franchise was likewise searching for itself after somehow becom- ing shattered along the way. 110 • Mortal Kombat Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Adapting to New Dimensions Whereas new technological affordances allowed the series’ storytelling to be developed far more complexly than as mere bookends to the com- bat, the world- building that had once distinguished Mortal Kombat from other fighting games now threatened to overwhelm its core gameplay. This problem emerged when the series moved away from a 2D fighting system, struggling to adapt to new generic and geometric dimensions with MK Mythologies and MK4, respectively. These shifts were partly inspired by the rise of more advanced home consoles that cut into the coin-o p market, eventually leading Midway to abandon the coin-o p market in 2001 and instead concentrate on game development for home consoles (Ali 2019, 180– 81). MK Mythologies was the first original Mortal Kombat game made exclusively for home consoles, while MK4 was the final entry to originate in arcades. If MK3’s postapocalyptic storyline about the Out- world invading the “home” realm of Earth had once echoed parental anxieties about disreputable public spaces invading private homes, now the situation was reversed as home consoles threatened to decimate the American arcade industry. The U.S. coin- op market began to significantly decline around 1996– 97 as the older generation of joystick-b ased arcade games gave way to coin- op machines with more immersive or embodied gameplay inter- faces that could not be so easily reproduced at home, much as 1950s Hollywood had introduced widescreen, stereo sound, and 3D gimmickry to draw viewers away from television and back to theaters (Wolf 2008b, 137). Although newly privileged genres like driving games and light- gun shooters, for example, had long been part of the coin- op scene, these features were not as fully integrated into a home console’s core design until the Nintendo Wii (introduced in 2006). For instance, MK: Arma- geddon helped deliver on the SEGA Activator’s failed promises when it was adapted for the motion-s ensitive Wii controller, allowing special moves to be performed with a simple flick of the wrist. In a promotional video, Ed Boon promised that the Wii controllers would make gameplay “so easy, in fact, that even your grandmother will be throwing spears, teleporting, and performing fatalities” (IGN 2011).5 Yet this advance hype belied the increasing difficulty of most fighting- game series since the late 1990s, since more sophisticated control schemes and much faster, combo- driven gameplay has weeded out many of the more casual players who once might have been drawn into arcades Imitation, Derivation, and Reinvention • 111 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution by earlier games’ gory gimmicks (Begy 2012, 213). As more layers of offen- sive strategy to be mastered, MK4 added a special move allowing each character to pull out and retain a weapon as an alternate fighting mode, while MK: Deadly Alliance also gave each character two unarmed fighting styles that could be toggled between during matches. The mid-2 000s rise of home consoles designed for online connectivity additionally encour- aged tournament- style competitive play (MK: Deception was the series’ first game specifically developed to prioritize networked play), another major factor in the fighting genre’s growing specialization, helping spawn the contemporary culture of fighting- game e-s ports tournaments. In a significant stylistic shift, MK Mythologies was the series’ last game to use photorealistic pixilation of live actors for its character sprites, whereas MK4 and later sequels use true motion capture of live actors whose physical movements are imported as models for 3D “skeletons” onto which skins for each character are texture-m apped (Sushi-X and Hain 1997, 82; also see Therrien 2008, 245).6 Unlike pixilation, then, this form of motion capture simply represents a digital- age update of rotoscoping (fig. 18)— and therefore falls short of the indexicality of photographic stills— even as such emulated human movements can nevertheless evoke a different sort of “uncanny valley” effect (deWin- ter 2016, 181). Similar motion- capture techniques became increasingly used in commercial Hollywood movies like Star Wars—E pisode I: The Phantom Menace (George Lucas, 1999), Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (Hironobu Sakaguchi, 2001), and The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Peter Jackson, 2001) for modeling computer-g enerated char- acters (Russell 2012, 262– 63). And yet Mortal Kombat’s shift away from pixilation actually robbed the games of many of the cinematic qualities that had first distinguished the series from its competitors. Released in 1993 and 1994, respectively, the Japanese-d esigned Vir- tua Fighter and Tekken had already been pioneers in 3D fighting games by using polygonal character sprites that may have appeared quite blocky in their surface texture but which nevertheless possessed a smooth and remarkably realistic range of bodily movements. By the time MK4 made the belated shift to polygonal characters in 1997, however, the series’ move away from its signature photorealism instead made MK4’s sprites look that much more primitive and unrealistic, despite running on Midway’s brand- new Zeus game engine. Subsequent sequels would show marked graphi- cal improvements— especially in conjunction with newer-g eneration consoles—b ut without ever capturing quite the same degree of photo- graphic indexicality as the pixilated sprites used in the original trilogy. 112 • Mortal Kombat Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Fig. 18. Mortal Kombat 4 eschews pixilated sprites for polygonal character textures, solely modeled on live actors’ movements instead of photographed images. More blatant was the fact that MK4 was not a true 3D fighting game like Virtua Fighter or Tekken— in which “ring out” wins are made pos- sible by knocking one’s opponent outside a square or circular arena (Harper 2014, 12)— but rather another 2.5D game consisting largely of horizontal gameplay, augmented by the ability to merely sidestep into an adjacent plane and small shifts in camera angle to suggest more 3D spatiality than gameplay actually allowed. Midway had previously tested this function with their coin- op fighting game War Gods (1996), which retained MK3’s basic button configuration but replaced the unpopular Run button with a “3D” button for the sidestepping function. Although War Gods was effectively a trial run for MK4, and was released the same year as Capcom’s similarly middling 2.5D Street Fighter EX (1996), Mid- way nevertheless committed to 3D with MK4, while Capcom’s competing 1997 release, Street Fighter III: New Generation, backpedaled into retain- ing a more familiar 2D aesthetic that further made MK4’s design look poorly realized by comparison. Steven Poole (2000, 83) notes that cam- era shifts in 3D games may seem superficially more “cinematic” in style, but they are typically constrained to maximizing the visibility of relevant gameplay action. Especially successful 3D fighting series like the Tekken, Soulcalibur, and Dead or Alive games embrace their 3D gameplay by privi- Imitation, Derivation, and Reinvention • 113 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution leging close- quarters combat, which also emphasizes the use of juggling combos. Because close- quarters combat keeps the two combatants in physical proximity to each other, camera rotations and angle changes still keep the action tightly framed and do not end up privileging one player’s perspective over another. The Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter series, by contrast, rely more heavily on covering arena space through the distanced use of projectiles, so rotations in single-c amera coverage (which, in fighting games, are typically not controllable by the players themselves) of spatially distant avatars may unduly skew the overall per- spective toward one player’s visual advantage in two- player mode. The Mortal Kombat series would evolve toward more authentic 3D gameplay in subsequent games; MK: Deception’s “death traps,” for instance, allow one’s avatar to perform an automatic, mid-r ound fatality by knocking their opponent into a lethal zone of the arena, thus combin- ing the 3D fighting game’s “ring outs” with the series’ existing stage fatal- ities. Yet I argue that the overall shift to 3D motivated the series to (over) compensate for its loss of photorealism by amplifying its other once- distinctive traits, such as the aforementioned narrative world-b uilding, the plethora of Easter eggs (e.g., MK: Deadly Alliance’s “Krypt” feature), and the series’ signature finishing moves. Post- SFII sequels had exagger- ated that series’ anime-i nspired sprites with more exaggerated “Super” special moves that bring additional spectacle to in-r ound gameplay, while Mortal Kombat’s later sequels extend its fatalities into the equivalent of elaborately gory cut- scenes. If there had once been a qualitative debate over the earlier games’ fatalities as gimmicky and repetitious detractors from in- round gameplay, these later sequels demonstrate that such com- plaints hold more water when fatalities are taken to an extreme. In the original trilogy, fatalities are rarely longer than five seconds in duration (and often much shorter), so despite their potential repetitiveness, the quick turnover between matches makes them seem more closely inte- grated into in-r ound gameplay than the cut-s cene- style fatalities made possible by technological advancements. By the release of Mortal Kombat X (NetherRealm Studios, 2015) to eighth- generation consoles like the Sony PlayStation 4 and Microsoft Xbox One (both introduced in 2013), each fatality plays out like a multi- camera horror movie scene lasting about twenty seconds each. Rather than the older fatalities’ ability to give the players a quick “exclamation point” between matches, now the fatalities feel far more segmented away from gameplay itself (and indeed, while striking at first, more quickly become boring via their repetition). These cut-s cene-s tyle fatalities may 114 • Mortal Kombat Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution evince more “cinematic” shifts in camera perspective and spectacles of slow-m otion dismemberment, but they also recall the drawbacks of 1990s- era “interactive movies” like Night Trap: a ceding of interactive gameplay to lengthy scenes of passive viewing. Further, the ever- more- carnivalesque tone of these extended fatalities—M KX’s Cassie Cage, for instance, shoots a gushing pistol wound in her opponent’s head, sticks a piece of chewed bubblegum in the hole, and watches the blood burst the resulting bubble—d etracts from the later games’ own invitations to take their hyperdiegetic narrative convolutions so seriously. Because new technologies allowed the series to double down on the outrageousness of its fatalities at a time when the American coin- op mar- ket was in decline, it also makes sense that Midway would commit its development efforts toward home console games if its increasingly gory games would not likely translate well into overseas coin-o p markets due to the different cultural attitudes about graphic violence. Capcom, for example, has remained a leader in the international coin-o p market with mostly bloodless games like Street Fighter IV (2008) and Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition (2018) because Japanese fighting gamers prefer the arcade as a still- thriving subcultural space, whereas competitive play in virtual online spaces has increasingly usurped the North American arcade for accessing “arcade-p erfect” home ports of games like SFIV and SFV (Harper 2014, 113– 14; Goto- Jones 2016b, 114– 15; Skolnik and Conway 2017, 10–1 2). By contrast, Midway closed its arcade division altogether in 2001, and the company itself filed for bankruptcy in early 2009. Upon its subsequent purchase by Warner Bros., the Mortal Kombat franchise was also freed from its long-t erm licensing deal with Threshold Entertain- ment, although Larry Kasanoff’s company unsuccessfully sued to retain the right to produce derivative works, especially at a time when the live- action web series Mortal Kombat: Legacy (2011) was still in development (Boothroyd 2012, 410; Ali 2019, 196).7 With Midway’s former Chicago stu- dio (now owned by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment) rebranded NetherRealm Studios in April 2010 and helmed by Ed Boon, the fran- chise was finally free to reinvent itself. Rebooting the Past As William Proctor (2012) argues, a “reboot” differs from a mere sequel (a further and often repetitive iteration in a linear chain of texts) or remake (a narratively self-c ontained text displaying fealty to an original) in the sense that it not only attempts to correct the errors of a failed or Imitation, Derivation, and Reinvention • 115 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution stalled franchise, but it also aspires to generate a new series of sequels of its own. In this regard, we can see NetherRealm Studios’ eponymous Mortal Kombat of 2011—w hich fans have dubbed “Mortal Kombat 9” for the sake of clarity—a s a course correction that returns to 2.5D gameplay, while also serving as a quasi-r emake of the original trilogy by nostalgi- cally revisiting (and, in the process, “retconning”) the original games’ narrative events. With the series’ last fully 3D entry to date, MK: Armageddon, having killed off almost all of its principal characters during the titular free- for- all, Raiden’s message to himself travels back in time to the tourna- ment on Shang Tsung’s island (MKI)—n ow featuring many of the com- batants introduced in the sequels— where Liu Kang is again victorious. During the subsequent Outworld tournament (MKII), Kung Lao dies at Shao Kahn’s hands, having not been the hero retroactively proph- esied to defeat the forces of evil, while Quan Chi resurrects Sindel, open- ing the dimensional gates for the Outworld’s invasion of Earthrealm (MK3). During the ensuing battle, most of the other heroes are killed, and Raiden accidentally kills Liu Kang while trying to prevent him from besting Shao Kahn and hence inadvertently repeating the old timeline toward Armageddon. Having realized that Shao Kahn is actually the one who “must win” the tournament, and thereby earn the Elder Gods’ pun- ishment for attempting to invade Earthrealm without having achieved ten consecutive tournament wins, Raiden throws his own fight with Shao Kahn. At this point, the Elder Gods finally intervene, granting