Black, Female, Fighter #10 at 8:43 AM

(According to an article made last year there have only ever 13 playable female characters. The list doesn't include fighting game characters for reasons I don't agree with. As such, I have decided to put a spotlight on 14 of these characters, to see what is being dismissed here. There are MORE than that, but I admit, not MUCH more.)

Tanya

Game
Mortal Kombats 4, Deception, Armageddon, and X

Bio

She's a traitor to team good. In fact, for a while, betrayal was about her only characterization. Due to the fact that she only exists because the MK team realize "Oh, shit, we haven't added any new characters yet" and made quick changes to Kano, Noob Saibot, and in her case, Kitana, to make them "new".

How Black is she?

Like Jade, her mocha skin doesn't betray the fact she's basically an alien

Prominence

Let's put it this way: MKX's first DLC characters, where a monster from an 80's movie, a minor character from a largely reviled spinoff game and her, and the minor character is the one people where expecting more besides the monster.

Tanya's the poor man's Jade.

Fight examples

Flaws

The same way Jade is mostly just a goon, Tanya's just a goon.

Pros

Those Special moves tho. I mean, Jade's moveset is pretty much my favorite thing about her.

Black, Female, Fighter #6 at 1:33 PM

 (According to an article made last year there have only ever 13 playable female characters. The list doesn't include fighting game characters for reasons I don't agree with. As such, I have decided to put a spotlight on 14 of these characters, to see what is being dismissed here. There are MORE than that, but I admit, not MUCH more.)

Jackie Briggs

Game

Mortal Kombat X

Bio

How Black is she?

She's the daughter of Blaxploitation Dude Jaxx and has cornrows.


Prominence
Well, she's fairly recent, but as the daughter of an important character, she's bound to be somewhat important. Also, since the story has a focus on the Special Forces characters of the game, of which she is, well that's what makes her beautiful. Whoa-oh-oh...

Fight examples

Flaws

Have you ever noticed how black characters always get stuck with scifi and military stuff in mixed fantasy settings? Like, Black guys aren't getting bitten by radioactive spiders or getting magic alien rings.

Tha's not to take anything away from Jackie. It's just an issue I have with fiction overall, sometimes.

Point is, Jackie being a Special Forces member is boring to me, personally. Wouldn't she be a little wild, growing up without her dad because he got killed by Syndel in the last game? Why is she the Murtaugh to Cassandra Cage's Riggs?

Pros

She's not a dance-fighter, she's wearing clothes most of the time, and she's just a boring and uncharacteristic Special Forces type character.

Progress.

Black, Female, Fighter #4 at 8:07 PM

 (According to an article made last year there have only ever 13 playable female characters. The list doesn't include fighting game characters for reasons I don't agree with. As such, I have decided to put a spotlight on 14 of these characters, to see what is being dismissed here. There are MORE than that, but I admit, not MUCH more.)

Jade

Game

Mortal Kombat

Bio

How Black is she?

Jade was originally a palette swap of an actress who played both Kitana and Millena. Those are White. This one is not. She was drawn with dark skin since the beginning, and has mostly been consistently been shown as tan skinned at least. However, as an extradimensional being, she carries no actual Earth Ethnicity.


Prominence

Jade has never been the most important Mortal Kombat character. In further games, her being Kitana's bodyguard meant that she was mostly a goon. A good goon, but a goon nontheless. She's currently super fucking dead, but that happens in Mortal Kombat.

She appeared in the second movie, as an Asian, and she was not to be found in the cartoon at all.

Fight examples

 Flaws

Jade's skin color has fluctuated wildly, and it's still a point of contention whether she's supposed to be Black or Middle Eastern-ish tan.

Pros

As a support character, she's remained pretty consistent in at least her characterization.

Mortal Kombat just got Dingoed! at 8:01 AM

Of course Jenny Cho made it into this.

Through the magic of Gimp and Yoyo Game Maker,  I bring you the Dingo take on Mortal Kombat. Love it. Love ME!

I ripped some Dingo strikes from Phelous' review of Countryside Bears. It's...It's what Dingo would have wanted...sniff. Seriously, check them  out for him here. (Token useless attempt to not get sued by claiming not to own anything.)

Mortal Kombat Giberish Finally Decoded! at 10:25 AM

¿Por que no?

