Notes from NE Lincs

During returns to school, it didn’t escape my attention that 30 years had passed on 13 September since the original Mortal Monday.

For those of you of a certain age, the tagline ‘Mortal Monday’ conjures up all sorts of memories of video game developer Acclaim’s promotional campaign for the hit arcade game Mortal Kombat.

Mortal Monday happened on my first Monday at secondary school. I was much more invested in getting my sweaty eleven-year-old mitts on the world’s most popular and controversial computer game than I was in the life-changing event that would see life slide downhill for the next five years – such is the mind of a pre-pubescent boy in the early-90s.

The release of Mortal Kombat to the small screen wasn’t just another game hitting the shelves, this was a seismic shift in the way that computer games would and continue to dominate the home entertainment industry.

An accompanying advertising campaign with slogans like ‘Prepare Yourself’ and hordes of people marching through city streets screaming ‘Mortal Kombat’ in a visceral howl only served to intensify the anticipation.

Mortal machinery

I had been lucky enough to play the game in the arcades. The benefits of living a stone’s throw from Cleethorpes Seafront. The hype was real. Fighter games had taken off in the late-80s, Streets of Rage followed by Streetfighter II.

Indeed, Christmas 1992’s must-have present in our class was Streetfighter II for your console or computer of choice – Amiga 500+ if you need to know (you can keep Tracy Island too, Blue Peter showed us all how to make our own).

But Mortal Kombat was different. Out went cartoon-style graphics, replaced instead by motion capture. This was mind-blowing in the summer of 1992 – there were people inside the game! And it didn’t stop there. People died. People actually died within the game! Impaled on spikes, tossed off a precarious ledge, burnt to crispy cinders. All the characters had solid back stories and there was blood – lots of it.

Mortal Kombat felt like the game you shouldn’t be playing, and it caused outrage amongst parents across the globe, which made it even more must-play. And play it we did. 20 pence after 20 pence flooded into the coin slot – it must have been a bumper summer in Meggies.

Mortal masters?

So, to have the game in your home was the next logical step. You could play as Scorpion, Sub Zero, Kano or any of your other favourites any time you wanted, without having to convert your weekly pocket money into a bag of silver coins.

In truth, I have never been that much of a big gaming fan but what I like I really like. Mortal Kombat fell firmly into that camp. Rewind five years previous and I received my first games console for Christmas 1988 – a Sega Master System (the original one with the card slot and the burgundy top) – that would play a big part in my Mortal Monday letdown.

After endlessly playing games like Shooting Gallery, Rescue Mission, Great Football and World Soccer, a Game Gear was next in my sights, quickly followed by a Mega Drive. Nintendo just didn’t cut it for me – you could keep the quaintness of Mario and Tetris – I wanted the rough and tumble of Sonic and Alex Kidd.

When Mortal Monday finally arrived (after what felt like about two years’ worth of promotional build-up that was more realistically about two months), the prices were eye-watering. I wanted the game primarily on the handheld Game Gear so I could play this on the bus to and from school. The £34.99 price tag wasn’t all that off-putting, it just meant a summer holiday’s worth of saving, but there was a curveball.

Mortal miniatures

You can imagine my excitement during the lunch break of Tuesday 14 September 1993 when I finally plugged the emulator into the Game Gear, and then the cartridge into the emulator…and then everything was miniature.

It looked like Mortal Kombat, sounded like Mortal Kombat, and played like Mortal Kombat – you just needed a magnifying glass to see anything. Unlike other games that seamlessly transferred across between the two systems, Mortal Kombat became Miniature Kombat.

I couldn’t hide my disappointment nor embarrassment. It took me months to swallow my pride and go purchase a proper Game Gear version of the game. But, over 30 years later, the terms ‘Mortal Kombat’, ‘Come ‘ere’, and the button combinations back-back-low punch and block-up-up have stuck with me, so Acclaim were obviously doing something right.