born-again-vampire Wrote:
It's interesting how MK kind of paved the way for violence in video games over a decade ago, yet few other fighters have followed. You have FPS, Action, Adventure, etc. with very violent games but not so much with fighters. Wierd. |
Mortal Kombat had a copy of wanna-bes of its own. Games like Way of the Warrior, Eternal Champions, Kill Thrill, Primal Rage, Midway's own War Gods, Killer Instinct, and a copy of other obscure Jaguar/3D0 games tried to cash-in on the controversal, "violent" fighting genre popularized by Mortal Kombat.
Killer Instinct was the most popular violent fighting game in the wake of Mortal Kombat while Eternal Champions and Primal Rage went on to find moderate amounts of success.
However the genre basically imploded after that. Mortal Kombat I and II were both huge, but with Mortal Kombat III (don't get me wrong, it was a huge game as well), the over-publicity started working against itself. By the time Mortal Kombat 4 was released Mortal Kombat was at its lowest point in terms of popularity to date and people basically forgot about all MK's immitators. By 1997/1998 the genre/movement (whatever you wish to call it) was pretty much gone.
MKDA, released in 2002, revitalized Mortal Kombat a bit. It ended-up outselling Mortal Kombat 4, but not Mortal Kombats 1-3. However by that point Mortal Kombat wasn't the 'cool' and over-the-top/unnecessarily violent game it was back in the mid-90s: Grand Theft Auto was. Grand Theft Auto started picking up all the media attention that Mortal Kombat picked up in its earlier days, which only fueled sales, which, of course, fueled developers trying to cash-in on the GTA-craze, just like how everyone treid to cash-in on the MK-craze between 1993-1997.
The fact of the matter is the type of game that Mortal Kombat was (a violent fighting game) lost a lot of popularity in the late-90s (1997/1998), so developers trying to cash-in on the next big thing stopped making those types of games. It didn't help that there was a five year gap between MK 4 and DA either. If anything DA proved that there's still a market for those kind of games, although it's not as big as it once was, especially since Grand Theft Auto, not Mortal Kombat, is the 'edgy/violent/obscene' franchise these days.
[edit] Heh, forgot the list. ;)
Primal Rage (ie, Mortal Kombat with dinosaurs) - Arcade, SNES, Genesis, PSX, Saturn, and 3D0 (probably more)
Way of the Warrior - 3D0
Thrill Kill - PSX (although you'd have to play the boot-legged copy, since the game was never released)
Eternal Champions - Arcade, Genesis (I think a sequel was made for the arcade and Saturn too)
Killer Instinct - Arcade and N64 (the sequel, KI Gold, as well)
War Gods (basically MK in 3-D before MK 4, made by Midway too) - Arcade (not sure about home systems)
Time Killers (really cool game in where you could dismember your opponent and cause them to lose arms and crap in battle) - Arcade, Genesis
Ultra Vortex - Jaguar
Kasumi Ninja - Jaguar
Out of all those games, Way of the Warrior and Ultra Vortex are the most 'MK-like,' in that they use digitized actors, gore and blood, and their own versions of Fatalities (I forget their names).