For more than half my life there´s been a question in my mind: What the hell did Raiden just say?



Scooby Doomy Doo? Shyamadama doo? I GATTA DIE? The hell is that? It wouldn't be until I was older than I realized that the character is saying nothing at all. Unlike when I thought Ryu was saying "Atack-tack-doo-ken" and Psylocke was saying "Uphold the pudding", there wasn't any language barrier or loud competing arcade sounds to overcome, here. It is gibberish made up  by voice actors clearly having too much fun. Like with the Sims, the point here isn't to give you what the  character is saying, but what the character is trying to say.

Well, no Wreckless for you, Psylocke.

Except, I once rented Mortal Kombat 4. And with that game, I was sure...SURE! That that game was using Spanish terms. So I looked up all the voices, which someone was kind enough to put on a video.



Mortal Kombat 4 is not as much gibberish as you might have believed. Within this audio clips, voices can clearly be heard saying things like "Oh I'm gonna throw you over there!" and "AAAAW MY LEG!". But If you're a Puerto Rican, like me, you'll find some other things. Let's look at them.


2:52 "Dejame Quieto". It  means "leave me alone".

3:04 "Carajo Coño". These are two curse words that often can be seen whenever a Puerto Rican is angry. Although overusage has left their litteral meaning worthless, "carajo" is the lousiest place on a  ship where you send people you don't like(although there is debate about it's meaning, with some thinking it is a place on the map or a reproductive member.), and "coño" is pubic hair. Both of these are used to express frustration.

By the way, these are major curse words, equivalent on weight to your English "Fuck" and "Dick". "Stuff you don't say on TV"  bad. Usted no jode con un dios!



3:09 "Cuidame" It means "Take care(of me)". Uh...what?

3:13 "Toque el piano" it means "(I) played the piano". Nice to know, but I'm still planning to rip out your arms.

3:11 "No me toque" means "Don't touch me". Interestingly, it uses the more proper "toque" which is used with strangers or people of grander stature over the more commonerish "toques". 

3:45 "Ay, Mami". The fighter calls out his mom, in pain.

4:08 "Quien puso ese pedazo de hielo alpino ahi" or "Who put that piece of alpine ice there".  Pretty sure this is the sound for "slipping on Sub Zero's ice", too.

4:12 "Marrallo Parta". This expression is also heard from exasperated and frustrated Ricans the world over.  It is a contraction from the phrase "Que un mal rayo me parta" or "May a bad lightening split me". It's a poor choice of words if you are fighting Raiden.

What did Youtube think this says? at 5:43 AM

What ass story mark.

Negative Nancy: The TOP 5 Most Misoginist games of the year! at 3:42 PM

I don't have opinions. I AM OPINIONS

(In order to be more hip with the kids today, I intend to bring you  more socially conscious messages, under the lable Nega Nancy)


The year isn't over, but I'm already pretty sure what the most sexist games are gonna be this year. Remember that just because something is DAMAGING TO THE PSYCHE and A STEP BACK INTO THE MIDDLE AGES doesn't mean you can't like it. You horrible person.


Remember some of these games might be not even be out yet, but It's still sexist because I say so.

5: Shift Stick

 Oh, what? This game decided that a man would rather fuck a car than a woman? I take this as a statement on all cars, all men and all women. The Statement is women are objects, just objects that are not currently present at the screen. Typical Cis male thoughts, no doubt...

4: Mortal Kombat X

Mortal Kombat THINKS it can get into my good graces by limiting the amount of sinflesh it is showing compared to previous outings. But sadly, the reduced sensuality is in this case is just troubling. The game is clearly trying to say that a woman can't be sexy, can't be sexual, and still strong and powerful. I mean, I can say that, and it's not troubling, but they can't implicitly say that, even under my advice.

3)Grim Fandango: Remastered

Grim Fandango is a  point and click adventure game, and as phallic as that is, we're not even at the core complaint, yet: They remastered the game, and did not take time to allow for a female playable Manny Calavera.  They had  more than a decade to make a female Manny Calavera, and DID NOT. Pass.

2) Metal Slug


This game either includes women as playable characters and enemies or doesn't. You know it's sexist either way.

1)Kaio: King of Pirates


I admit to a bit of a double standard.  Catfight might be less sexist than Street Fighter in certain respects, but Catfight is also super shitty, so I'd rather pile on it for being sexist as well. Quality can distract me from that kind of complaint.

