Oldbie here once again.

Be warned, much geekery is involved here, as well as some speculation. You've been warned. =P

Now anyway, I wanted to turn my attention to investigating Mortal Komabt 1 for seeing how the bosses work. I found a character modifier code for the SNES version, and I thought I'd give it a try with that. I was able to play as both Goro and Shang Tsung...but with very disappointing results.

Goro turned out to have some graphical garbage about him when played. Understandably, he was never meant to be played in the first place, but I'm not really sure as to why he's all garbled instead of being crystal clear like when the computer plays as him. Sadly, the only thing you can do with goro is move forward and block. Attacking, ducking, jumping, or moving backwards only results in the game crashing.

Shang Tsung was worse. He's the most unplayable character I've seen that's never meant to be played. The only thing you can do with him is move forward...and then he just kinda moves backward in a quick and rather trippy manner. He doesn't do anything but that.

I wish I knew exactly how they get the computer to pull off all the moves. It would probably make a great lead as to how to get these characters actually playable instead of glitching like they do all the time.

However, I've had some interestingness with the Genesis version of MK1. I believe some of you, if you've looked around enough, has found a code to make it so when you do Sub-Zero's slide, he morphs into another character like Shang Tsung does.

(If you wanna try the code for yourself, the Game Genie code is 4WXA-AC32.)

Now, while this code is fun, and it's always fun to morph into Goro and laugh like a madman as you see Sub-Zero morph into Goro and the computer takes control of Player 2, who's nearly crapped himself...but that's besides the point. XD

Anyhoo, looking into the code further, I speculate that move effects are actually done by some kind of "pointer". What the pointer does in programming is it tells the game to do a certain effect when a button or series of buttons are pressed. I believe that all the effect pointers are held in a variable or two as well. When I say "variable", if you've used a Gameshark for N64 for example, the "address" of the code is the first eight digits, and the "variable" is the last four digits of the code. For example...

80123456 ABCD

The first part is the address, where a particular effect is stored. The second is the variable tells it how many, or which effect, to do. And the code is in Hexidecimal (0-F). For example, if you wanted to have five lives in a game instead of 3, assuming that when you have 0 lives, it's game over, then you would put "0005" in the variable.

Sometimes the variable also holds particular effects. For example, changing the variable creates entirely different effects, which is best represented in a list. For example...

0000 - Do nothing
0001 - Jump
0002 - Duck
0003 - Explode

Now getting back to Sub-Zero, the address of the code points to his slide, but there's a change in the variable that tells the game "when you hold back and press both kick buttons, then you morph into a different character" instead of "you perform the slide attack". This leads me to believe that Shang Tsung's morph move is a near fully-implemented move, aside of the computer taking control of you at first. And if you turn into Goro, in the next round you will be in a bizarre version of the level you were in with the Goro's Lair music. Apparantly whenever you're Goro, the game assumes you're in Goro's Lair, but can't load the background mid-match.

So what does all this mumbo-jumbo mean? With the right hacking, you could get ANYONE to do just about ANYTHING. You want Sonya to do Scorpion's teleport? You can do it. You want Sub-Zero to do Johnny Cage's fireball? You can do that. You want Liu Kang to morph instead of doing his flying kick? You can do that. While the sprites probably won't be there for such an occasion, it could be done.

It also leads me to believe that implimenting a fully-playable Shang Tsung, and a fully-playable Goro would be easy enough to do for a good hacker. Heck, even a playable Reptile could be done! There's a glitch that leads me to believe it too.

You remember the "Secret Sonya" glitch in which you get to Reptile on an endurance match? What happens is the game tries to load in the second character as Reptile, but botches some of it. That's why Sonya seems to do weird moves, but successfully performs the same moves that Reptile does.

For now, I've found a character modifier code for the Genesis MK1, but I have yet to try out Goro or Shang Tsung. The only experience I've had playing with Goro is using the above code and morphing into him, which actually seems to happen quite freqently. Once I play around with the character modifier code, I'll post my findings on them both.

So far what I've been able to experience, Goro can move forward, backwards, and can jump, but he freezes the game when he lands. This is a big step up from the SNES version of the game. I leave you with that.

What do you think? I'd love to hear some speculation or some comments. Questions are OK too, as I'm sure that I'm the only one who likes to study glitches and how things are programmed, and this is a lot to absorb.