Raiden their collective powers to ultimately destroy Shao Kahn. Although the game’s “Arcade Mode” (an increasingly anachronis- tic designation) still allows players to ascend the vertical “ladders” of opponents in classic style, MK9 unfolds its retconned telling of the origi- nal trilogy through a sixteen-c hapter, single- player “Story Mode” that consists of long narrative cut- scenes interrupted by comparatively brief, playable fights. Each chapter is focalized through a different charac- ter’s perspective, thus providing more narratively justified reasons for each character’s inclusion— even to the extent of fatalities and brutali- ties being unperformable in Story Mode in order to preserve the nar- rative continuity of keeping essential characters alive until their respec- tive chapters. While the sheer imbalance of cut- scene versus gameplay time in Story Mode (and the fact that the game imposes each avatar upon the player in narratively consecutive order) means that players are less likely to revisit that mode once its three-a nd- a- half- hour duration is played through, Story Mode still requires players to effectively master 116 • Mortal Kombat Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution the control schemes of each of the major playable avatars while retroac- tively integrating a larger roster of characters into the overall diegesis in a more organic way than grafting them on in medias res (à la MK4 and MK Mythologies). Eschewing the previous games’ Konquest Mode and dropping most of the superfluous mini-g ames, MK9 represents a partial return to the series’ roots as a side-b y-s ide fighting game, albeit with the graphically advanced trappings of seventh-g eneration consoles like the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 (introduced in 2005 and 2006, respectively) at its disposal. Photorealistic pixilation of live actors has not returned, but NetherRealm’s use of Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 3 (2005) allows for superior surface rendering and far more lifelike emulation of its motion- captured actors compared to the series’ 3D games. Indeed, characters in the series’ most recent games are still clearly the products of CGI but now more closely resemble the CGI animation that dominates the concurrent flood of (nominally) live- action superhero movies. Character sprites and arena backgrounds retain a 3D aesthetic, while gameplay itself has returned to a horizontal plane, augmented only by small 2.5D shifts in camera perspective to emphasize especially dramatic moves. And in another callback to the series’ 1990s heyday, MK9 was effectively banned in Australia after the Australian Classification Board refused to assign a rating due to the game’s “realistically rendered and very detailed” fatali- ties, and the (then) lack of an R18+ rating for video games comparable to the existing R18+ film classification (Ramadge and Connelly 2011).8 In the process of dropping most of the other generic paths into which previous Mortal Kombat games had expanded, the control interface for the core fighting experience was also revamped with MK9. The High Punch/Kick and Low Punch/Kick buttons became limb- based Front Punch/Kick and Back Punch/Kick buttons (à la Time Killers), empha- sizing the game’s return to a horizontal plane, while longer, prepro- grammed dial- a- combos were largely removed, and juggle- based combos again privilege the player’s own creativity in chaining together disparate attacks. Unlike the deliberate secrecy surrounding the early games, how- ever, the button combinations for performing special moves and fatali- ties are now readily accessible in the Pause screen, whether as a conces- sion to the “spoiling” abilities of the now-u biquitous internet or as an encouragement to the latter-d ay fighting genre’s competitive network of dedicated gamers (instead of more casual coin- droppers drawn in by surprise features). Much like the tripartite “Super” meter used in Capcom’s Street Fighter Imitation, Derivation, and Reinvention • 117 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Fig. 19. The game camera zooms in for a mid-r ound close-u p of internal damage from Kung Lao’s hat in an “X-r ay move” in Mortal Kombat X. EX, MK9 also features a tripartite meter that gradually charges up dur- ing in-r ound attacks. When the first segment of the meter is charged, the player can perform enhanced special moves; the second segment allows the player to perform a “combo breaker” counterattack upon their opponent; and the third segment unleashes “X-r ay attacks.” These latter moves bear the closest resemblance to the high- damage dial-a - combos of earlier games, since they play out as brief but devastating combos that cannot be interrupted once initiated. Akin to abbreviated five- second versions of the game’s elaborate cut-s cene- style fatalities, gameplay is momentarily suspended as the camera rotates and zooms in to various details of the receiving fighter’s body— the camera’s speed ramping down to slow motion to emphasize interior- body close- ups of bones cracking in grotesque fashion—o ver the course of several strong blows (fig. 19). Much as combatants immediately spring back from other types of in- round attacks that would realistically kill an actual person, horizontal gameplay resumes as usual following the graphically cinematic spectacle of an X- ray attack, therefore representing a means of successfully inte- grating fatality- like gore into the flow of gameplay itself, as opposed to the overly extended epilogues of the game’s actual end- of- match fatali- ties.9 With interstitial narrative content now primarily split off into Story Mode and brief spectacles of graphic violence better integrated into in- round gameplay strategy via X- ray moves, MK9 balanced the later Mortal 118 • Mortal Kombat Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Kombat series’ most excessive tendencies and was critically heralded as a return to form for the franchise (e.g., Reiner 2011; Walton 2011; Elston 2011), though, much like the series’ early games, many reviewers still expressed a preference for Capcom’s most recent Street Fighter entries. Following the paratextual use of comics for adding narrative context around earlier games, DC Comics released the Mortal Kombat X comic book series in January 2015 as a semi- prequel to the events of the MKX game scheduled to be released three months later. (DC and Nether- Realm Studios had previously used this marketing strategy with their comic series Injustice: Gods Among Us [2013–1 6], a lead- in to the epony- mous 2013 fighting game featuring the DC Universe superheroes and villains, as if the narrative- universe crossover of the earlier MK vs. DC Universe game had since split apart again.10) In MKX’s Story Mode, the narrative events of MK4 play out in condensed form, with Shinnok and Quan Chi escaping the Netherrealm to wage war on the other realms, but Johnny Cage defeats Shinnok by trapping him in a magical amulet. With the events of MK: Deadly Alliance through MK: Armageddon now ren- dered non- canonical via the altered timeline, the story flashes forward twenty years to the offspring of Johnny Cage, Jax, Kung Lao, and other heroes being trained as the new generation of Earthrealm defenders, while a new generation of Outworld warriors recovers the amulet and releases Shinnok. After a series of battles between the warring forces, Cassie Cage defeats Shinnok, and Raiden becomes corrupted in the pro- cess of absorbing Shinnok’s power. Following this cliff- hanger, Mortal Kombat 11 (2019) introduces Shin- nok’s time- bending mother, Kronika, whose further machinations to the series timeline attempt to counter Shinnok’s unexpected defeat. Using a magical hourglass, she erases present-d ay Raiden from existence by opening a time- space rift during the events of the MKII Outworld tour- nament, causing younger versions of the combatants to enter the pres- ent day and confront their future selves. The remainder of the game’s Story Mode finds these various past and future versions of major charac- ters forming new alliances and facing off to manipulate their own fates. Raiden eventually fuses himself with both the past and present versions of Liu Kang to form a heroic new fire god powerful enough to defeat Kronika. With Kronika now destroyed and the hourglass at their com- mand, Liu Kang’s fire god status has elevated him to the new protector of Earthrealm, while the morally redeemed Raiden assumes a mortal form. For my purposes, however, MK11’s conceit of past and present ver- sions of Mortal Kombat’s characters encountering each other, surprised Imitation, Derivation, and Reinvention • 119 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution to see how much of themselves has changed over the series’ grand nar- rative, evokes the same sense of surprise that an MKII player in 1993 (myself included) might experience, if given a glimpse into how the franchise has evolved over the intervening quarter century. No longer orchestrated by game designers in their early twenties, MK11’s attempt to reconcile these disparate character arcs through the combatants’ own dawning awareness of their lifespans marks the belated maturity of a series that often rode a fine line between juvenile thrills and “mature” levels of violence. Indeed, much as the games have experienced a viable reboot, so too has the series’ associated franchisability, such as Simon McQuoid’s eponymous Mortal Kombat live-a ction film, released to the- aters and HBO Max in April 2021. As the first Mortal Kombat film to glee- fully depict gory, R-r ated fatalities (rendered via CGI remarkably similar to the cut- scene- like fatalities in the rebooted games), this cinematic reboot implicitly acknowledges that the series’ main audience has aged into adulthood, no longer consisting of a predominantly (pre)teen demographic in need of “protection” from violent imagery. Meanwhile, Mortal Kombat fans have continued to keep the series’ history alive in other ways, by attending conventions like Kombat Kon (held annually in the Chicagoland area), developing cosplay designs to embody game characters, and creating a plethora of fan art. Perhaps the most notable examples of this tendency, however, are the fan- made playable mods powered by M.U.G.E.N (Elecbyte, 1999), a freeware 2D fighting-g ame engine that allows fan artists to modify existing sprites and sound effects from the official franchise, import their own original back- grounds and sound files, and program new moves and gameplay modes (Chris D. 2019). In many of these mods, characters introduced in the later 3D sequels are “retconned” into 2D gameplay inspired by the origi- nal trilogy, effectively rewriting the later series back into the franchise’s golden age in an unlicensed, freely shared twist on the very processes of rebooting concurrently undertaken by NetherRealm Studios. Whether creating lovingly upgraded versions of the original 2D trilogy, goofy par- odies of finishing moves, or unofficial sequels and franchise crossovers, these processes allow today’s fans the creativity that Mortal Kombat aficio- nados of my generation, drawing out our stick- figure diagrams of new characters and gameplay moves, could have only dreamed. As one of the most successful game franchises of all time reaches its three-d ecade mark in 2022, there is little doubt that Mortal Kombat’s story will continue on for the foreseeable future with this new generation of characters, games, and gamers alike. In the wake of the First Amendment 120 • Mortal Kombat Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution protections extended to video games in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association— decided the same year as the series’ reboot—n ew entries are doubtful to ever stoke as much controversy as seen during the “Mortal Moment,” not least because the series has since become an established part of the cultural landscape. Writing in the majority opinion, even arch- conservative U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia remarked, “Reading Dante is unquestionably more cultured and intellectually edi- fying than playing Mortal Kombat. But these cultural and intellectual dif- ferences are not constitutional ones.”11 The macabre creations of Dante’s netherrealm and NetherRealm Studios are, of course, more than centuries apart in their respective aims and taste valuations, yet their grotesque images have each left a lasting impact in their own way. Mixed reactions to the series’ many spin- offs, imitators, and sequels have complicated any clear verdict on whether Grand Guignol gimmickry alone sits at the heart of Mortal Kombat’s pop- ularity, but Midway’s blend of generic inspirations clearly struck some- thing in the mid-1 990s cultural imagination. Reflecting a moment when the aesthetics of cinema and video games converged around photorealis- tic images of interactive violence that were no longer constrained to the public spaces of arcades, the Mortal Kombat games mark an important precedent in the popularization of fighting games both as a genre and as a node for social anxieties. The series’ shadowy and increasingly mul- tilayered story world may have hinted at secret features that parents and moral entrepreneurs feared would corrupt impressionable youth, but the resulting controversy actually testified to a very different story: that of an industry under increased public scrutiny as the influence of video games expanded into a wider array of media platforms. As a transitional moment within its own genre, within larger cultural conversations about its medium, and in the history of transmedia practices, Mortal Kombat has well earned its status as a landmark video game. Imitation, Derivation, and Reinvention • 121 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Notes Introduction 1. Wherever relevant or not immediately apparent from context, I have cited the home country of game studios upon their first mention, using the familiar abbrevia- tions JP (Japan), U.S. (United States), and U.K. (United Kingdom). I have also used the North American names for game consoles, such as SEGA “Genesis” instead of SEGA “MegaDrive.” 2. See Bogost 2015; Sharp 2015; and Parker 2018. 3. My discussion here is rooted primarily in the U.S. context, given how arcades in East Asia tend to have a more socially “wholesome” image (see Ashcraft and Snow 2008), helped in part by the relative absence of gore in most Japanese games—a cultural difference that the Mortal Kombat series exploited as a means of product differentiation. Chapter 1 1. Note that the generic terms “fighting” and “beat-e m- up” are still sometimes used interchangeably, especially in British game criticism. For the sake of clarity, how- ever, I will distinguish between these two varieties of hand-t o- hand combat games. 