So Kaio King of the Pirates is a game that was cancelled. That's worst that it having it been released, so, ergo, the game is the most sexist game of the year. Got it? Good.

5 weird uses of public domain on gaming at 1:04 PM

Well, how am I gonna go ahead if I don't mention Knights of the Round every few posts?

As my Game jam aproaches, I think more on these stories and characters that so influenced the gaming landscape. Sure, some like Castlevania and God of war do the obvious and pull familiar names and concepts for you to murder.

But that's not always the case. That's why I present you the 5 weirdest use of Public Domain material in games.

Sonic and the Black Knight

Pulling it off is easy.

The Blue Blur realized awhile ago that it was wasting it's time. Sonic has at times been a plumber, a doctor and a hotel manager. Sonic, though let himself get typecast as a hedgehog.

And so, he went off in the search of a new, marketable Identity. Which is how he ended in Camelot for Sonic and the Black Knight.

As a fish out of water in the Arthurian myth times, Sonic must Hack and slash in a world he never knew,in which not only did swords get jammed in rocks to decide who is king, but also the usual characters from lore such as Lancelot were now played by his friends/enemies.

Is this the fan fickiest shit you've ever seen or what?

It seems like a strange choice, I admit. The Sonic Fan in me hates it for not being Sonic 2, but the realist in me loves that isn't Sonic 2.

Dr Jeckyl and MR Hyde

NOT THE HEAD-BITE!

The story of Dr Jeckyl and Mr Hyde is one that makes sense for a game if you think about it. Drinking something to become an unstoppable monster? That's already an established formula!

The game, though, is not remembered for making sense. The good Doctor must traverse a world full of minor inconveniences, which trigger his rage and make him turn into his evil alter ego.

You just got hustled for a wad of cash, tell me what you gonna do? Act a Fool!

Sadly, the game is even more remembered for  sucking and giving the AVGN material.

Cthulu saves the world

"PART OF YOUR WOOOOOOORLD!"

The works of HP Lovecraft hold a special place in nerddom, especially Octopus Faced Cosmic Monstrocity Cthulu.

Appearing in games from high profile to obscure, there's certainly an interest in using the Great Old One as an antagonist. But one game asked the right question: what if Cthulu was the hero?

"YES, GODDAMNIT, YOU ALREADY SAW THAT EPISODE OF ANCIENT ALIENS!"

So this indie RPG casts you as the nightmare monster, as he, as expected, has to save the world in order to be able to destroy it. You guys can tell me if it's great or no.

Earth Worm Jim 2

What's the russian word for "Groovy!"?

Oh, you don't remember public domain stuff in EWJ2? Well, maybe your ears weren't paying attention. Earthworm Jim uses several songs from the public domain. Funiculi, Funicula for one, is a famous Italian opera I presume  is not an ode to the art of catching puppies.

But perhaps more pointedly, Tchaikovsky's '1812 Overture is used in the stage "Jim is now a blind cave salamander" which the titular hero becomes...err, you know.

Well, it could always be worst. This could be Clayfighter.

Besides the obvious asspull that the hero annelid is now a hero reptilian, and how nard crunchingly hard the level could feel, the most memorable part of it was the calm, soothing music, and how much weirder it made the whole thing.

You see, modernly, a lot of folks would have told Tommy Tallarico to just make his own damn music (or, implicitely, to go licence the Tchaikovsky song to whoever owns it). But that's the thing: the maker FELT like this pd song fit this moment, and was empowered to use it.

Mortal Kombat vs DC universe.

"If you hear a lightening, run and be a frightening, because here's a teenager that can tear you in half!"

Oh, you didn't know? There's a public domain character in a Mortal Kombat game! No it's not Santa.

I'm talking about Captain Marvel. NOT Captain Mar-Vell, Monica Rambeaux, or Carol Danvers, the original Big Red Cheese, Captain Marvel.

You see, it's a long story, but before Dc had to rename him Shazam, Cap Marvel was a Fawcett comics character. One day the company went under, not in little part thanks to litigation from DC. Dc swooped in and bought the company...all wrong.

You see, DC bought, or so they say, the physical place Fawcett comics was in, but not the assets. This means that DC had the physical original drawings that made up the first Captain Marvel Comic, but not the rights to the works themselves, which means that Cappy (as well as others that never fought Scorpion, so who cares) and his friends started slowly slipping into the public domain.

