Killer Feature
66 / wfmag.ccMortal KombatIt’s the pun-lover’s killer feature: the fatality
hen you’re talking about the game-changing
features, as we do here in the Killer Feature
section, it’s the temptation to make every
one of them supremely important and
all-encompassing; the sorts of things that
alter gaming forever and, usually, make it a better place. But
sometimes that initial thinking is just ‘wouldn’t it be funny if we
said fatalities were a Killer Feature, because they are literally
a feature that makes you a killer’. Bit of a peek behind the
curtain for you all, there.
But then, on sitting down and thinking
about it, Mortal Kombat’s fatalities did have
a huge impact on the world of gaming in a
couple of ways. First up, the more obvious
one, in that they changed how matches in
fighting games would end – the coup de
grâce was introduced: an act of absolute victory for the winner
and total humiliation for the defeated as their heart was
ripped out/head was ripped off/head was punched off/head
was exploded by lightning/they were set alight by a demon/
they were set alight by a kiss/they were uppercut quite high.
It was a bold, at the time shocking, full stop on matches in
a genre where traditionally someone just fell over and you
moved on to the next bout.
It had an impact, and there were plenty of copycats – even
to this day, the modern Mortal Kombats are capable of raising
the hackles of the finest Mary Whitehouse impersonator withhow genuinely grotesque they can be. But in this element of
their being at least, the fatality has been relatively enclosed in
its influence.
No, it was Mortal Kombat’s violence – capped off by the
fatalities – that led in part to the formation of the ESRB, the
United States’ video game ratings board. Any ratings body
would have the potential to be censorial in nature, especially
if operated as a wing of government – but the controversy
around Mortal Kombat (and some other titles) led to the
formation of the self-regulating body we have
today. As you might expect, a self-regulating
body is much more favourable to the industry
at large than an outside organisation could
ever be, so the deck has ever since been
stacked in gaming’s favour, content-wise.
There are lines that won’t be crossed –
especially with the US’s puritanical views on sex and nudity- so the ESRB can be an effective force in policing the content
that comes out of the video gaming world. But generally
speaking, its existence has proven a positive for how much
games are allowed to get away with. Complaints still arise,
but there’s an official body present to comment; there are
standards that can be pointed to and facts and figures
that can be doled out to placate. You see, thanks to Mortal
Kombat’s fatalities in 1992, Mortal Kombat is still free to include
fatalities in 2020 and beyond. Weird how some things work,
but that does make those death moves a true Killer Feature.
W
“An act of absolute
victory for the winner
and total humiliation
for the defeated”MIDWAY / 1992 / ARCADE, MULTIMortal Kombat