2. Also see Data East USA, Inc. v. Epyx, Inc. 862 F.2d 204, 9 U.S.P.Q.2d (BNA) 1322 (9th Cir. 1988). 3. To overcome such imbalances in two-p layer competition, the second player to select their avatar might deliberately “counter-p ick” a character whose own weak- nesses will help rebalance the upcoming match (Harper 2014, 61). To help with this issue, Mortal Kombat II also introduced a “Random Select” function, which allows players to defer to serendipity instead of counter- strategize—a very popular option among arcade players already skilled enough to use any character (“Special . . . Kom- bat II” 1994, Electronic, 114). 123 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution 4. According to programmer Ed Boon, MKI was affected by similar imbalances, with Sub- Zero’s moves considerably stronger than the other characters (LaMancha 1994, 35). 5. See “Fighter’s History” 1994, 120; “Letter of the Month” 1994, 14; and Capcom U.S.A., Inc. v. Data East Corp., 1994 WL 1751482 (N.D. Cal. Mar. 16, 1994). 6. On the cognitive/embodied experience of “force transfer” in hand-t o- hand combat games, also see Gregersen 2016, 53– 70. 7. Although not entirely identical, also see the character tier provided in Cure- ton 1994, 69. 8. Franchise crossover games would, however, be created by each company sepa- rately (see chapter 4), using licensing deals with the major American comics firms, including X- Men vs. Street Fighter (Capcom, 1996) and Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe (Midway, 2008). 9. Le Théâtre du Grand- Guignol (1897– 1962) was a Parisian theater specializing in realistic depictions of graphic violence and gore—o ften presented in a morbidly tongue- in- cheek tone— and has been credited as an influence on gory horror films, especially via the generic influence of Herschell Gordon Lewis. 10. Capcom would later introduce Akuma, a hidden playable character in Super Street Fighter II Turbo (1994), unlockable via a combination of carefully timed but- ton presses on the Character Select screen—a s if both acknowledging the earlier Sheng Long mishap and taking inspiration from Midway’s own introduction of secret characters. 11. The purple-a ttired character Rain would originate in a similar manner as a Prince-t hemed in- joke by Ed Boon, briefly seen during a flash of demo gameplay in the “attract mode” of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 (Midway, 1995), and was later made a playable character in subsequent games. 12. Also see the respective pages for the Mortal Kombat games on the Cutting Room Floor website (n.d.). Other major Easter eggs, such as Boon’s separate diagnos- tic menus for the first three coin- op games, would not be discovered until as late as 2015. 13. For MKII, Tobias initially wished to digitize real- life kickboxer Kathy Long as a character, but this idea was dropped due to time constraints (Quan 1994b, 29). 14. Wrestling games are already generically closer in spirit to fighting games than boxing games, since they typically rely on theatrical personas with signature moves, health meters to mark character strength, and so on. In its incorporation of foreign objects to be used as optional weapons, such as pool cues and crates, Pit- Fighter more closely resembles a wrestling game than a fighting game in many respects. 15. See Ahn, et al. v. Midway Manufacturing Company, et al., 965 F. Supp 1134 (N.D. Ill. 1997); and Pesina v. Midway Manufacturing Company, et al., 948 F. Supp. 40 (N.D. Ill. 1996). 16. Ahn, et al. v. Midway, et al. Chapter 2 1. Tobias had originally planned for Total Carnage to feature a backstory “involv[ing] the world being invaded by ghouls from a dimension called Outworld,” 124 • Notes to Pages 17–44 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution but the game’s cocreator, Mark Turmell, vetoed the inclusion of unnecessary themes and storylines (Ali 2019, 62). 2. As one of the first 3D fighting games (and a Mortal Kombat competitor), Tek- ken (Bandai Namco [JP], 1994–) provided a fitting “extra dimension” to its gameplay by developing the increasingly complex story of the Mishima family across its many popular sequels. The Tekken series, then, is a prominent exception to the fighting game’s oft-c riticized lack of narrative depth, much as it also represents an attempt to reassert Japanese dominance over the mid- 1990s coin- op market. 3. On the grindhouse market, see Church 2015, and for a sample of such double bills circa 1974–7 5, see Cope 1975. Also see Prashad 2001 and Bowman 2021 on this period. 4. Note that the pinyin term gong fu roughly translates as “hard work/practice over time” and can refer to any gradually acquired skill, not specifically martial arts, whereas wushu actually translates as “martial art.” By the 1960s– 70s, however, these meanings were effectively reversed once wushu was reconceived as a noncombative gymnastic sport and “kung fu” became internationally associated with empty-h anded martial artistry. In this chapter, I use the latter- day associations of these two terms for the sake of consistency with common usage. 5. Given the basis of the lawsuits that some of these original actors would later file against Midway, it is perhaps no surprise that today they claim a considerable amount of creative input, even if not enough to legally qualify them as joint authors. On the issue of authorship, it is also notable that Japanese character names and cul- tural allusions (such as the blind swordsman Kenshi as a Zatoichi trope) would signifi- cantly increase in the Mortal Kombat games made after Tobias left Midway in 1999. 6. According to Daniel Pesina, additional inspiration for Johnny Cage and Jax respectively came from Marvel’s characters Iron Fist and Power Man, whose own com- ics series ran concurrently with Master of Kung Fu (Myers 2018). 7. The documentary Bruce Lee: A Warrior’s Journey (John Little, 2000) recon- structs as much of Lee’s vision for Game of Death as possible from the extant footage. 8. Konami’s controversial rail-s hooter Lethal Enforcers, discussed in the following chapter, would include a level set in Chicago’s Chinatown, featuring stereotypically attired Chinese villains (see fig. 15). 9. On such diasporic video stores, see Hilderbrand 2009, 27– 32. 10. Dux’s story was later called into question in Johnson 1988. This has led to several ensuing decades of counterarguments over the veracity of Dux’s account, though my primary interest here is in how Bloodsport dramatized the story as a Van Damme vehicle. According to Dux’s original account, for example, despite fighting until knockouts, there were no deaths at the actual Kumite, nor were betting specta- tors allowed. 11. On hardbody films, also see Jeffords 1993; Tasker 1993; and Ayers 2008. 12. Notably, Provenzo’s research does not specify the exact game being described here, but it is likely either Ninja Gaiden (Tecmo, 1988), Double Dragon, or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Konami, 1989) for the 8- bit Nintendo Entertainment System— all of them, ironically, Japanese productions—a nd not one of the Mortal Kombat games. 13. On the tradition of “alternative blood” to evade censorship, also see Kocurek 2015b. This form of localization could operate in the opposite direction, however, Notes to Pages 44–67 • 125 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution with the Japanese- designed Bushido Blade featuring a splash of red blood upon fatal sword strikes in the American version, in place of the yellow flash in the original Japa- nese version. 14. This same toxic masculinity often overlaps with the aforementioned white supremacism expressed by a contingent of gamers fearing that their bubble of ludic escapism is being threatened by racial/sexual minorities (see Nakamura 2019). 15. American Amusement Machine Association v. Kendrick, 244 F.3d 572 (7th Cir. 2001). Chapter 3 1. Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson, 343 U.S. 495 (1952). Film distributor Joseph Burstyn legally challenged the New York State Board of Regents’ 1951 ban of Roberto Rossellini’s film The Miracle (1948), which had been accused of sacrilege. The U.S. Supreme Court’s “Miracle decision” in Burstyn’s favor, which struck down the ban, also reversed an earlier 1915 ruling that had declared motion pictures unprotected by the First Amendment. 2. Coin- op gamers of the early 1990s will recall, however, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s insertion of antidrug messages (“Winners Don’t Use Drugs”) into the attract mode for many games, apparently convinced that idle youth were as likely to reach for a crack pipe as a joystick. 3. City of Mesquite v. Aladdin’s Castle, Inc., 455 U.S. 283 (102 S.Ct. 1070, 71 L.Ed.2d 152) (1982). 4. During the same period, Midway/Williams developed the Williams Action Video Entertainment Network (or “WaveNet”), an attempt to remotely network arcade machines for competitive play via an ISDN connection. Although installation costs for these ISDN connections might have put off some arcade owners, Williams hoped that their widespread adoption would revolutionize the coin- op industry’s business model by allowing companies like Williams to remotely disseminate new software and updates for free, in exchange for a share of each arcade’s revenue on those games. In April 1996, Williams began field- testing WaveNet on ten Ultimate Mor- tal Kombat 3 cabinets in the Chicago area, but this early experiment with networked gaming was short- lived, and its ambitious revenue- sharing model did not come to pass (Webb 1996, 18). 5. Its sequel, Lethal Enforcers II: Gun Fighters (Konami, 1994), in fact, uses an Old West setting instead. 6. The Options menu on the SNES prototype even included a selection between “Bloody” and “Bloodless” game modes, but it is unclear if this was to be a standard menu option or unlockable only with a code. 7. The ESRB ratings include E (Everyone), T (Teen), M (Mature 17+), and AO (Adults Only 18+). 8. For example, MKI was banned and confiscated in Germany in 1994 under a Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons law against content that glorifies or trivializes violence. 9. For overviews of these debates, see Sicart 2009; Egenfeldt- Nielsen, Smith, and Tosca 2013, 255– 79; Schott 2016; Markey and Ferguson 2017. 126 • Notes to Pages 68–91 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution 10. However, they do allow that players with preexisting dispositions toward aggression were more intrigued by violent game content for its own sake, even if that violent content still did not correlate with their overall enjoyment of the games themselves. 11. Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, 564 U.S. 786 (2011). Chapter 4 1. Time Killers was considered so bad that it inspired its own parody game, Timeslaughter (Bloodlust Software [U.S.], 1996); whereas reviews of Naughty Dog’s almost self- parodic Way of the Warrior noted how the Panasonic 3DO’s “beautiful” CD- based graphics did not compensate for horrible gameplay since, even with its “humor value,” the game “isn’t even good by accident!” (“Review . . . Warrior” 1994, 38). 2. Emulated versions of the original Mortal Kombat trilogy would be further repackaged on Midway Arcade Treasures compilations (2004– 2005) for the Sony Play- Station 2 and Microsoft Xbox, in addition to serving as unlockable hidden games within the later sequels, as if having acquired the historical status of the PONG and Galaga games hidden in the original trilogy. 3. This compiled story information derives from several sources: Santoro et al. 2018; Mortal Kombat Wiki (n.d.); and Jasper 2017. 4. A hyperdiegesis is “a vast and detailed narrative space, only a fraction of which is ever directly seen or encountered within the text” (Hills 2002, 104). 5. Although the number of grandmothers who embraced MK: Armageddon is doubtful, Boon’s rhetoric is consistent with the Wii’s reputation as a game console adapted by “casual” gamers of many ages, as explained in Juul 2009. 6. “Mokap,” a hidden character in MK: Deadly Alliance, wears a motion- capture suit covered with reflective balls, alluding to this now- common cinematic process. 7. Also see In re MIDWAY GAMES INC., et al., Debtors. Threshold Entertainment, Inc., Plaintiff, v. Midway Games Inc., et al., Bankruptcy No. 09- 10465, Adversary No. 09- 51081 (446 B.R. 148 [2011]). 8. An R18+ rating for video games would be introduced by the release of Mortal Kombat X four years later, allowing the uncensored sequel to be sold to adults. 9. Mortal Kombat 11 (2019) replaces X- ray attacks with high- damage “Fatal Blow” attacks, enabled once a character’s health drops below the 30 percent mark, thus allowing a losing player to potentially turn the tables on their opponent. Meanwhile, MK11 splits the tripartite meter into separate offensive and defensive meters, giving players more strategic in-r ound options for how to use accumulated energy toward enhanced moves. 10. A playable Scorpion, however, would be available to Injustice players as a pre- mium download, much as NetherRealm’s Injustice 2 (2017) features Sub-Z ero and Raiden as downloadable characters. Likewise, NetherRealm introduced a mobile game for iOS and Android devices in conjunction with MKX, based in purchasing and collecting a virtual card deck of fighters and their corresponding powers, which incentivizes in- game microtransactions by also unlocking content on the home con- sole version. 11. Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, 564 U.S. 786 (2011). Notes to Pages 93–121 • 127 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Glossary Arena: The bounded physical space where one-o n-o ne combat occurs in a fighting game. Arenas in 2D fighting games (also referred to as “backgrounds”) are horizontal planes bounded by hard edges, while 3D fighting games typically feature square or circular spaces and the ability to knock one’s opponent outside the ring edge for an auto- matic round win. Attract mode: A series of preview screens (e.g., main titles, sample game- play footage) through which a coin-o perated arcade game cycles when not currently in use by a player. Audit menu: A special menu accessible only by a coin- operated arcade machine’s owner/operator, used to perform system updates and to assess a given machine’s overall gameplay statistics. Avatar: A playable character serving as the player’s diegetic surrogate, such as the combatant chosen from a Character Select screen in a fighting game. Beat- em- up: Also called “brawlers,” this subgenre of action games fea- tures one or more playable characters who must engage in hand-t o- hand melee combat against many (largely indistinguishable) enemy fighters at once while proceeding through a given level. Boss: One or more extra- strong enemies who must be overcome near the end of a game (or at the end of a discrete unit of gameplay, such as a level). In many fighting games, bosses are non-p layable charac- ters (NPCs), reachable only in single- player mode at the end of a tournament-l ike series of fights. 