They got wise and stopped it just before Black Adam got into the mix, but by then it was too late. That means that Captain Marvel, Billy Batson,  the Shazam family up to and including Freckles Marvel belong to all us.*

YOU CAN'T MAKE YOURS HAVE THE RAGE! WE CAME UP WITH THAT!

Essentially all his traits in MKvsDC come from the PD version, albeit his appearance and moves like holding and Shazaming people come from DC's stories.  Later on Midway died, got revived and bought by WB under a different name, and they made Injustice, Gods Among Us, which included Shazam. He's got a little redesign and they finally gave up on him being Captain Marvel (and I guess Mary Marvel is now Mary Shazam, right?)

This is...actually not your father's Captain Marvel.

Altered Beast

Zack Gilliafanakis Looking fit next to Adrien Brody.

Oh , you remember this one, don't you? Two burly bros from the ancient times have to rise from their graves, to knock the snot out of assorted undeads and monsters, eventually ditching their homoerotic human forms to become homoerotic  anthros.

What's from the public domain? The setup. Athena, Greek Goddess of Wisdom, can't stay out of trouble, and gets captured by a Wizard. Naturally Zeus, Almighty God of Olympus, sends two guys to rescue her. You still get some Goddess on Furry action at the end, though.

 

"I'd rather give my daughter away to this buff werewolf than get off my lazy ass"-Zeus

Sure, you don't need Zeus and Athena into a story like this to get it going. It's basic rescue the princess shit. But it's still somewhat interesting and weird how they got that going on, and made your characters have no emotional attachment to the lady in question.

King of Fighters/Athena

I hope I'm this modest in EVERY future representation of me.

Similarly, you don't need  Greek Myths to explain why a schoolgirl can shoot fire from her mittens in a fighting game. But in this case it's special.

 

Athena, wearing a red bikini and purple hair. Are YOU gonna tell a chick gave birth to herself what she can and can't wear?

 Athena once again shows up, in a little known SNK game of her namesake, where she falls down a hole in Heaven and has to fight badguys.

But as things tend to happen in SNK land, it all came to end in SNK's endless crossover series The King of Fighters. There her descendant, Athena Asimiya(first name/last name?), became a mainstay in it. However, Real Athena did show up a few times.

"You see? There, clothes, boom, sexism is over."

Good or bad, weird or serious, the Public Domain has enrichened videogames since the beggining. Perhaps, soon, we can help videogames return the favor in kind?

*But first someone would have to challenge DC's unfounded claim that it still has ownership of the character. Could it be YOU? Also, Captain Marvel, Billy Batson, and Shazam are trademarked, so avoid using those names in promotion or as the title of your work, if yeh know what's good for y'all.

5 things modern fighting games should not be doing. at 11:05 AM

I remember it like it was yesterday. My father and I walked into this place where he used to buy old issues of various magazines. And out in the corner, there she was. Street Fighter 2. I was intrigued. I had seen coin op games before, sporadically, but Street Fighter was  a new game to me. One that I'd never played before. I begged for money, as children are wont to do. I sacrificed that coin to watch an Hindu Stereotype beat my American soldier stereotype to a pulp.

Since then fighting games have come a long way. THey've evolved, developed intricate storylines and new, radical playstyles.  They've become an entirely different beast.

In some ways. In other ways they're stuck 2 decades ago. My love for fighting games calls me to request that these 5
things become better, so that our beloved genre can continue to flourish and grow. So yes, I am salty that some fighting games still have...


5 Slideshow endings

When the fighting game boom took place, the capacity for them to tell a story was fairly limited by memory and space. There just wasn't enought to put much audios or, god-forbid,  videos. Most of the storytelling was done via little pictures and words that told the story. Any full featured endings or such would have eaten into other parts of the game, basically forcing you to cut out characters and stages to make room for endings to the characters   you were going to have.

This was true of all games back then, and now only true in little cellphone games. And fighting games, apparently. How else can you explain that as far back as 2011 Mortal Kombat was still having the bulk of it's arcade endings be  slideshows with pictures, now merely updated with narration?

