Following on the heels of Mortal Kombat II being named to GameSpot's Greatest Games of All Time, GameSpot has named Mortal Kombat's original four-armed brawler Goro to its list of Top Ten Boss Fights! From the article:

Ask any avid player of Mortal Kombat, and he or she will tell you that Goro was a decisively different fighter from anyone else in the game. For all intents and purposes, pretty much all of the normal CPU fights in MK weren't terribly hard once you got the hang of the basic strategies and you learned all the usual cheap moves, such as constantly sweeping an opponent and repeatedly uppercutting them, which worked like a charm basically all of the time. Against Goro, however, any player who enacted these cheap tactics was in for a rude awakening. Goro simply wasn't having any of that, and when you attempted to use them, he'd just pick you up and pummel you into easy submission.

To be fair, Goro would usually just pummel you into easy submission regardless of tactics. He was psychotically overpowered and able to eat away huge chunks of your life meter without even breaking a pixelated sweat. Aggressive tactics of any kind on your behalf usually resulted in the loss of a quarter and another couple of minutes of your life down the drain. Beating Goro required a whole lot of patience, and just a bit of luck to boot. Generally, the best strategy involved quick air strikes and then immediate attacks as he attempted to get back up, since he was unable to block while doing so. You had to be precise in your timing, however, because if he got up before you managed to pull off the attack, the match was pretty much over. However, if you were able to stay far enough away from him to avoid being grabbed, and could dodge his projectile attacks, after a few tries, you could pretty well take him down.

To read the entry for Goro in its entirety, click here.

Our thanks to forum member Murdoink for the heads-up on this story!

GameSpot has a series of articles called The Greatest Games of All Time, in which they discuss the games which they consider to be the best ever made. In the September 12th edition, they pay homage to Midway's classic fighting game Mortal Kombat II! From the article:

If you had to trace the debate on excessive violence in video games back to a single game, that game would be Mortal Kombat. Midway's absurdly bloody fighter took arcades by storm in 1992, with its graphic depictions of character-inflicted carnage that included decapitated heads, eviscerated hearts, and buckets of spilled blood. Problem was, Mortal Kombat wasn't exactly the best fighting game. The mechanics were simple and the fighting wooden; sometimes, you felt like the whole game was just a vehicle for the gore. Midway fixed that problem, scarcely a year later, with the aptly titled follow-up: Mortal Kombat II. The sequel balked at the senators, parents' groups, and media watchdogs who had condemned the first game by upping the gore factor considerably. But more importantly, the second installment also brought Mortal Kombat into its own as a fighting series.

Considering how quickly Mortal Kombat II came out after its predecessor, Midway went well above expectations with its creativity and, frankly, the sheer amount of stuff that it put into the game. While Mortal Kombat took place on Earth in a series of bland, gray stone temples, the sequel moved to the twisted, bizarrely colorful Outworld. The varied and strange backgrounds there gave the game a real unique visual character. MKII nearly doubled the number of available player characters as well, and all of the characters had plenty of new and useful moves. The plot involved the Earth warriors from the first game, who were transported to Outworld to fight against Shao Kahn, the oppressive master of the first game's boss, Shang Tsung. In an amusing twist, the shape-shifting Shang Tsung became a playable character, with all of his transformation powers intact. You could actually use him to turn into any other fighter in the game, making him a real Swiss army knife of a character.

To read GameSpot's article, entitled "The First Fighting Game That Let You Just Be Friends", in its entirety, click here. We at MK5.ORG send our congratulations to Midway and the Mortal Kombat development team on this achievement!

Our thanks to forum members _JRF_ and Baraka_MK for the heads up on this story!

Gamespot was next in line in releasing its hands on review of the new GBA-exclusive Mortal Kombat: Tournament Edition.  They scored the game with an overall rating of 7.6, while keeping with the tradition of rather kind words for this special sequel to last fall's Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance. Here's a snippit:

For anyone who hasn't already tried the Mortal Kombat series on the Game Boy Advance, Mortal Kombat: Tournament Edition is a good starting point. If you already own MK: Deadly Alliance, however, the decision to make the jump to Tournament Edition will primarily depend on your love of the series and whether or not you have friends to compete against. Despite the change in cast members, Tournament Edition and Deadly Alliance are basically identical in solo play. To get the most out of Tournament Edition, you really need to gather some friends and link together multiple copies of the game.

Thanks to Baraka_MK; as well as our own digitalninja, for the tip on the update.