129 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Combo: A series of offensive blows landed on an opponent in very quick succession. In fighting games, combos may be performed via “juggling” (or knocking one’s opponent into the air and land- ing additional blows as they fall) or via preprogrammed combo moves specific to each character (also dubbed “chain combos” or “dial-a - combos”). Cut-s cene: A non- interactive, cinematic sequence of narrative informa- tion or gameplay instruction interspersed between periods of inter- active gameplay. Also see full- motion video (FMV). Diegesis: The story world within the text, including the characters, set- tings, “in-w orld” sounds, and overall visual environment (or mise-e n- scène). By contrast, extra- diegetic (or non-d iegetic) elements are experi- enced only by the viewer/player, such as onscreen captions/meters, menu screens, soundtrack music, etc. Also see transmedia. “Easter egg”: An unlockable or visually obscured gameplay feature, message, sound, or in- joke encoded by game designers to reward knowledgeable players. Exploitation film: A broad cinematic mode of genre films that compen- sate for their (often) low budgets or independent origins by priori- tizing viscerally impactful spectacle and sensationalistic or timely subject matter. Fighting game: A genre in which gameplay consists of a series of one-o n- one, multi-r ound matches (measured via a per- round health meter) of hand-t o- hand combat between distinctly different characters, each often possessing both standard and special moves. Single-p layer mode (or “arcade mode”) is often figured as a tournament with a Manichean framing narrative, while most fighting games also include a two- player competitive mode. Finishing move: A visually spectacular special move, typically executable only at the end of a match, in which the winning combatant may kill, humiliate, or punish the loser. First- person shooter (FPS): A genre of 3D shooting games in which the player’s point of view maps onto the weapon- toting avatar’s point of view as the player freely navigates a maze-l ike level full of shootable enemies. Full- motion video (FMV): A nonplayable sequence of prerecorded video or prerendered animation, often used in cut-s cenes. Game balance: An aspect of game design referring to the relative fair- ness of the gameplay abilities provided to a player. “Asymmetric” or unbalanced game design may leave one player at a significant disad- 130 • Glossary Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution vantage to the power of AI- controlled opponents (in single- player mode) or human-c ontrolled opponents (in two-p layer competitive mode). Home console: A video game machine designed for home use, with the visual interface provided via connection to a separate television set or computer monitor. Home consoles typically use games that are modularly insertable into the base machine via chip- based cartridges or CD/Blu- ray discs. Indexicality: A semiotic term referring to signs in which the signifier is directly caused or created by the signified. Unlike iconic signs, in which there is a mere resemblance between signifier and signified, indexical signs bear a literal trace of what they represent. For exam- ple, a footprint, photograph, or lingering smell all bear an indexical relationship to the physical thing that imprinted them. Kung fu: A colloquial term, popularized since the early 1970s, used to broadly describe a variety of close- range, empty- handed com- bat styles originating in East Asia and especially China. Not to be conflated with the pinyin term gong fu, or “hard work/practice over time.” Media effects: A field of behaviorist social science research exploring how media consumption influences individual psychology or social behavior. Meter: An onscreen indicator of character strength/power, ranging from the standard (e.g., a health bar) to the specialized (e.g., a “charge” meter for performing special moves). Motion capture: A technique for recording a live actor’s physical move- ments and rendering it as lifelike movement within another medium, such as a film or game. Also see pixilation; rotoscoping. Orientalism: Edward Said’s term for a broadly reductive body of Euro- American beliefs about the so- called Orient. Supposedly rooted in scientific knowledge, but actually based in cultural stereotypes, ori- entalism has historically been generated through, and used to help justify, the “Western” world’s colonialist encounters with “the East.” “Palette swap”: A character sprite modeled on an existing sprite but visually differentiated via another color palette; often used to save memory space. Paratext: A type of ancillary text that “surrounds” the main text while also shaping the main text’s reception. Paratexts may include spin- offs, merchandise, promotional materials, packaging, reviews, etc. Also see transmedia. Glossary • 131 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Peripheral: An ancillary device connectable to the controller or cartridge slot of a home console, intended to enhance gameplay or upscale the base console’s technological capacities. Pixilation: A motion-c apture technique in which photographed still frames of live actors are rendered as lifelike movement via stop- motion animation. Platform game: A subgenre of action games in which the player’s avatar must navigate a series of suspended platforms and obstacles within a given level. Port: A translation of an existing game onto another platform, such as from an arcade machine to a home console. Projectile: A type of special move emitted from one’s avatar and covering the spatial distance to one’s opponent. Often used as an offensive attack, but some projectiles may be used to stun. Rail- shooter: A genre of shooting game in which the game camera moves incrementally along a preprogrammed “hard rail” for as long as the player remains successful at clearing the screen of numerous threats. The player typically uses a “light gun” (a weapon- shaped device that shoots infrared light at the screen) as their controller but does not control camera movements. Reboot: Derived from computing lingo, a “reboot” is a text that attempts to restart an existing franchise. Unlike the fealty to an original text associated with the “remake,” the reboot attempts to correct per- ceived shortcomings of previous sequels or spin-o ffs in a franchise. Role- playing game (RPG): A game genre in which the player gradually develops their character’s knowledge and inventoried skills/items via lengthy quests and explorations of sprawling, often fantastical story worlds. Rotoscoping: A motion- capture technique in which a record of live actors’ physical movements is manually or digitally traced over to create lifelike animation. Special move: A more advanced type of attack or fighting technique requiring the player’s knowledge of specific combinations of joystick moves or button presses. Special moves are often unique to a par- ticular character, may do more damage than standard moves, and are sometimes executable only when an onscreen meter is charged up. Sprite: A two-d imensional bitmap animation used in video games to produce moving objects set against stationary backgrounds. Standard move: A basic attack used in a fighting game via simple joy- stick controls and button presses, with no specialized knowledge required. 132 • Glossary Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Transmedia: A form of franchise storytelling that unfolds across a variety of media platforms, playing to the strengths of each platform and incentivizing multiple paratextual purchases to keep track of the vastly expanding story world. Wushu: A gymnastic sport combining elements of Chinese martial art- istry and Chinese opera acrobatics, consolidated and sanctioned by the Chinese government during the twentieth century. Wuxia: The genre of Chinese chivalric swordplay fiction featuring itin- erant, sword- wielding heroes with superhuman abilities in fantastical stories set during China’s premodern past. Glossary • 133 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Mortal Kombat Ludography Mortal Kombat (Midway, 1992) Genre: Fighting First release: Arcade Mortal Kombat II (Midway, 1993) Genre: Fighting First release: Arcade Mortal Kombat 3 (Midway, 1995) Genre: Fighting First release: Arcade Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 (Midway, 1995) Genre: Fighting First release: Arcade Alternately titled ports: Mortal Kombat Advance (Nintendo Game Boy Advance, 2001), Ultimate Mortal Kombat (Nintendo DS, 2007) Mortal Kombat Trilogy (Midway, 1996) Genre: Fighting First release: Sony PlayStation, Nintendo 64 Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Z ero (Midway, 1997) Genre: Platform First release: Sony PlayStation, Nintendo 64 135 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Mortal Kombat 4 (Midway, 1997) Genre: Fighting First release: Arcade Alternately titled port: Mortal Kombat Gold (SEGA Dreamcast, 1999) Mortal Kombat: Special Forces (Midway, 2000) Genre: RPG First release: Sony PlayStation Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance (Midway, 2002) Genre: Fighting First release: Nintendo GameCube, Sony PlayStation 2, Microsoft Xbox Alternately titled port: Mortal Kombat: Tournament Edition (Nintendo Game Boy Advance, 2003) Mortal Kombat: Deception (Midway, 2004) Genre: Fighting; RPG First release: Sony PlayStation 2, Microsoft Xbox Alternately titled port: Mortal Kombat: Unchained (PlayStation Portable, 2006) Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks (Midway, 2005) Genre: Beat-e m-u p First release: Sony PlayStation 2, Microsoft Xbox Mortal Kombat: Armageddon (Midway, 2006) Genre: Fighting; RPG First release: Sony PlayStation 2, Microsoft Xbox, Nintendo Wii Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe (Midway, 2008) Genre: Fighting First release: Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360 Mortal Kombat (NetherRealm Studios, 2011) Genre: Fighting First release: Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360 Alternately titled/expanded version: Mortal Kombat: Komplete Edition (2012– 13) Mortal Kombat X (NetherRealm Studios, 2015) Genre: Fighting First release: PC, Sony PlayStation 4, Microsoft Xbox One Alternately titled/expanded version: Mortal Kombat XL (2016) 136 • Mortal Kombat Ludography Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Mortal Kombat Mobile (NetherRealm Studios, 2015) Genre: Digital collectible card game; Fighting First release: iOS, Android Mortal Kombat 11 (NetherRealm Studios, 2019) Genre: Fighting First release: PC, Sony PlayStation 4, Microsoft Xbox One, Nintendo Switch Alternately titled/expanded version: Mortal Kombat 11: Aftermath (2020) Mortal Kombat Ludography • 137 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Bibliography Adams, Andy. 1969. “Behind the Mask of Japan’s Black Dragon Society.” Black Belt, August. Ali, Reyan. 2019. NBA Jam. Los Angeles: Boss Fight Books. Anderson, Aaron. 1998. “Kinesthesia in Martial Arts Films.” Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media, no. 42. https://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlines- says/JC42folder/anderson2/index.html Andrew, Ryan. 1995. Letter to the editor. Electronic Gaming Monthly, February. Aoki, Guy. 1995. “Media Watch: Bad Guys.” Asianweek, September 8. Aranda, Marcelo Alejandro. 2016. “World Building.” In Debugging Game History: A Critical Lexicon, edited by Henry Lowood and Raiford Guins, 419– 24. Cam- bridge, MA: MIT Press. Arsenault, Dominic. 2014. “Action.” In The Routledge Companion to Video Game Studies, edited by Mark J. P. Wolf and Bernard Perron, 223–3 1. New York: Routledge. Ashcraft, Brian. 2016. “The Reason behind Street Fighter’s Iconic Button Layout.” Kotaku, August 31. https://kotaku.com/the-reason-behind-street-fighters-ico nic-button-layout-1785985830 Ashcraft, Brian, and Jean Snow. 2008. Arcade Mania! The Turbo-C harged World of Japan’s Game Centers. New York: Kodansha USA. Ayers, Drew. 2008. “Bodies, Bullets, and Bad Guys: Elements of the Hardbody Film.” Film Criticism 32, no. 3: 41–6 7. Ballard, Mary E., and J. Rose Wiest. 1996. “Mortal Kombat™: The Effects of Vio- lent Videogame Play on Males’ Hostility and Cardiovascular Responding.” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 26, no. 8: 717– 30. Begy, Jason Scott. 2012. “Fighting Games.” In Encyclopedia of Video Games: The Culture, Technology, and Art of Gaming, edited by Mark J. P. Wolf, 210– 13. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood Press. Bieniek, Chris. 1995a. “Input: Read This Editorial!” Video Games, April. Bieniek, Chris. 1995b. “Mortal Kombat III.” Video Games, April. Bieniek, Chris. 1995c. “Noob Saibot Speaks!” Video Games, April. 139 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution “Bloody: Mortal Kombat 3 (PC).” 1995. Next Generation, October. Bogost, Ian. 2015. How to Talk about Videogames. Minneapolis: University of Min- nesota Press. Bolter, Jay David, and Richard Grusin. 1999. Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Boothroyd, Aaron D. 2012. “Midway Games.” In Encyclopedia of Video Games: The Culture, Technology, and Art of Gaming, edited by Mark J. P. Wolf, 409– 10. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood Press. Bordwell, David. 2000. Planet Hong Kong: Popular Cinema and the Art of Entertain- ment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bowman, Paul. 2011. “The Fantasy Corpus of Martial Arts; or, The ‘Communica- tion’ of Bruce Lee.” In Martial Arts as Embodied Knowledge, edited by D. S. Farrer and John Whalen- Bridge, 61– 96. Albany: SUNY Press. Bowman, Paul. 2021. The Invention of Martial Arts: Popular Culture between Asia and America. New York: Oxford University Press. Brown, Randall. 1984. Letter to the editor. Black Belt, December. Budziszewski, P. Konrad. 2012. “Bally.” In Encyclopedia of Video Games: The Culture, Technology, and Art of Gaming, edited by Mark J. P. Wolf, 67– 68. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood Press. Burton- Rose, Daniel. 2017. “Desiderata for the Principles of Compilation of a Canon of Buddhism and Medicine: A Consumer’s Guide to the Zhongguo Fojiao yiyao quanshu (Complete Works of Chinese Buddhist Medicine and Pharmaco- peia, 2011).” Asian Medicine 12, no. 1– 2: 203–3 2. Carter, Chip, and Jonathan Carter. 