I know MK also had an expansive, movie like in-engine story mode, which it inherited form it's predecessor. This does not make it better...it makes it worse. Because you can clearly see they have better in-engine capacities, motion capture,  voice acting and overall storytelling capacity that they did the last time they tried individual  theatrical endings  25 years ago, and they still decided they wheren't going to bother with anything but a narrator telling you what happened.

"And life...had never been sweatier."

If this seems like I'm being petty, think about this: if another, non-fighting game franchise did this kind of ending, whether it was Final Fantasy, Halo or Assasins Creed... would people put up with it? Because Mortal Kombat is one of the most recognizable fighting game franchises in the world, now owned by one of the larges corporations in the world, and they still settled for the storybook bullshit. It's not some little indie  game made by 2 people, why should it's endings
suggest otherwise?

Fighitng game endings give you a goal to fight towards. Mortal Kombat's little movie was a fine endeavor, but you can't even play as every character in it.

But in the fighting game world, even that seems like being extremely generous, when others can sell you...



4 Bare bones packages  with nothing but fighting

Holy shit, a new Killer Instinct! After all these years, Microsoft finally got on that! Now I can see what's been up with B. Orchid and the gang since they time-traveled and fought a devil gargoyle!

Except  somehow they manage to ship a game more bereft of options than  getting mugged by a Pokemon. What? Oh, whatever, at least I have King of Fighters XII.

How does this happen? A fighitng game used to compete by being a package that they tried to pile value on. Story mode, and other modes other than "fight other dudes, until you get tired." Killer instinct Gold was shipped to the Nintendo 64 filled with as many things as they could fit in to offset the fact you where playing Killer Instinct 2 on a controller  designed by the Spanish Inquisition to tear your ligaments.

Why  would something made 11 of years after Soul Calibur from Dreamcast decide that features aren't important? Why is offering replay value optional in this genre?


3 A disturbing obsession with guest characters.

"Hey, a loud, organized fight is technically an assasination if you planned to murder the guy."

Everything was fine in fighting game-opolis. The birds where singing their chip-tunes and the flowers were swaying in repeated animation cycles, their beautiful palettes entirely dependant on the button you pressed to choose them.And then Soul Calibur 2 happened. The sequel to one of the most well revieved fighitng games of it's time, SC2 did something that would innexplicably become a trend in fighitng games till today: It added characters that had nothing to do with the Soul Calibur franchise, specifically undead emo-demon Spawn from the Image comic of the same name for the Xbox, Link from Soul Calibur for Gamecube, and Heihachi, from Bandai's other fighitng game series for Xbox.

Sure, the idea had been done before. Earth Worm Jim was in Battle Arena Toshiden,  and even Soul Calibur one had a guest character in Yoshimitsu. But those guys wheren't in the cover of their games. Putting them in was a cool thing to do.

Now it seems a fighting game can't be complete without some guests, DOA had a Halo Spartan and some Virtua Fighters, Mortal Kombat had Freddy Krueger, Soul Calibur had characters from Star Wars and Assasin's Creed. Even the frickin Street Fighter/Tekken crossover decided to add some weird manga cats and the guy from Infamous. Don't be surprised when Guilty Gear finally caves in and announcess Shrek.

Is there something inherently wrong with guests? No. But guests would be better if it didn't feel like there was some weird mandate that there has to be at least one guest character. On Kratos' case this might actually be the truth, since he's already been in Soul Calibur  and Mortal Kombat.

To be frank, it feels a little like cheating the fans to, instead of giving the spot to a character from the franchise people haven't seen in a while, or adding new characters to grow the roster, they go "No, you can't have Raibow Mika. Here's Sam Witwer in a robe. He'll not be seen after this, so enjoy."





2 Unlockable Characters

A new character has been unlocked!

Unlockables where a part of a game's replay value. They'd slowly trickle new content to the player as he played, rewarding continued returns.

But this has no place in Fighting games anymore. A fighting game is not supposed to be have finite replayability, like a Campaign in a First Person Shooter. It's supposed  to keep inviting you in to try new things in it and to challenge yourself, like a puzzle game. Unlockable characters kind of limit that by saying, "even though you know and we know that there is a character called Jenny Cho in this game, because she's on the cover and everything and the Internet exists, you need to grind in story mode a bit to play as her."

It's a real kick in the pants too, especially since at least in the old days when something was locked, there was a good possibility for a cheat to be available to unlock it.