1993a. “Buttons of Blood and Other Codes for ‘Mortal Kombat.’” Chicago Tribune, December 31. Carter, Chip, and Jonathan Carter. 1993b. “Lethal Enforcers: Right on Target.” Washington Post, December 27. Carter, Chip, and Jonathan Carter. 1993c. “Mortal Kombat: Why All the Fuss?” Washington Post, September 27. Carter, Chip, and Jonathan Carter. 1996. “A Super Cheat Sheet of Tips for ‘Mor- tal Kombat III.’” Chicago Tribune, April 12. Cassell, Justine, and Henry Jenkins. 1998. “Chess for Girls? Feminism and Com- puter Games.” In From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games, edited by Justine Cassell and Henry Jenkins, 2–4 5. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Char-L i, Martin Vega, and Mike Guzman. 1994. “GamePro ProStrategy Guide: Mortal Kombat II.” GamePro, June. Chernicky, Mooncricket. 1994. “Letter of the Month.” Electronic Gaming Monthly, May. Cherry, Brigid. 2002. “Refusing to Refuse to Look: Female Viewers of the Horror Film.” In Horror: The Film Reader, edited by Mark Jancovich, 69–7 8. London: Routledge. Cheuk, Pak Tong. 2008. Hong Kong New Wave Cinema (1978– 2000). London: Intellect. Chong, Sylvia Shin Huey. 2012. The Oriental Obscene: Violence and Racial Fantasies in the Vietnam Era. Durham: Duke University Press. Chris D. 2019. “The Best Mortal Kombat Fan Games So Far.” Level Smack. Posted January 25. https://www.levelsmack.com/best-mortal-kombat-fan-games/ 140 • Bibliography Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Chung, Stephanie Po-Y in. 2007. “Moguls of the Chinese Cinema: The Story of the Shaw Brothers in Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Singapore, 1924–2 002.” Modern Asian Studies 41, no. 4: 665– 82. Church, David. 2015. Grindhouse Nostalgia: Memory, Home Video, and Exploitation Film Fandom. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Cohen, Richard. 1993. “Violence for Fun and Profit.” Washington Post, September 21. Consalvo, Mia. 2007. Cheating: Gaining Advantage in Video Games. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Constant, Nikos. 1994. “The Brutality and Ecstasy of Fighting Games.” Video Games, October. Cope, Demetrius. 1975. “Anatomy of a Blaxploitation Theater.” Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media, no. 9. https://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/ onlinessays/JC09folder/aBlackTheater.html Couch, Aaron. 2015. “‘Mortal Kombat’: Untold Story of the Movie That ‘Kicked the Hell’ Out of Everyone.” Hollywood Reporter, August 18. https://www.hol- lywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/mortal-kombat-movie-oral-history-815287 Creed, Barbara. 1993. The Monstrous- Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis. Lon- don: Routledge. Crisafulli, Chuck. 1995. “The Mortals behind Kombat: Creators Bask in Success as Arcade Hit Takes on a Life of Its Own.” Los Angeles Times, October 18. C- SPAN. 1993. “Video Game Violence” (December 9). Accessed July 10, 2018. https://www.c-span.org/video/?52848-1/video-game-violence C- SPAN. 1994. “Video Game Violence” (March 4). Accessed July 14, 2018. https://www.c-span.org/video/?55034-1/video-game-violence Cureton, Ben. 1994. Mortal Kombat Super Book. Indianapolis: Brady Publishing. Cutting Room Floor, The. n.d. “Category: Mortal Kombat Series.” Accessed November 26, 2018. https://tcrf.net/Category:Mortal_Kombat_series Desser, David. 2000. “The Kung Fu Craze: Hong Kong Cinema’s First Ameri- can Reception.” In The Cinema of Hong Kong: History, Arts, Identity, edited by Poshek Fu and David Desser, 19– 43. New York: Cambridge University Press. deWinter, Jennifer. 2016. “Game Camera.” In Debugging Game History: A Criti- cal Lexicon, edited by Henry Lowood and Raiford Guins, 177–8 6. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Donovan, Tristan. 2010. Replay: The History of Video Games. East Sussex, UK: Yel- low Ant. Douglas, Adam. 1996. “Mortal Kombat 3.” IGN, November 25. http://www.ign. com/articles/1996/11/26/mortal-kombat-3 Dretzka, Gary. 1995. “‘Mortal Kombat’ Creators Flex Muscles in Multimedia Mar- ket.” Chicago Tribune, October 25. “Editorial: Game Ratings: An Idea Whose Time Has Come?” 1993. GamePro, September. “Editorial: Knowledge Is Power.” 1994. GamePro, May. Egan, Kate. 2007. Trash or Treasure? Censorship and the Changing Meanings of the Video Nasties. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Egenfeldt- Nielsen, Simon, Jonas Heide Smith, and Susana Pajares Tosca. 2013. Understanding Video Games: The Essential Introduction. New York: Routledge. “EGM! Special Assignment.” 1994. Electronic Gaming Monthly, July. Bibliography • 141 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Elmer- Dewitt, Philip, and John F. Dickerson. 1993. “Too Violent for Kids?” Time, September 27. Elston, Brett. 2011. “Mortal Kombat Review.” GamesRadar, April 19. https://www. gamesradar.com/mortal-kombat-2011-review/ Emerson, Ralph Waldo. 1862. “Old Age.” Atlantic Monthly, January. Everett, Anna. 2009. Digital Diaspora: A Race for Cyberspace. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Fahey, Mike. 2019. “People Are Upset about Things That Don’t Actually Happen in Jax’s MK11 Ending.” Kotaku, April 23. https://kotaku.com/ people-are-upset-about-things-that-don-t-actually-happe-1834249359 Ferguson, Christopher J., and John Kilburn. 2010. “Much Ado about Nothing: The Misestimation and Overinterpretation of Violent Video Game Effects in Eastern and Western Nations: Comment on Anderson et al. (2010).” Psycho- logical Bulletin 136, no. 2: 174– 78. Fickle, Tara. 2019. The Race Card: From Gaming Technologies to Model Minorities. New York: NYU Press. Fielder, Robert. 1994. Letter to the editor. GamePro, February. “Fighter’s History.” 1994. Electronic Gaming Monthly, May. “Finished? Mortal Kombat III (Sega Genesis).” 1995. Next Generation, November. Flanagan, Kevin M. 2017. “Videogame Adaptation.” In The Oxford Handbook of Adaptation Studies, edited by Thomas Leitch, 441– 56. Oxford: Oxford Uni- versity Press. Flynn, Bernadette. 2003. “Geography of the Digital Hearth.” Information, Com- munication, & Society 6, no. 4: 551–7 6. Foucault, Michel. 1990. The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction. Trans- lated by Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage. Frayling, Christopher. 2014. The Yellow Peril: Dr. Fu Manchu and the Rise of China- phobia. London: Thames & Hudson. Gaboury, Jacob. 2016. “Perspective.” In Debugging Game History: A Critical Lexicon, edited by Henry Lowood and Raiford Guins, 359–6 7. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. “Game Doctor.” 1993. Electronic Games, December. “The Game Makers: The Artists.” 1996. GamePro, January. “Gaming Gossip.” 1997. Electronic Gaming Monthly, April. Glionna, John M. 1993. “The Thrill Is Gore: Kids Love the Grisly Video Games Adults Hate.” Los Angeles Times, November 18. Gore, Chris. 1995. “The Gore Score.” Video Games, April. Goto-J ones, Chris. 2016a. Conjuring Asia: Magic, Orientalism, and the Making of the Modern World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Goto- Jones, Chris. 2016b. The Virtual Ninja Manifesto: Fighting Games, Martial Arts, and Gamic Orientalism. London: Rowman & Littlefield. Gregersen, Andreas. 2016. “Hit It: Core Cognitive Structures and the Fighting Game.” In Video Games and the Mind: Essays on Cognition, Affect, and Emo- tion, edited by Bernard Perron and Felix Schröter, 53– 70. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. Griest, Stephanie. 1995. “‘Mortal Kombat’s’ Bloodless Coup: Kids Say Martial- Arts Film Lacks Video Game’s Gory Details.” Washington Post, August 25. 142 • Bibliography Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Grossman, Howard, and Steve Harris. 1995. “Mortal Kombat III.” Electronic Gaming Monthly, February. Gruson, Lindsey. 1993. “Video Violence: It’s Hot! It’s Mortal! It’s Kombat!” New York Times, September 16. Guins, Raiford. 2014. Game After: A Cultural Study of Video Game Afterlife. Cam- bridge, MA: MIT Press. Harper, Todd. 2014. The Culture of Digital Fighting Games: Performance and Practice. New York: Routledge. Harrington, Linda M. 1994. “Lawmakers Tune In to Video Game Mayhem.” Chi- cago Tribune, March 4. Harrington, Richard. 1995. “Kartoonish ‘Kombat.’” Washington Post, August 19. Harris, Blake J. 2014. Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle That Defined a Generation. New York: Dey Street. Hickey Jr., Patrick. 2018. “John Tobias, Mortal Kombat: Enter the Fatality.” In The Minds Behind the Games: Interviews with Cult and Classic Video Game Developers, edited by Patrick Hickey Jr., 174– 78. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. Hilderbrand, Lucas. 2009. Inherent Vice: Bootleg Histories of Videotape and Copyright. Durham: Duke University Press. Hills, Matt. 2002. Fan Cultures. London: Routledge. Hollingsworth, Chauncey. 1995. “The Whomping Continues with MK3.” Chicago Tribune, June 30. Hornibrook, Andy. 1993. Letter to the editor. Electronic Gaming Monthly, March. Hsing, Li [Randall Brown]. 1984. China’s Ninja Connection. Boulder, CO: Paladin Press. Hsing, Li [Randall Brown]. 1986. Combat Skills of the Lin Kuei: Heritage of the Ninja. Boulder, CO: Paladin Press. Huizinga, Johan. 1949. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play- Element in Culture. Lon- don: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Hunt, Leon. 2000. “Han’s Island Revisited: Enter the Dragon as Transnational Cult Film.” In Unruly Pleasures: The Cult Film and Its Critics, edited by Xavier Men- dik and Graeme Harper, 73– 85. Guildford, UK: FAB Press. Hunt, Leon. 2003. Kung Fu Cult Masters: From Bruce Lee to Crouching Tiger. Lon- don: Wallflower Press. Hutchinson, Rachael. 2007. “Performing the Self: Subverting the Binary in Com- bat Games.” Games and Culture 2, no. 4: 283– 99. Hutchinson, Rachael. 2015. “Gender Stereotypes in Japanese Fighting Games: Effects on Identification and Immersion.” NMEDIAC: The Journal of New Media & Culture 10, no. 1. http://ibiblio.org/nmediac/summer2015/Gen- derStereotypes.htm Hutchinson, Rachael. 2019. Japanese Culture through Videogames. London: Routledge. IGN. 2011. “Mortal Kombat: Armageddon Nintendo Wii Trailer— Ed Boon.” YouTube Video, 2:17. June 23. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_1TQ1KTu3U International Arcade Museum and Killer List of Videogames. n.d. Accessed Sep- tember 2, 2018. https://www.arcade-museum.com/ Ivins- Hulley, Laura. 2013. “A Universe of Boundaries: Pixilated Performances in Jan Švankmajer’s Food.” Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal 8, no. 3: 267–8 2. Bibliography • 143 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Iwabuchi, Koichi. 2002. Recentering Globalization: Popular Culture and Japanese Transnationalism. Durham: Duke University Press. Jasper, Gavin. 2017. “The Mortal Kombat Timeline: The Krazy Story Explained.” Den of Geek, August 6. http://www.denofgeek.com/us/games/ mortal-kombat/248595/mortal-kombat-timeline-krazy-story-explained Jefferson, David J. 1995. “Entertainment: Mortal Kombat Spins Off Army of Tamer Stuff.” Wall Street Journal, March 30. Jeffords, Susan. 1993. Hard Bodies: Hollywood Masculinity in the Reagan Era. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Jenkins, Henry. 2006. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: NYU Press. Johnson, John. 1988. “Ninja: Hero or Master Fake? Others Kick Holes in Fabled Past of Woodland Hills Martial Arts Teacher.” Los Angeles Times, May 1. Jones, Darran. 2007. “Blood Simple: The History of Mortal Kombat.” Retro Gamer, July. Juul, Jesper. 2005. Half- Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Juul, Jesper. 2009. A Casual Revolution: Reinventing Video Games and Their Players. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Juul, Jesper. 2014. The Art of Failure: An Essay on the Pain of Playing Video Games. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Kanter, Fred, Jr. 1997. Letter to the editor. Electronic Gaming Monthly, April. Kennedy, Brian, and Elizabeth Guo. 2005. Chinese Martials Arts Training Manuals: A Historical Survey. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books. Kent, Steven L. 2001. The Ultimate History of Video Games: From PONG to Pokémon and Beyond— The Story behind the Craze That Touched Our Lives and Changed the World. Roseville, CA: Prima Publishing. Kinder, Marsha. 1996. “Contextualizing Video Game Violence: From Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles I to Mortal Kombat II.” In Interacting with Video, edited by Patricia M. Greenfield and Rodney R. Cocking, 25– 37. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Kirsh, Steven J. 1998. “Seeing the World through Mortal Kombat–C olored Glasses.” Childhood 5, no. 2: 177– 84. Kirt S. 1994. Letter to the editor. GamePro, June. Klepek, Patrick. 2016. “Inside Nintendo’s Plan to Save Video Games from Con- gress.” Waypoint, November 6. https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/article/ yvw5n7/inside-nintendos-plan-to-save-video-games-from-congress Kline, Stephen, Nick Dyer- Witheford, and Greig de Peuter. 2003. Digital Play: The Interaction of Technology, Culture, and Marketing. Montreal: McGill– Queen’s University Press. Kocurek, Carly A. 2015a. Coin- Operated Americans: Rebooting Boyhood at the Video Game Arcade. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Kocurek, Carly A. 2015b. “Who Hearkens to the Monster’s Scream? Death, Vio- lence, and the Veil of the Monstrous in Video Games.” Visual Studies 30, no. 1: 79–8 9. Kocurek, Carly A. 2019. “Night Trap: Moral Panic.” In How to Play Video Games, edited by Matthew Thomas Payne and Nina B. Huntemann, 309– 16. New York: NYU Press. 144 • Bibliography Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Kunkel, Bill. 1993a. “The Man behind Mortal Kombat: Acclaim Pulls No Punches in Bringing MK Home!” Electronic Games, September. Kunkel, Bill. 1993b. “Meet the Creators of Mortal Kombat.” Electronic Games, May. Kunkel, Bill. 1993c. “Mortal Kontroversy.” Electronic Games, December. Kunkel, Bill. 1993d. “The Standards.” Electronic Games, December. Kunkel, Bill. 1993e. “The View from Nintendo: Peter Main Discusses the Ethics of Video Game Content.” Electronic Games, December. Kunkel, Bill. 1994. “More Mortal Kombat!” Electronic Games, January. Lam, May. 1994. “Do Fighting Video Games Prolong Stereotypes of Asian Ameri- cans?” Asianweek, September 23. LaMancha, Manny. 1994. “Mortal Kombat II Interview.” GamePro, January. Larry, Scary. 1993. “Super NES ProReview: Mortal Kombat.” GamePro, September. Lauer, Paula. 1994. “The Video Game: An Incredible Success Story.” Chicago Tri- bune, May 1. Lee, Heh-K yu. 1995. Letter to the editor. Electronic Gaming Monthly, February. Leeds, Jeff. 1994. “Video Game Makers Unveil Consumer Rating System Retail.” Los Angeles Times, July 30. LeFebvre, Mark. 1994. “Fact File: BloodStorm.” EGM2, July. Leone, Matt. 2018. “Mortal Kombat’s Johnny Cage, 20 Years Later.” Poly- gon, April 2. https://www.polygon.com/features/2018/4/2/17182334/ mortal-kombat-johnny-cage-20-years-later “Letter of the Month.” 1994. Electronic Gaming Monthly, May. Lewis, Jarel. 1994. Letter to the editor. Electronic Gaming Monthly, July. Lichtenfeld, Eric. 2007. Action Speaks Louder: Violence, Spectacle, and the American Action Movie. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. Makuch, Eddie. 2015. “As Mortal Kombat X Arrives, Entire Franchise Reaches 35 Million Units Sold.” GameSpot, April 14. https://www.gamespot.com/ articles/as-mortal-kombat-x-arrives-entire-franchise-reache/1100-6426616/ Markey, Patrick M., and Christopher J. Ferguson. 2017. Moral Combat: Why the War on Violent Video Games Is Wrong. Dallas: BenBella Books. Markoff, John. 1994. “The Media Business: Mortal Kombat, Over the Tele- phone.” New York Times, June 6. Masui, Garrett. 1993. Letter to the editor. GamePro, July. McCarthy, Caty. 2018. “Get Over Here: Meeting the Faces of Mortal Kombat, 25 Years Later.” USGamer, April 16. https://www.usgamer.net/articles/ get-over-here-meeting-the-faces-of-mortal-kombat-25-years-later McKenna, Mark. 2020. Nasty Business: The Marketing and Distribution of the Video Nasties. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. McKernan, Brian. 2013. “The Morality of Play: Video Game Coverage in the New York Times from 1980 to 2010.” Games and Culture 8, no. 5: 307– 29. Mendez, Chris. 1994. Letter to the editor. GamePro, February. Mick-L ucifer. 2012. “In Konversation: Mortal Kombat Online vs. John Tobias— Part 1.” Mortal Kombat Online. Posted September 17. http://www.mor- talkombatonline.com/content/News/read.cds?article=1725 Midway Games. 1992. Mortal Kombat Kit arcade manual (Chicago, August). Internet Archive. Accessed June 21, 2018. https://archive.org/details/ ArcadeGameManualMortalkombat Bibliography • 145 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Moore, Steven Dean, dir. 1995. The Simpsons. Season 7, episode 11, “Marge Be Not Proud.” Aired December 17, on FOX. Morris, Andrew D. 2004. Marrow of the Nation: A History of Sport and Physical Cul- ture in Republican China. Berkeley: University of California Press. Morris, Meaghan. 2004. “Transnational Imagination in Action Cinema: Hong Kong and the Making of a Global Popular Culture.” Inter- Asia Cultural Studies 5, no. 2: 181– 99. “Mortal Kombat.” 1993. Electronic Gaming Monthly, March. “Mortal Kombat.” 1993. SEGA Visions, August/September. “Mortal Kombat: A Dangerous Conflict.” 1993. Nintendo Power, October. “Mortal Kombat III: Top 10 Rumors.” 1994. Electronic Gaming Monthly, March. “Mortal Kombat Tour Postponed to Add Special Effects.” 1995. Chicago Tribune, September 15. Mortal Kombat Wiki. n.d. Accessed May 12, 2019. http://mortalkombat.wikia. com/wiki/Mortal_Kombat_Wiki “Mortal’s Master: Programmer Ed Boon.” 1995. GamePro, November. Murray Dian H., and Qin Baoqi. 1994. The Origins of the Tiandihui: The Chinese Triads in Legend and History. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Myers, Quinn. 2018. “An Oral History of ‘Mortal Kombat.’” MEL Magazine, November 26. https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/an-oral-history-of-mo rtal-kombat Nakamura, Lisa. 2019. “Gender and Race in the Gaming World.” In Society and the Internet: How Networks of Information and Communication Are Changing Our Lives, edited by Mark Graham and William H. Dutton, 127– 45. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Neogamer— The Video Game Archive. 2018. “Behind the Scenes—M ortal Kombat 1.” YouTube Video, 9:54. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UnG80vqzSU Newman, James. 2016. “Walkthrough.” In Debugging Game History: A Critical Lexi- con, edited by Henry Lowood and Raiford Guins, 409–1 7. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Newman, Michael Z. 2017. Atari Age: The Emergence of Video Games in America. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Ng, Benjamin Wai- ming. 2008. “Video Games in Asia.” In The Video Game Explo- sion: A History from PONG to Playstation and Beyond, edited by Mark J. P. Wolf, 211– 22. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Nguyen, Phuong. 1995. “Lungren Decries Video Game Gore Entertainment.” Los Angeles Times, August 16. Nowell, Richard. 2011. Blood Money: A History of the First Teen Slasher Film Cycle. London: Continuum. “Now Playing: Mortal Kombat II.” 1994. Nintendo Power, September. Parker, Felan. 2018. “Roger Ebert and the Games-a s- Art Debate.” Cinema Journal 57, no. 3 (Spring): 77– 100. Patterson, Christopher B. 2020. Open World Empire: Race, Erotics, and the Global Rise of Video Games. New York: NYU Press. Peirce, Charles S. 1977. Semiotics and Significs. Edited by Charles Hardwick. Bloom- ington: Indiana University Press. Perron, Bernard. 2008. “Genre Profile: Interactive Movies.” In The Video Game 146 • Bibliography Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Explosion: A History from PONG to Playstation and Beyond, edited by Mark J. P. Wolf, 127– 33. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Perrott, Lisa. 2015. “Music Video’s Performing Bodies: Floria Sigismondi as Ges- tural Animator and Puppeteer.” Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal 10, no. 2: 119– 40. Phillips, Amanda. 2018. “Shooting to Kill: Headshots, Twitch Reflexes, and the Mechropolitics of Video Games.” Games and Culture 13, no. 2: 136– 52. Phillips, Kendall R. 2014. Dark Directions: Romero, Craven, Carpenter, and the Mod- ern Horror Film. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Pierson, Michele. 2002. Special Effects: Still in Search of Wonder. New York: Colum- bia University Press. Poole, Steven. 2000. Trigger Happy: Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution. New York: Arcade Publishing. Powell, Michael. 1993. Letter to the editor. Electronic Games, September. Prashad, Vijay. 2001. Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting: Afro-A sian Connections and the Myth of Cultural Purity. Boston: Beacon Press. “Press Start: Sega to Tread ‘Deep Water’ with New Mature Gaming Label.” 1995. Electronic Gaming Monthly, February. Proctor, William. 2012. “Regeneration and Rebirth: Anatomy of the Franchise Reboot.” Scope: An Online Journal of Film and Television Studies, no. 22. https:// www.nottingham.ac.uk/scope/documents/2012/february-2012/proctor.pdf Provenzo, Eugene F. 1991. Video Kids: Making Sense of Nintendo. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Przybylski, Andrew K., Richard M. Ryan, and C. Scott Rigby. 2009. “The Motivat- ing Role of Violence in Video Games.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 35, no. 2: 243–5 9. Quan, Slasher. 1994a. “Hot at the Arcades: Mortal Kombat II.” GamePro, February. Quan, Slasher. 1994b. “The Minds Behind Mortal Kombat II (Part 1).” GamePro, May. Quan, Slasher. 1994c. “The Minds Behind Mortal Kombat II (Part 2).” GamePro, June. Quan, Slasher. 1994d. “Preview: Mortal Kombat (Sega CD).” GamePro, June. Ramadge, Andrew, and Claire Connelly. 2011. “It Took 18 Years, but Mor- tal Kombat’s Finally Banned.” News.com.au, March 3. https://www.news. com.au/technology/home-entertainment/it-took-18-years-but-mortal- kombat-is-finally-banned/news-story/0f1fe1a62b1ec3adb3a0ca061693 49e9 Raposa, Ernie. 1994. Letter to the editor. GamePro, May. “Ratings for Video Games.” 1994. New York Times, January 4. “Reader Report.” 1994. GamePro, February. Reiner, Andrew. 2011. “Mortal Kombat Review: Much More Than a Classic Revival.” Game Informer, April 19. https://www.gameinformer.com/games/mortal_ kombat/b/ps3/archive/2011/04/19/much-more-than-a-classic-revival.aspx “Review Crew: Mortal Kombat (Genesis).” 1993. Electronic Gaming Monthly, September. “Review Crew: Mortal Kombat (SNES).” 1993. Electronic Gaming Monthly, September. Bibliography • 147 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution “Review Crew: Mortal Kombat II.” 1994. Electronic Gaming Monthly, October. “Review Crew: Time Killers.” 1994. Electronic Gaming Monthly, January. “Review Crew: Way of the Warrior.” 1994. Electronic Gaming Monthly, September. Rhodes, Gary D. 2018. The Birth of the American Horror Film. Edinburgh: Edin- burgh University Press. Riemenschneider, Chris. 1995. “‘Kombat’ Set to Battle New Terrain— and Crit- ics.” Los Angeles Times, August 24. Russell, Jamie. 2012. Generation Xbox: How Videogames Invaded Hollywood. East Sus- sex, UK: Yellow Ant. Saaler, Sven. 2014. “The Kokuryūkai (Black Dragon Society) and the Rise of Nationalism, Pan- Asianism, and Militarism in Japan, 1901–1 925.” International Journal of Asian Studies 11, no. 2: 125– 60. Said, Edward W. 1978. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books. Santoro, Tony, Justin Deering, Nash Aguilar, Jeff Chrismer, Myke Ivory, and Tommy Gagnon. 2018. Mortal Kombat: Book of Souls. Accessed September 15, 2018. http://uppercuteditions.com Sarkar, Bhaskar. 2001. “Hong Kong Hysteria: Martial Arts Tales from a Mutating World.” In At Full Speed: Hong Kong Cinema in a Borderless World, edited by Esther C. M. Yau, 159– 76. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Schott, Gareth. 2016. Violent Games: Rules, Realism, and Effect. New York: Blooms- bury Academic. Schroeder, Andrew. 2004. Tsui Hark’s Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Schubart, Rikke. 2007. Super Bitches and Action Babes: The Female Hero in Popular Cinema, 1970– 2006. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. Sconce, Jeffrey. 1993. “Spectacles of Death: Identification, Reflexivity, and Con- temporary Horror.” In Film Theory Goes to the Movies, edited by Jim Collins, Hilary Radner, and Ava Preacher Collins, 103– 19. New York: Routledge. See- Kam, Tan. 2010. “Surfing with the Surreal in Tsui Hark’s Wave: Collage Prac- tice, Diasporic Hybrid Texts, and Flexible Citizenship.” In Hong Kong Screen- scapes: From the New Wave to the Digital Frontier, edited by Esther M. K. Cheung, 33– 49. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. “Sega Responds to Video Game Violence!” 1994. Electronic Gaming Monthly, January. Semrad, Ed. 1993. “Insert Coin: Nintendo Wins, Acclaim Loses!” Electronic Gam- ing Monthly, September. Semrad, Ed. 1994. “Violence in Video Games  .  .  . Part 2.” Electronic Gaming Monthly, January. Shahar, Meir. 2008. The Shaolin Monastery: History, Religion, and the Chinese Martial Arts. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Sharp, John. 2014. “Perspective.” In The Routledge Companion to Video Game Studies, edited by Mark J. P. Wolf and Bernard Perron, 107– 16. New York: Routledge. Sharp, John. 2015. Works of Game: On the Aesthetics of Games and Art. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Sicart, Miguel. 2009. The Ethics of Computer Games. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Sirlin, David. 2016. “Game Balance.” In Debugging Game History: A Critical Lexicon, edited by Henry Lowood and Raiford Guins, 169–7 5. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 148 • Bibliography Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Skolnik, Michael Ryan, and Steven Conway. 2017. “Tusslers, Beatdowns, and Brothers: A Sociohistorical Overview of Video Game Arcades and the Street Fighter Community.” Games and Culture (August): 1– 21. https://doi. org/10.1177/1555412017727687 Smith, Mark Chalon. 1995. “Winners in ‘Mortal Kombat’ Conflict Are Those Who Like Violence.” Los Angeles Times, September 7. “Special Feature: Mortal Kombat II.” 1994. Electronic Gaming Monthly, July. “Special Feature: Mortal Kombat II.” 1994. EGM2, July. “Special Feature: Mortal Kombat II vs. Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers.” 1994. EGM2, July. “Special Feature: PlayStation vs. Saturn— Battle of the Polygon Monsters.” 1995. Electronic Gaming Monthly, February. “Special Feature: Primal Rage.” 1994. Electronic Gaming Monthly, September. Spigel, Lynn. 1992. Make Room for TV: Television and the Family Ideal in Postwar America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Staiger, Janet. 1992. Interpreting Films: Studies in the Historical Reception of American Cinema. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Stewart, John. 1980. “Kumite: A Learning Experience.” Black Belt, November. Surman, David. 2007. “Pleasure, Spectacle, and Reward in Capcom’s Street Fighter Series.” In Videogame, Player, Text, edited by Barry Atkins and Tanya Krzywin- ska, 204– 21. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Sushi- X. 1993. “Arcade War I.” Electronic Games, May. Sushi- X, and Mark Hain. 1997. “Special Feature: MK4.” Electronic Gaming Monthly, April. Sweeney Jr., Gerald O., and John T. Williams. 2002. “Mortal Kombat: The Impact of Digital Technology on the Rights of Studios and Actors to Images and Derivative Works.” Minnesota Intellectual Property Review 3, no. 1: 95– 110. Swires, Steve. 1986. “John Carpenter: Kung Fu, Hollywood Style.” Starlog, August. Tasker, Yvonne. 1993. Spectacular Bodies: Gender, Genre, and the Action Cinema. Lon- don: Routledge. Tasker, Yvonne. 1997. “Fists of Fury: Discourses of Race and Masculinity in the Martial Arts Cinema.” In Race and the Subject of Masculinities, edited by Harry Stecopoulos and Michael Uebel, 315–3 6. Durham: Duke University Press. Taylor, Paco. 2018. “Man, You Come Right Out of a Comic Book: The Unbeliev- able Life & Death of Count Dante.” Medium. Accessed July 6, 2018. https:// medium.com/@StPaco/man-you-come-right-out-of-a-comic-book-the-unbe- lievable-life-death-of-count-dante-b41b5521bf99 Teo, Stephen. 1997. Hong Kong Cinema: The Extra Dimensions. London: British Film Institute. Teo, Stephen. 2009. Chinese Martial Arts Cinema: The Wuxia Tradition. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ter Haar, Barend J. 1992. The White Lotus Teachings in Chinese Religious History. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Therrien, Carl. 2008. “Graphics in Video Games.” In The Video Game Explosion: A History from PONG to Playstation and Beyond, edited by Mark J. P. Wolf, 239– 50. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Tobias, John. 1992. Mortal Kombat Collector’s Edition comic book. Chicago: Mid- way Games. Bibliography • 149 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Tobias, John. 1993. Mortal Kombat II Collector’s Edition comic book. Chicago: Midway Games. Tobias, John (@therealsaibot). 