1 Not having  sufficient DLC characters

Ultra Street Fighter 4 is Capcom's way of saying "No matter how much Internet and 3D we have, we're still the same cheap bastards that reisued Street Fighter 2 for 4 years, and we'll die before we give up on our comprehensive asset recycling program". The game grabs a bunch of leftovers  from Street Fighter X Tekken, adds Cammy in a mask, and then expects everyone to jump into the 4rth or 5th Street Fighter 4 SKU.

It's arguably slightly less awful than the traditional practice of releasing  the same game with some slight changes and 3 new charactes, because at least this one only costs like half of a new game and you can download it into your Super Street Fighter Megamax Super Duper arcade edition, but it's arguably worse than what it would have been to, one by one, continue to add new characters to the game.

We're already in the DLC age, I don't know why most fighting games play it so coy with this. Street Fighter outright refuses to have stand alone DLC characters. Mortal Kombat only had a handful. Marvel vs Capcom 3 had 2, and then decided to jump back later in the year with a 60 dollar reissue with 6 more characters.

 What I haven't seen is a fighter that doubles it's roster with DLC.  Costumes are fine, but a character adds real value to the game. Are you gonna wait to be beaten to the punch by EF 12, developers? I'd like to see a fighting game franchise forgoe just hitting the reset button to make a new reiteration every couple of fiscal years and just make the one game they have continue to grow in it's roster and features. Some are better at this. DOA5, Injustice, and Skullgirls seem to have had comprehensive DLC schedjules, that don't just seem like they're doing it because their mommy forced them.  Killer Instinct seems to have gone too far into the forest with it's "make everything DLC" plan. Let's hope more games follow the good examples and continue to grow their games rather than ditch out the baby with the bathwater.

Mortal Kombat X confirma a Big Daddy con Little Sister, Sadira, True Ogre, y a La hija de Johny Cage at 11:29 AM

Bueno, no son los personajes mas originales del mundo, pero es un juego de pelea. Hay websites completos dedicados a explicar en detalle de quien y como se copio cada payaso de Street Fighter. Y Mortal Kombat nunca fue precisamente inmune a esto.

Para que quede claro, me agradan Ferra y Torr,  D'vora, Kotal Kahn y Cassie Cage, aunque francamente  nunca me a gustado mucho eso de los hijos de los heroes. El hijo de Ken pasa con ficha hasta que se ponga a pelear. Y despues del ultimo juego, los prefiero mil veces a que traigan de vuelta esos Ninjas Pallette Swap. Pero me gustaban mas aun cuando se llamaban Master Blaster, Sadira,  Ahu Kin y  Jill Valentine. Eso es todo.

El juego tambien promete retomar la historia 25 años despues de el ultimo juego, aunque con su tramolla de viaje en el tiempo no se si se empieza a contar despues de  todos murieron,  o desde el pasado en que Syndel limpio el piso con los heroes. 

The Mortal Kombat X Bingo at 11:12 AM

Hey there, boys and girls! Here's a little game I cribbed from Joystiq. I'm gonna throw some guesses at the Recently announced Mortal Kombat X. If I four of these guesses in a row then Bingo, I win.

The Mortal Kombat bingo is applicable until E3 ends.Here's a description of each thing, in case y'all can't read this Simpsons font. Fight!

Fujin is Back

Remember Fujin? Well he hasn't shown up in 8 years, which in itself is a 9 year wait from Mortal Kombat 4. Fujin gotta rise again.

Retkon

They're gonna Retkon the shit out of having killed a bunch of good guys and sent them to hell. Well, they would do that, eventually. My bet is they're gonna do it now.

New Faces

AT E3. I mean, yeah, they announced they where gonna have new characters, but will we see them? Probably, yeah.

F2P DLC POS

Are you gonna have to pay 5 dollars to play as Sheeva? Well, would you?

Kustom Karacters

Fuck and yes. This option's been sorely missed.

Jack Bauer Plays Subzero

Well, why wouldn't he?

Konquest story mode

Well, they aren't just gonna make a little movie this time, huh?

Most of the Kast from MK4 and after

Well, they already did retread the first 3 games (again) so maybe they can get on with things.

Unplayable karakter bekomes playable.

Well, I think they've just about used every asshole that ever was mentioned or rumored. But maybe Kid Thunder will show up.