2011. “My biggest influences came from Tsui Hark films.” Twitter, September 1. https://twitter.com/therealsaibot/ status/109468173685895169 Tosca, Susana, and Lisbeth Klastrup. 2020. Transmedial Worlds in Everyday Life: Networked Reception, Social Media, and Fictional Worlds. New York: Routledge. “Tricks of the Trade.” 1992. Electronic Gaming Monthly, April. “Tricks of the Trade: Most Wanted Trick Answers.” 1994. Electronic Gaming Monthly, March. Tummynator, The. 1993. “Genesis ProReview: Mortal Kombat.” GamePro, September. “2 Toy Chains Drop 1 Violent Video Game.” 1993. Chicago Tribune, December 28. “Video Game Gallery: Mortal Kombat.” 1993. Electronic Games, September. “Video Violence—T he Debate Continues.” 1994. Letters to the editor. GamePro, February. “Violence in Games— The Readers Speak Out.” 1993. Letters to the editor. GamePro, September. “Walking in Controller Wonderland.” 1994. Electronic Gaming Monthly, October. Walton, Mark. 2011. “Mortal Kombat (2011).” GameSpot, April 19. https://www. gamespot.com/reviews/mortal-kombat-review/1900-6309219 Wang, Wensheng. 2014. White Lotus Rebels and South China Pirates: Crisis and Reform in the Qing Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Ware, Nicholas. 2016. “A Whirl of Warriors: Character and Competition in Street Fighter.” In The Play versus Story Divide in Game Studies, edited by Matthew Wilhelm Kapell, 158–7 0. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. Wasser, Frederick. 2001. Veni, Vidi, Video: The Hollywood Empire and the VCR. Aus- tin: University of Texas Press. “Way of the Warrior (3DO).” 1994. Electronic Gaming Monthly, July. Webb, Marcus. 1996. “Arcadia.” Next Generation, August. Wendi. 1995. “It’s No Fun for ‘Kombat’ Fan to Fend Off Teasing.” Chicago Tri- bune, March 28. Wenz, Karin. 2014. “Death.” In The Routledge Companion to Video Game Studies, edited by Mark J. P. Wolf and Bernard Perron, 310– 16. New York: Routledge. “Win a BloodStorm Arcade Game!” [contest ad]. 1994. EGM2, July. Wolf, Mark J. P. 2001. “Narrative in the Video Game.” In The Medium of the Video Game, edited by Mark J. P. Wolf, 93– 112. Austin: University of Texas Press. Wolf, Mark J. P. 2008a. “Arcade Games in the 1980s.” In The Video Game Explosion: A History from PONG to Playstation and Beyond, edited by Mark J. P. Wolf, 91–9 8. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Wolf, Mark J. P. 2008b. “Arcade Games of the 1990s and Beyond.” In The Video Game Explosion: A History from PONG to Playstation and Beyond, edited by Mark J. P. Wolf, 135– 42. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Wolf, Mark J. P. 2008c. “Laserdisc Games.” In The Video Game Explosion: A History from PONG to Playstation and Beyond, edited by Mark J. P. Wolf, 99–1 02. West- port, CT: Greenwood Press. Wolf, Mark J. P. 2012. Building Imaginary Worlds: The Theory and History of Subcre- ation. New York: Routledge. 150 • Bibliography Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Wolf, Mark J. P. 2016. “Genre.” In Debugging Game History: A Critical Lexicon, edited by Henry Lowood and Raiford Guins, 229– 36. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Wormdahl, Philip. 1994. Letter to the editor. Electronic Gaming Monthly, January. Yip, Man- Fung. 2018. “Dragons, Ninjas, and Kickboxers: The Minor Transna- tional Action Films of IFD.” In Exploiting East Asian Cinemas: Genre, Circula- tion, Reception, edited by Ken Provencher and Mike Dillon, 77– 94. New York: Bloomsbury Academic. “Youth Opinion: ‘The Problem Is Not the Video Games.’” 1993. Los Angeles Times, October 25. Zhen, Zhang. 2001. “Bodies in the Air: The Magic of Science and the Fate of the Early ‘Martial Arts’ Films in China.” Post Script 20, no. 2– 3: 43– 60. Bibliography • 151 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Index Abyss, The, 77 Atari 2600, 11 Acclaim Entertainment, 77, 83–8 4 Atari Jaguar, 102 action films (genre), 14, 19, 61, 64, 70, Atop, 99 125n11, 129 attract mode, 1, 35, 42– 43, 124n11, 126n2, action games (genre), 14, 95, 132 129 Adventure, 30 AT&T TIPS, 35 adventure games (genre), 13 audit menu, 30– 31, 42, 129 Aerosmith, 38 Australian Classification Board, 117 Ahn, Philip, 40 avatar, 10–1 4, 16– 17, 20–2 2, 25– 26, 53, 57, Akuma (character), 124n10 67– 68, 93–9 4, 104, 114, 116– 17, 123n3, Alien, 48 129–3 0, 132 American Laser Games, 78 Amusement and Music Operators Associa- “Babalities,” 28 tion (AMOA), 75 Babbage’s, 91 Anderson, Aaron, 48– 49 Bakshi, Ralph, 74 Anderson, Paul W. S., 105– 6 balance, 16–1 7, 21, 31, 39, 67– 68, 70, 98, Andresen, Bill, 73 103– 4, 123n3, 124n4, 124n7, 130– 31 “Animalities,” 32 Bally, 18 Aoki, Guy, 66– 67 Ballz 3D, 100 arcades, 1–2 , 5– 6, 9, 11, 15, 17– 19, 22– 24, Bandai Namco, 125n2 26–3 2, 34– 35, 49, 68– 70, 71–7 2, 74–7 6, Baraka (character), 42–4 4 79, 82–8 3, 85–8 8, 94– 95, 98, 102–3 , Barbarian: The Ultimate Warrior, 24 105– 6, 111, 115, 116– 17, 121, 123n3, 125n2, Battle Chess, 110 126n2, 126n4, 129 “Battle Plan” screen, 53, 116 Area 51, 78 beat- em- up (genre), 4, 11–1 2, 14, 16, 24, 53, Arena Entertainment, 86 103, 105, 110, 123n1, 129 arenas, 10– 11, 12– 13, 16, 19, 21, 26–2 7, 30, Beavis & Butt-h ead, 74 32, 34, 36, 42, 54, 58, 63, 65, 100, 103– 4, Beyond Games, 99 113–1 4, 117, 129 Bieniek, Chris, 29 Arsenault, Dominic, 14 Big Boss, The, 46 Art of Fighting, 17 Big Trouble in Little China, 55– 57, 59, 61 Asianweek, 66 Black Dragon Fighting Society, 62 Atari, 14– 15, 30, 34, 78, 92, 102 Black Dragons, 62 153 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Black Dragon Society, 61– 62 88–8 9, 91, 95, 117, 125n13, 126n1, 126n8, Black Lives Matter, 68 127n8. See also ratings system Blanka (character), 65– 66 Chameleon (character), 31 blaxploitation films (genre), 47, 51 Chan, Jackie, 45, 48, 64, 99 Blaze (character), 109 chanbara films, 46, 63 blocking, 14, 17, 20, 22 Character Select screen, 17, 32, 68, 93, blood. See violence 124n10, 129 “blood code,” 29, 73, 86, 88, 105, 126n6 Chicago Tribune, 64, 69 Bloodlust Software, 127n1 Chiller, 24 Bloodsport, 58– 62, 65, 67, 125n10 Chinese Boxer, The, 46 BloodStorm, 82, 94, 98– 101 Chinese Exorcist. See Reikai Doushi Blood Warrior, 99 Chong, Sylvia Shin Huey, 55 Bogost, Ian, 71 Chow, Raymond, 51 Bolter, Jay David, 34 Chuck Norris Superkicks, 11, 45 Boon, Ed, 1, 18– 20, 30, 32, 34, 77, 104, 111, Chun- Li (character), 66 115, 124n4, 124nn11– 12, 127n5 cinema of attractions, 26 Bo’ Rai Cho (character), 100 City of Mesquite v. Aladdin’s Castle, Inc., 75, Bordwell, David, 52 95 boss, 12, 16– 17, 24, 34, 41, 53, 104, 108– 9, Clan of the White Lotus, 51 129 class, 74– 75 Bowman, Paul, 52, 63 ClayFighter, 34, 100 Boxer Rebellion, 51 clone games, 3, 6, 17–1 8, 28, 30, 34, 38, 47, boxing games (genre), 4, 10, 14, 84, 100, 67, 85, 93– 95, 97– 104, 121 124n14 Clouse, Robert, 52 Brøderbund, 13 ColecoVision, 11 Brown, Randall, 50, 62 Columbine massacre, 94 Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Associa- combos, 17, 20–2 3, 87, 102– 4, 111, 114, 117– tion, 95, 121 18, 130 Bruce Lee (game), 45 comic books, 42– 43, 50, 52, 81, 106–7 , 109, Bruce Lee: A Warrior’s Journey, 125n7 119, 124n8 “Brucesploitation” films, 53 Commodore 64, 11 “Brutalities,” 81, 104, 116 Communist Revolution (China), 46– 47 Burstyn, Joseph, 126n1 Computer Entertainment, 14 Burstyn v. Wilson, 73, 126n1 computer- generated imagery (CGI), 40, Bushido Blade, 49, 104, 126n13 77, 105, 107, 112, 117, 120 Bushido: Way of the Warrior, 11 Consalvo, Mia, 29 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), 85, 89 Cage, Cassie (character), 115, 119 controversy, 2– 7, 24, 26, 28, 70, 71–8 2, Cage, Johnny (character), 20, 30, 35, 43– 84– 86, 88–8 9, 91– 95, 97, 111, 117, 120– 21, 44, 52, 58, 100– 101, 119, 125n6 125n8 camera. See perspective Conway, Steven, 74 Cannon Films, 49–5 0, 58, 61, 64 Council for Better Business Bureaus, 73 Capcom, 1, 3, 9, 12– 13, 15– 18, 20, 22, 29–3 0, Crisis on Infinite Earths, 109 65, 83, 98–9 9, 103, 109, 113, 115, 117, 119, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, 64 124n8, 124n10 C-S PAN, 72 Carpenter, John, 55– 56 cut- scenes, 32, 91, 108, 110, 114, 116, 118, Carradine, David, 46 120, 130 Cassell, Justine, 69 Cutting Room Floor, 124n12 Castlevania, 24 Cyrax (character), 38, 108 casual games, 25, 127n5 Catfight, 100 Dante, 121 censorship, 46, 67, 70, 73, 76, 82, 84– 85, Dante, Count, 62 154 • Index Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Data East, 14, 17–1 8, 99– 100 Eternal Champions, 99 Datasoft, 45 Eternal Champions: Challenge from the Dark DC Comics, 81, 109, 119 Side, 82, 91 Dead or Alive, 69, 113 Evolution (EVO) Championship Series, Death Race, 71 25 Death Race 2000, 71 Executioners from Shaolin, 50 Defender, 18 Exidy, 24, 71 Dhalsim (character), 16 exploitation films, 3, 5, 47, 49, 53, 61, 64, Digital Pictures, 5, 76, 79– 80, 84 71, 97– 98, 130 digitization, 4, 32, 34, 38– 40, 99, 124n13. Exterminator, 33 See also motion capture; pixilation Dirty Harry, 78– 79 fans, 2, 4, 22, 29, 32– 33, 47, 67– 70, 71, 81– Disney theme parks, 25 82, 85– 87, 94, 103, 107– 9, 116– 17, 120 DiVita, Sal, 38 fantasy films (genre), 34, 54 Divizio, Richard, 35 Fatal Fury, 17 Donkey Kong Country, 86 “fatalities.” See finishing moves DOOM, 92, 94 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Dorgan, Byron, 77, 80, 88 126n2 Double Dragon (film), 105 Ferguson, Christopher, 91, 94 Double Dragon (game), 12, 125n12 Fickle, Tara, 9 Double Dragon V: The Shadow Falls, 103 Fighter’s History, 17 Double Team, 64 fighting games (genre), 1– 7, 9– 17, 23–2 4, Douglas, James, 84 28, 30, 34, 39, 41–4 2, 44, 48– 49, 61, 64, driving games (genre), 111 67–6 9, 72, 76, 83, 86– 88, 93–9 4, 97– 100, Dr. No, 51 102–5 , 107, 110– 13, 115, 117, 120–2 1, 123n1, Droz, Marilyn, 76, 80 124n6, 124n14, 125n2, 129– 30, 132 Dux, Frank, 59– 62, 67, 125n10 Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, 112 Final Fight, 12, 16 Earthrealm, 43– 44, 108– 9, 116, 119 finishing moves, 3–4 , 9, 19, 23–2 9, 48–4 9, Easter eggs, 4, 9, 28–3 3, 44, 114, 117, 121, 55– 57, 69, 73, 81–8 2, 85– 88, 91, 93– 94, 124nn11–1 2, 127n2, 130 98–1 00, 102, 104, 106, 109, 111, 114– 18, Ebenel Enterprises, 11 120, 130 Edenia, 44, 108 First Amendment. See free speech EGM2, 101 first- person shooter (genre), 68, 72, 78–7 9, Elder Gods (characters), 44, 108– 9, 116, 94, 130 119 Fishof, David, 106 Elecbyte, 120 Fists of Fury. See The Big Boss Electronic Arts, 89 Five Fingers of Death. See King Boxer Electronic Games, 22, 38, 74, 78, 86 Five Shaolin Masters, 50 Electronic Gaming Monthly, 30, 74, 82, 85– Flanagan, Kevin, 83 86, 94, 104 Ford, Gerald, 59 Electronic Software Association (ESA), 89 Forden, Dan, 19, 33 Electronic Software Rating Board (ESRB), Foucault, Michel, 82 3, 72, 88–9 1, 95, 97, 126n7 franchise, 1, 4– 7, 22, 30, 83, 95, 97, 102, Electro Sport, 33 103– 12, 114– 16, 119– 21, 124n8, 132 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 1 Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare, 48 Enter the Dragon, 47, 51– 53, 55, 61, 63 free speech, 3, 73, 75, 95, 120–2 1, 126n1. See Enter the Ninja, 50 also censorship Epic Games, 117 Friday the 13th, 48, 105 Epyx, 14, 18 “Friendships,” 28 Ermac (character), 30– 31, 103 Fritz the Cat, 74 e-s ports. See gaming tournaments From Barbie to Mortal Kombat, 69 Index • 155 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution full-m otion video (FMV), 33, 35, 78, 80, Hong Kong New Wave cinema, 45, 53– 55 91, 130 horror films (genre), 2, 24– 25, 47–4 8, 69, Fu Manchu (character), 52, 55, 61 80, 98, 114, 124n9 Hoskins, Kerri, 38 Galaga, 30, 110, 127n2 Hu, King, 46 Game of Death, 52– 53, 125n7 humor, 48, 65– 66, 80, 93, 100, 115, 120, GamePro, 29, 87 124n9, 127n1 gaming capital, 29 Hunt, Leon, 50– 52, 63 gaming tournaments, 17, 23, 25, 67–6 9, 112, Hutchinson, Rachael, 1, 42, 65, 67–6 8, 93 115, 117 hyperdiegesis, 108, 115, 127n4 gender, 5, 45–4 6, 65– 70, 75, 80– 81, 85, 94, 126n14 id Software, 92, 94 global games, 9 Incredible Technologies, 82, 94, 98– 99 Godard, Jean- Luc, 71 indexicality, 33, 36, 39, 65, 70, 77, 112, 131 Golden Axe, 12 Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, 55 Golden Harvest, 51– 54, 99 Injustice: Gods Among Us, 119, 127n10 gore. See violence Injustice II, 127n10 Goro (character), 34, 43– 44, 61, 102, 105 Innovation Mortal Kombat II Kontroller, 87 Goskie, Tony, 29 Interactive Digital Software Association Goto- Jones, Chris, 25, 41 (IDSA), 89, 91. See also Electronic Soft- Gottlieb, 33 ware Association Grand Guignol, 24, 121, 124n9 “interactive movies,” 79– 80, 115 Grand Theft Auto, 95 interface, 10, 12, 14–1 5, 17, 20– 22, 41– 42, Grusin, Richard, 34 76, 85– 87, 94, 98, 111, 117, 132 Guile (character), 16, 99 International Arcade Museum / Killer List Guins, Raiford, 2 of Videogames, 102 International Karate, 14, 16 Hand Made Software, 99 Interplay Productions, 110 “Hara- Kiris,” 104 Intruder at White Lotus Temple, 51 Harris, Blake J., 72, 83– 84 Irem, 11 Harryhausen, Ray, 34 Ivins-H ulley, Laura, 38–3 9 Hasbro Control-V ision. See Hasbro NEMO Hasbro NEMO, 79–8 0 Jade (character), 30–3 1, 42 HBO Max, 120 James “Buster” Douglas Knockout Boxing, 84 Heaven and Earth Society, 51 Jason and the Argonauts, 34 Heavyweight Champ (1976), 10– 11 Jax (character), 37, 42, 44, 65–6 8, 119, Heavyweight Champ (1987), 10 125n6 Heike monogatari, 50 Jeet Kune Do, 52– 53 Heistand, Jack, 89 Jenkins, Henry, 69, 106–7, 108 Hero, 64 Jigoro Kano, 62 “Heroic Brutalities,” 81 Johnson, Craig, 75 hidden characters, 10, 29–3 3, 44, 82, 99, judo, 62 124n10, 124n11, 127n6. See also Easter juggling. See combos eggs Jurassic Park, 77 High Impact, 18 Juul, Jesper, 27 High Voltage Software, 100 Hiroyuki-T agawa, Cary, 66 Kabal (character), 42 home consoles, 1– 2, 6– 7, 11, 17– 18, 40, 49, Kalinske, Tom, 72– 73 57, 69, 71– 73, 75– 77, 79–8 9, 97– 98, 100, Kaneko, 99 102– 4, 106, 111–1 2, 114– 15, 117, 123n1, Kano (character), 30, 35, 42– 43, 55, 62, 66, 127n5, 127n10, 131– 32 73, 81, 87 Home Data, 34 Kaplan, Perrin, 84 156 • Index Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution karate, 12, 14, 18, 62 Li, Jet, 64 Karate Champ, 12– 14, 18– 19, 45, 60– 61 Lichtenfeld, Eric, 61 Karateka, 13, 33 Lieberman, Joseph, 73, 77, 82, 88–8 9, 91 Kasanoff, Larry, 105– 6, 115 Lightweight, 49 Kasumi Ninja, 99 Li Hsing. See Brown, Randall Kay- Bee Toys, 81 Lincoln, Howard, 84– 85, 88–8 9 Keehan, John. See Dante, Count Lin Kuei, 43, 50, 62, 108 Kelly, Jim, 51 Liu Kang (character), 35, 43– 44, 50, 52, Ken (character), 13 66– 67, 81, 108, 116, 119 Kenshi (character), 125n5 Long, Kathy, 124n13 Kent, Steven L., 72 Lord of the Rings, The: The Fellowship of the Kickboxer, 58, 61 Ring, 112 Kilburn, John, 91 lore. See narrative Kill Bill, 64 Lungren, Daniel, 73–7 4 Killer Instinct, 23, 102– 4 King Boxer, 46 MacIver, Drew, 106 Kintaro (character), 