Simplified Fatalities

Forward, back, back fuck off. Nobody wants to do those little dances anymore. I'll eat my hat if performind finishing moves isn't simplified this time around.

Tanya rides again

We all love Tanya. We want her back.

Zebron
Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

15 Questions about Mortal Kombat at 12:48 PM

"Not even summer camp!"

I have seen Mortal Kombat many, many times. I never catched it on it's original theater run, on account of extreme poverty. I like this movie so much it makes me feel guilty, because it's a silly movie, and big ass men like myself aren't supposed to like silly movies.

But I'm a curious man. I have an inquisitive spark within myself. I have questions about everything, especially movies from the 90's. I will now onload 15 of these riddles on you, and ask you to answer them all to me. It has begun!

15) Is Master Boyd dead?

During the course of the movie Shang Tsung rarely uses his transformation powers. See, in the game, Shang Tsung can take the shape of any fighter in the game, and for the longest time this was his defining characteristic.

In the movie he uses this ability exactly twice. One is to guilt trip Liu Kang over his brother, who tried to fight Shang Tsung and got his neck rearranged for his trouble. The other is to fool Johnny Cage into going to the tournament, by pretending to be his mentor, Master Boyd.

No, he's NOT Bo' Rai Cho! Not everything is canon!

Did Shang Tsung kill Master Boyd and claim his soul? Because It's implied his ability to copy people is related to his ability to steal souls. If his power did work in this way, it is safe to assume he found Boyd and killed him.

14) Why did Shang Tsung  get Earth's Best fighters involved?

The Mortal Kombat Tournament was lost by Outworld thanks mostly to two people: Johnny Cage, and Liu Kang. The strongest fighters, Sub Zero, Scorpion, and Goro, where defeated by them. Obviously Raiden knew how to pick them.

Except he didn't. Liu Kang only joined because his brother was killed by Shang Tsung. Before that he was completely distanced from the Monks and the Tournament.

And Johnny Cage only joined because he was actively brought by Shang Tsung. If Shang Tsung really wanted to win, he would have let Liu Kang's brother participate, and he'd have forgotten all about Johnny Cage. He could come collect their stupid souls later, when Earth Realm had gotten taken over. He could have kept Sonya, though.

13) Why are Sonya's weak fighting skills  a plot point?

No aerobics clothing?

Sonya doesn't get to do much in MK. She avenges her partner by killing Kano early on and then moves on to the background.

Because it's an actual plot point that Shang Tsung only brought Sonya so he'd have someone weak to fight at the end of the tournament. That's her arc. Shang Tsung spent his time  doing Raiden's work for him by getting the REAL fighters in here, and now he turns around and decides that maybe he should go easy on himself, and cap things off by fighting the lady from The Wedding Planner.

This isn't so much a question as it is a complaint. I like Sonya, we could have given her another Palette Swap Ninja to fight or something.

12) Did Raiden bring in a bunch of fighters to their death knowing they where going to die?

See, he WOULD lift a finger.

So Raiden didn't  recruit any of the important people in the movie, even though he only ever spent any time with Liu Kang, Sonya and Johnny Cage. He didn't give any life saving tips to Art Lean or Jenny Cho. We might assume this people where brought here either by Raiden or by Shang Tsung.

Let's give Raiden the benefit of the doubt and assume he brought at least some of the people from the tournament. Why wouldn't he assist them in any way?  Why would he leave them completely out of things?

Liu Kang is the chosen one, but he can't fight everyone in the tournament, otherwise he'd face exhaustion and die. Some people  who were not the chosen one needed to score some victories. Raiden  possibly brought in a bunch of people and then decided that  he should only work with 3 of them, and everyone else would be fine.

11) Who the hell is that guy?

Seriously, who the hell is that guy?

10) Can Shang Tsung revive the death?

Near the climax of the movie, Shang Tsung fights Liu Kang in his creepy castle of gloomness. After exchanging Hyas for a bit, Shang leaves Liu to face with some warriors who come out of manholes.

This guys are clearly culled from all human history, and presumably  former fighters that Shang Tsung enslaved.

But Shang Tsung has only been seen to enslave souls. Nobody said anything about Shang being able to revive the people who's souls he owned. Because then he really needed to revive Kano, Art Lean and that guy and made them fight Shang Tsung at the end.

09) Can't Raiden stop people participating in a tournament?

I mean, he's Earthrealm's protector. He's supposed to do everything he can to keep Earth from becoming absorbed by Outworld.

So can't keep Sonya from participating? Again, I like Sonya, but she's here strictly because how much she sucks. If I were Raiden, I'd be like, "nope, you can't participate" and I'd kick her out of the boat.

You can slap me if you want. If you can actually hurt me you get the job.

08) If Earth Realm people can participate in the tournament, why wouldn't Shang Tsung  get Johnny Cage on his side?

Not to repeat myself, but Johnny Cage is in Mortal Kombat exclusively because of Shang Tsung. But in the same way he conned(or is that konned?) Kano into fighting for him, why didn't he get Johnny Cage?

I mean, Cage was so completely out of the loop, I'm sure he would have gone with whatever, had he been properly not told about the impending  destruction of Earth.

07) How is Reptile made?

Nothing about no statue, here.

Near the end of the movie, Reptile, in this movie a little satanic gecko with invisibility powers, falls into a statue. The statue shoves some tentacles into him. The statue turns into Reptile, the Green Ninja.

So, is Reptile always in  the wait for the right statue to turn himself into a Ninja, or is the statue a ninja that needs a little monster in his heart to be able regain his full form? Or is this an exceptional moment that neither of them knew? A secret that eluded both the ugly statue and the  little stealth lizard?

Talk about your star crossed lovers!

06) What happens if Shang Tsung gives up?

During the final fight, Liu Kang starts a massive beatdown against Shang Tsung. But, since he's also learned  that revenge is no good, he asks Shang Tsung to surrender several times. Shang Tsung replies to this requests with "Never" and "Save your pity for the weak" and "Spit".

But what happens if Shang Tsung says uncle? Does he go to jail? Does Earthrealm win and he just has to go away? Because no one in this movie ever just tapped out.  Even after all the cheating and stuff, doesn't he get a sanction or anything?

05) Are all Shokans weak ass pussies?

All they want...is a hug...

Goro is the equalizer in the tournament. Seemingly impervious to most physical attacks, and strong enough to lift a man, we even get a montage of all the people  he's broken down.

So if Shokans are so tough, why isn't team Outworld all Shokans? Why bother with That Guy if you could have another Shokan in there?

Is it because Goro is an exceptional Shokan, and the rest of the Shokans are not so hot? Is it some kind of Outworld affirmative action thing, where you gotta give  everyone equal participation in the
tournament?

Think about it.

04) Can Shang Tsung move freely in Earthrealm?

Because it seems like he shouldn't. It seems kind of unsporting that an immortal shape-shifting demon sorceror can go about our side of existence. He could make a lot of things to influence the odds and cause an unfair upset.

In the actual movie he basically helped us, yes. If he can just saunter in an out of our world, why wouldn't he poison or cripple our greater fighters before their get to the tournement?  Why wouldn't he kill most people who know about the tournament? Why wouldn't he pretend to be Raiden and fool the best fighters into missing the tournament?

03) How is Shao Khan 3 stories high?

"I WARNED YOU ABOUT THE OZONE LAYER! I WAARNEEED YOUUUU!"

Now, we all know in every other media Shao Khan is tall, but this is ridiculous.

You might assume this is just a projection of Shao Khan. But a projection wouldn't be able destroy a temple. No, it's clear Shao Khan in this universe is a translucent titan.

02) Can you just pull a weapon on somebody in the Tournament?

"Well, that's not sporting at all."

Because it seems that one can. Kano can casually produce a knife, and That guy has some kind of fighting sticks.

So if there's no limits on weapons, who doesn't every fight have them? Why can't Sonya just  stab Goro in the neck and call it a day? I'm sure the only reason her gun  was destroyed early in the movie was to keep her from turning Mortal Kombat into Unreal Tournament.

01) If Raiden has no power in the island, how come he can do a bunch of stuff?

Raiden is a God. However, Raiden has no power in the tournament's setting, the Island. We are explicitely told this. He can only...

NYE-HEH-HEH..

...threaten large groups of warrior men with lightening eyes...

...Piss off testosterone-ridden Ninja...

...manifest himself unexpectedly behind people...

Exactly how limited is Raiden? Because if he was just being an asshole and not directly helping well...that seemingly would go with a pattern.