34, 43– 44, 102 Mad Dog McCree, 78, 80 Kitana (character), 42, 44, 55–5 7, 67, 69, magic circle, 24, 92– 93 103 Malecki, Elizabeth, 35, 40, 70 Kmart, 81 Mario Kart, 110 Knock Off, 64 Markey, Patrick, 94 Kocurek, Carly A., 68, 71 Marquez, Tony, 38 Kohl, Herbert, 73, 79, 88– 89 martial- arts films (genre), 3–5 , 19, 45–5 5, “Kombat Kodes,” 32, 106 58–6 3, 68– 69, 98–9 9, 105, 125n4. See also Kombat Kon, 120 kung fu; wuxia Konami, 6, 13, 24, 78, 103, 125n8, 125n12, Marvel Comics, 52, 62, 109, 125n6 126n5 Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter, 109 “Konquest Mode,” 110, 117 masculinity. See gender Korean War, 58 Master of Kung Fu, 52, 62, 125n6 Kronika (character), 119 Matrix, The, 64, 107 “Krypt,” 32, 114 McLaren, Norman, 38 Kumite, 59– 62, 65, 125n10 McQuoid, Simon, 120 kung fu, 3, 5, 45– 53, 55, 62– 63, 66, 70, Meals on Wheels, 45 125n4, 131. See also martial- arts films Mechner, Jordan, 13 Kung Fu (TV series), 46– 47, 50 Media Action Network for Asian Ameri- Kung- Fu Master, 11– 13, 53 cans (MANAA), 66 Kung- Fu Master Jackie Chan, 99 media effects, 1, 6, 72, 75–7 6, 78, 91– 94, Kung Fu Superkicks. See Chuck Norris 127n10, 131 Superkicks meter, 12–1 3, 49, 104, 117– 18, 124n14, Kung Lao (character), 35, 37– 38, 43– 44, 127n9, 130–3 2 55, 68, 116, 118–1 9 Microsoft Xbox, 110, 127n2 Microsoft Xbox One, 114 “ladders.” See “Battle Plan” screen Microsoft Xbox 360, 117 Lakeshore Athletic Club, 35 Midway Arcade Treasures, 127n2 Lam, May, 66 Midway Games, 1, 4–5 , 9–1 1, 18– 19, 22–2 4, Lee, Ang, 64 28–3 0, 32–3 5, 38–4 0, 41, 42, 45, 63, 65, Lee, Bruce, 11, 45– 47, 51– 53, 58– 59, 125n7 67, 81, 85, 89, 97–1 00, 103–5 , 107, 109–1 3, Leland Interactive Media, 103 115, 121, 124n8, 124n10, 124n11, 125n5, Lethal Enforcers, 6, 72, 78–7 9, 81, 89, 94, 126n4 125n8 Mike Tyson’s Punch- Out!!, 84 Lethal Enforcers II: Gun Fighters, 126n5 Mileena (character), 42, 44, 55, 67, 69, 103 Lewis, Herschell Gordon, 124n9 Minamoto no Yoshitsune, 50 Index • 157 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Miracle, The, 126n1 “Mortal Moment,” 2, 4, 6, 38, 97– 98, 104, “Mirror Match,” 53 106– 7, 121 Missile Command, 92 motion capture, 36, 39, 77, 112– 13, 117, moral panic. See controversy 127n6, 131– 32. See also pixilation; roto- Mortal Kombat (1992 game), 1–7 , 9– 10, 12, scoping 14, 18– 33, 35–4 0, 42–4 5, 47– 49, 51–5 3, Motion Picture Association of America 55– 58, 59, 61–6 7, 69– 70, 71–7 4, 77–8 9, (MPAA), 73, 84, 91, 105 91–9 5, 97– 106, 108– 9, 116, 121, 123n3, M.U.G.E.N (engine), 120 124n12, 125n2, 125n12, 126n8, 127n2 Munro, Grant, 38 Mortal Kombat (1995 film), 6, 66, 105–7 Muybridge, Eadweard, 38 Mortal Kombat (2011 game), 25, 48, 116– 19, 121 Nakamura, Lisa, 69 Mortal Kombat (2021 film), 120 Namco, 24, 30, 110 Mortal Kombat II, 4, 6, 10, 20– 22, 25– 26, NARC, 34 28–3 0, 32, 35–3 9, 42– 44, 50, 52–5 7, 65, narrative, 1, 5– 6, 11, 13– 14, 16, 19, 22, 25, 28, 67, 69, 76, 83, 87– 88, 90–9 1, 98, 103, 108, 31, 34, 41–4 6, 48– 53, 58–5 9, 61–6 2, 67, 116, 119– 20, 123n3, 124n13 80– 81, 89, 103–4 , 106– 11, 115– 21, 124n1, Mortal Kombat 3, 1, 4, 17, 21–2 3, 30– 31, 32, 125n2, 127nn3– 4, 130, 132–3 3 38, 44, 53, 63, 70, 87, 100, 102–5 , 108, 111, National Basketball Association (NBA), 33 113, 116 National Coalition Against Television Mortal Kombat 4, 6, 43, 49, 77, 104, 107– 14, Violence, 76 117, 119 Naughty Dog, 99, 127n1 Mortal Kombat 9. See Mortal Kombat (2011 NBA Jam, 23, 33, 38 game) Neighbours, 38 Mortal Kombat X, 25, 48, 114–1 5, 118–1 9, Neo•Geo, 17, 86 127n8, 127n10 Netherrealm, 43, 108, 119 Mortal Kombat 11, 68, 119– 20, 127n9 NetherRealm Studios, 68, 114– 17, 119– 21, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, 6, 106 127n10 Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, 109, 111, 116, New Line Cinema, 105 119, 127n5 Newman, James, 20 Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance, 32, 49, 52, New World Pictures, 71 108, 110, 112, 114, 119, 127n6 Next Generation, 103 Mortal Kombat: Deception, 11, 104, 108, 110, Nicastro, Neil, 106 112, 114 Nightmare on Elm Street, A, 48, 105 Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm, 6, Night Trap, 5, 72, 75, 77, 79– 82, 84, 92, 95, 106– 7 115 Mortal Kombat: Konquest, 106 Nightwolf (character), 38, 100, 104 Mortal Kombat: Legacy, 115 Nihonjinron, 65 Mortal Kombat: Live Tour, 6, 106– 7 Ninja Gaiden, 125n12 Mortal Kombat (Malibu Comics series), 6, ninjutsu, 49–5 0, 66 105, 107 Nintendo, 6, 10, 48, 72, 77, 82– 85, 88–8 9, Mortal Kombat Mobile, 127n10 102, 110 Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub- Zero, 107– 8, Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), 110– 12, 117 84, 92, 125n12 Mortal Kombat (novelization), 105 Nintendo Game Boy, 85 Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks, 110 Nintendo Power, 85, 88 Mortal Kombat: Special Forces, 110 Nintendo Power Glove, 48 Mortal Kombat: The Journey Begins, 105, Nintendo Super Scope, 89 107 Nintendo Wii, 111, 127n5 Mortal Kombat Trilogy, 31, 104, 109 Nixon, Richard, 58 Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, 81, 109, 119, Noob Saibot (character), 31, 108 124n8 Norris, Chuck, 11, 64 158 • Index Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution NOW Comics, 18 Prince of Persia, 13 Nowell, Richard, 98 Probe Software, 84– 85 Proctor, William, 115 Occupation of Japan, 9, 58 projectiles, 12– 13, 17, 20, 35, 47, 55– 56, 103– Onaga (character), 108, 110 4, 114. See also special moves Once Upon a Time in China, 53 Provenzo, Eugene, 66, 76, 92, 125n12 orientalism, 5, 45, 51–5 2, 55, 58, 61– 63, 65, Przybylski, Andrew, 93 131 Punch- Out!!, 10 Outworld, 29, 43– 44, 54, 63, 108– 11, 116, Pu Songling, 51 119, 124n1 Quan Chi (character), 107–8 , 116, 119 Pac- Man, 77, 92 Quarter Horse, 33 Pajitnov, Alexey, 110 Pak, Ho-S ung, 35–3 6, 100 race, 5, 45, 51, 55– 59, 61– 69, 74, 79, 100, Palace Software, 24 126n14, 131 palette swap, 13, 31, 131 Raiden (character), 35, 43– 44, 49, 54, 56, Panasonic 3DO, 80– 81, 89, 102, 127n1 81, 85, 108– 9, 116, 119, 127n10 Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC), rail- shooter (genre), 34, 38, 78–7 9, 89, 94, 74 111, 125n8, 132 Patterson, Christopher B., 9 Rain (character), 31, 124n11 PC-D OS, 11, 24 Rankin/Bass, 34 peripheral, 48, 76, 79– 80, 86–8 7, 89, 103, Rare, 23, 86, 102 111, 132 ratings system, 3, 6– 7, 72– 74, 76, 78, 82, 84, Perrott, Lisa, 38– 39 86, 88– 91, 95, 97, 105, 117, 126n7, 127n8. perspective, 4, 6–7 , 10– 13, 18, 21, 26– 27, 36, See also Electronic Software Rating 78– 79, 94, 97, 100, 102–4 , 107, 111– 18, Board; Videogame Ratings Council 120, 125n2, 127, 130 Reagan, Ronald, 58 Pesina, Carlos, 35 Recording Industry Association of America Pesina, Daniel, 35– 36, 39, 47, 49, 65, 99– (RIAA), 74 101, 125n6 Reikai Doushi, 34, 100 PF Magic, 100 remediation, 3, 34, 106 Phantom Card, 100 Reptile (character), 30– 31, 42, 44, 103 Phillips, Amanda, 93 Resident Evil, 105 photorealism, 4–5 , 24, 33–3 4, 36, 39, 72, Revolution X, 38 77–7 9, 85, 95, 106, 112, 114, 117, 121 Rigby, C. Scott, 93 Pierrot le Fou, 71 Rising Sun, 66 Pierson, Michele, 77 RoboCop, 59 “pinky violence” films, 69 Rockstar Games, 95 Pit-F ighter, 34, 38, 124n14 Rohmer, Sax, 52 pixilation, 4–5 , 10, 24, 33–4 0, 47, 64, 77– role-p laying games (RPG) (genre), 41, 107, 79, 99, 112–1 3, 117, 131–3 2 110, 132 platform games (genre), 45, 107, 132 Rossellini, Roberto, 126n1 Pober, Arthur, 73 rotoscoping, 13, 33, 112, 131– 32 PONG, 30, 110, 127n2 Running Man, The, 19 Poole, Steven, 39, 113 Ryan, Richard, 93 ports, 2, 6, 14, 17–1 8, 29, 40, 69, 72– 73, 75– Ryu (character), 13, 16, 25, 30, 47 78, 83– 89, 91, 98– 99, 102–3 , 105, 107, 132. See also home consoles Saaler, Sven, 61 Posner, Richard, 70 Said, Edward, 131 Predator, 48 Samurai Shodown, 86 Primal Rage, 34, 102 Sarkar, Bhaskar, 55 Prince, 124n11 Scalia, Antonin, 121 Index • 159 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Scarab, 99 Sonic the Hedgehog 2, 83 Schott, Gareth, 78, 92 Sony, 37, 80, 102 Schroeder, Andrew, 64 Sony PlayStation, 102– 3 Schwarzenegger, Arnold, 18– 19, 61 Sony PlayStation 2, 110, 127n2 Sconce, Jeffrey, 48 Sony PlayStation 3, 117 Scorpion (character), 21, 35– 36, 42–4 4, 49, Sony PlayStation 4, 114 65, 94, 103, 108, 127n10 Sonya (character), 35, 38, 42– 44, 65– 66, 70 Sculptured Software, 84–8 5 Soulcalibur, 113 Seagal, Steven, 64 Soulcalibur II, 110 Sea Wolf, 18 special effects, 34, 46, 54, 64, 77, 105 SEGA, 6, 10– 12, 19, 72–7 4, 76–7 7, 79, 82–8 6, special moves, 2, 13–1 7, 19– 23, 26, 28, 41, 88– 91, 99– 100, 102– 3 49, 55, 87, 99, 103, 106, 111, 114, 117–1 8, SEGA 32X, 103 120, 124n14, 127n9, 130– 32 SEGA Activator, 76, 111 Spielberg, Steven, 55 SEGA CD, 78, 80, 84, 91, 103 Splatterhouse, 24 SEGA Channel, 76 sports games (genre), 14, 18, 23 SEGA Game Gear, 85– 86 sprites, 4, 10, 13, 16, 19, 22, 24, 31, 33– 40, SEGA Genesis, 29, 72– 73, 76–7 7, 80, 83– 88, 42, 47, 65, 78– 79, 82, 85– 88, 98–9 9, 102, 90, 91, 98, 103, 105, 123n1 106, 112– 14, 117, 120, 131– 32 SEGA MegaDrive. See SEGA Genesis Staiger, Janet, 45 SEGA Saturn, 103 Star Wars (1977 film), 54 SEGA Visions, 74 Star Wars – Episode 1: The Phantom Menace, Sektor (character), 38, 108 112 Semrad, Ed, 85 stereotypes, 16, 18, 42, 65– 70, 79, 94, 100, sexuality, 66, 68–7 0, 74, 80, 82 125n8, 131 Shadow: War of Succession, 99 Stern, Howard, 74 Shang Tsung (character), 24, 35, 43, 52, stop-m otion animation, 33– 35, 38, 100, 102, 56, 66, 81, 104, 108, 116 105, 132. See also pixilation Shao Kahn (character), 42, 44, 54, 56, 66, “Story Mode,” 116– 19 81, 104, 108– 9, 116 Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 45 Shaolin Martial Arts, 50 Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, 51 Shaolin Temple, 43, 46, 50– 52, 63, 86, 108, Strata, 98 110 Street Fighter (film), 99 Shaolin Temple (film), 50 Street Fighter (game), 1, 12– 16, 23, 25– 26, 41, Sharpe, Roger, 19, 41 47, 85, 98, 102, 114 Shaw Brothers, 46, 51– 53 Street Fighter II: Champion Edition, 17, 19, 83 Sheng Long (character), 30, 32, 124n10 Street Fighter II: The World Warrior, 3– 4, 6, Shinnok (character), 108, 119 9, 12, 15– 26, 30, 32– 34, 41, 64– 66, 72, 78, shooter (genre), 18, 24, 33– 34, 130, 132. See 83, 85– 86, 97– 99, 103, 114, 119 also first- person shooter; rail-s hooter Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting, 17, 19 Shujinko (character), 110 Street Fighter III: New Generation, 113 Simon, Danny, 106 Street Fighter Alpha, 103 Simpsons, The, 74, 94 Street Fighter EX, 113, 117–1 8 Sindel (character), 44, 116 Street Fighter: The Movie (game), 99 Sirlin, David, 16 Strong National Museum of Play, 1 Skolnik, Michael Ryan, 74 Stryker (character), 104 slasher films, 98 Studio Gigante, 109 Slumber Part Massacre, 80 Sub-Z ero (character), 20–2 1, 35, 42– 44, 49, Smash TV, 18–1 9, 24 55, 65, 73, 103– 4, 108, 124n4, 127n10 Smoke (character), 30–3 2, 38, 104, 108 Super Famicon. See Super Nintendo Enter- SNK, 17– 18, 86 tainment System (SNES) Software Publishers Association, 89 superhero films, 117 160 • Index Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Super High Impact, 18 Uchida Ryōhei, 61–6 2 Super Nintendo Entertainment System Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, 31, 70, 103– 4, (SNES), 18, 72, 83–8 8, 100, 126n6 124n11, 126n4 Super Punch- Out!!, 10 Ultra Vortek, 99–1 00 Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers, uncanny valley, 38– 39, 78, 99, 112 83, 103 Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 45 Super Street Fighter II Turbo, 83, 104, 124n10 Universal Soldier, 19, 35, 58– 59, 99 Surman, David, 26 Unreal Engine 3, 117 Survival Arts, 99 U.S. Constitution. See free speech Švankmajer, Jan, 38 U.S. Senate, 5, 28, 66, 72– 85, 88– 89, 91– 92, Sweeney Jr., Gerald O., 40 94– 95. See also controversy Swordsman, The, 53 U.S. Supreme Court, 75, 95, 121, 126n1 Taito, 84 Van Damme, Jean-C laude, 5, 19, 35, 45, Tattoo Assassins, 99–1 00 58– 62, 64, 99, 125n10 taunt screen, 23, 41 Vectorbeam, 10 Technōs Japan, 12 Videogame Ratings Council (VRC), 73– 74, Tecmo, 69, 125n12 82, 86, 88– 91, 105 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, 125n12 Video Games, 29 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: Secret of the video nasties, 76 Ooze, 35 Vietnam War, 54, 56, 58– 59 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament violence, 1–3 , 5– 7, 19, 23–2 9, 33–3 4, 36– 37, Fighters, 103 48–4 9, 55, 67, 69–7 0, 71– 88, 91–9 5, 97– Tekken, 104, 112– 13, 125n2 99, 100, 102, 105, 112, 114– 15, 118, 120–2 1, Terminator 2: Judgment Day (film), 34, 59, 123n3, 124n9, 125n13, 126n8, 127n10. See 77 also finishing moves Terminator 2: Judgment Day (game), 34–3 5, Virtua Fighter, 11, 100, 112– 13 89, 105 Visual Concepts, 34, 100 “Test Your Might,” 13 Vogel, John, 19, 109 Tetris, 110 Texas Chain Saw Massacre, The, 48 Walmart, 81, 91 Texas Instruments, 36 Ware, Nicholas, 42, 44, 65 Thea Realm Fighters, 100 War Gods, 113 36th Chamber of Shaolin, The, 50 Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, Threshold Entertainment, 105– 7, 115 109, 115 Thunderbolt, 99 Warner Brothers, 46– 47, 51, 115 Time Killers, 98– 99, 117, 127n1 Warrior, 10–1 1, 13 Timeslaughter, 127n1 Washington Post, 79 Tobias, John, 1, 4–5 , 18–2 0, 24, 28, 30–3 6, Way of the Warrior, 99– 100, 127n1 42, 45, 50, 53, 57– 58, 63, 69, 77, 81, 109, western films (genre), 55, 78– 79, 126n5 124n13, 124n1, 125n5 White, Bill, 74, 84, 89 Torching the Red Lotus Temple, 45– 46 White Lotus Society, 43, 50– 51, 110 Total Carnage, 18– 19, 124n1 Williams, John T., 40 Touch of Zen, A, 46 Williams Action Video Entertainment Toys “R” Us, 81, 91 Network (WaveNet), 126n4 transmedia, 1, 4, 6, 95, 97, 104– 10, 121, 130– Williams Electronics, 18, 126n4 31, 133. See also franchise WMS Industries, 18, 106 Tribeca Digital Studios, 99 Wolf, Mark J. P., 107 Tsui Hark, 53– 55, 57 Woo, John, 64 Tsui, Josh, 65 World Karate Championship. See Interna- Turmell, Mark, 125n1 tional Karate Tyson, Mike, 84 World’s Deadliest Fighting Secrets, 62 Index • 161 Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution World Video Game Hall of Fame, 1 Yie Ar Kung– Fu, 13 World War I, 62 YouTube, 39 World War II, 9, 46, 58, 61– 62 Yuen Woo-p ing, 64 wresting games (genre), 14, 38, 124n14 wushu, 35, 47, 49, 125n4, 133 Zamiar, Katalin, 40, 100 wuxia (genre), 5, 45– 47, 49, 53–5 5, 63–6 4, Zatoichi, 46, 125n5 70, 133 Zeus (engine), 112 WWF Wrestlemania: The Arcade Game, 38 Zhang Yimou, 64 Zito, Tom, 76– 77 X- Men vs. Street Fighter, 124n8 Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain, 53– Xonox, 11 55, 64 “Yellow Peril,” 52, 55, 66–6 7 Yeung, Bolo, 61 162 • Index Church, David. Mortal Kombat: Games of Death. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11477677. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution