I’ve already mentioned time after time how fresh and innovative Mortal Kombat was when it hit the arcades in 1992, but did you know that it was innovative enough to spawn a large array of copycats? Everyone wanted to cash in on the controversial look and feel of the game, and quickly arcades began to fill up with fighting games that had guys tearing other guys in half at the end of matches. In this installment of Mortal Monday, we’re going to take a look at these titles that were a little beyond influenced by the Mortal Kombat series.

Time Killers

The game that many remember appearing in arcades shortly after Mortal Kombat was a brutal, bloody game titled Time Killers. Produced by Strata and developed by Incredible Technologies, this game had a lot of similarities and differences when compared to the first MK title. All of the characters were animated rather than digitized sprites, and it made for a bloodier experience. The game allowed players to chop off an opponent’s arm after so much damage was done to the limb. It was also possible for the player to chop off both of an opponent’s limbs, leaving the opponent with only the head and legs to fight with.

Something that made Time Killers stand out when compared to Mortal Kombat is the Death Move. Somewhat like a Fatality, the Death Move could be performed by pressing all five buttons at once and lopped the opponent’s head off on contact, instantly ending the round. There is also the Super Death Move that removes both of the opponent’s arms and head all in one attack. This is performed only on a stunned opponent by pressing all five buttons and pressing the joystick toward the opponent.

Time Killers was a great game aside from the massive borrowing from Mortal Kombat. It played somewhat similar to Street Fighter 2 and had a complexity above Mortal Kombat that made some arcade kiddies choose it over the massively popular MK cabinet.

Killer Instinct

Moving on, Killer Instinct was one badass title. It had impressive graphics, a soundtrack that would kick someone’s teeth in, and a cast of sweet characters that people could get behind and become fans of. It was also published by Midway and kindly “borrowed” from the Mortal Kombat series. Developer Rareware did a great job with the combo system in this title. It got a lot of people talking about the ridiculous combo counts they could pull off in the game, and it also got people to overlook the fact that there were blatant Fatalities for each character – referred to as No Mercy moves.

But Killer Instinct should continue to receive all the hype and praise it receives from the old arcade crowd. It was one hell of a game, and fans couldn’t get enough of trying to master the Ultra Combos for their favorite characters. I’d say that the borrowing of Fatalities can be forgiven in this case especially because it’s a Midway game.

This game also capitalized on a rumor from Mortal Kombat 2. The rumor was that Kitana and Mileena were able to perform sexual fatalities, and people actually believed it for a while. After the rumor was beaten with a lead pipe for being a pile of fail, it was discovered that Killer Instinct’s Orchid was able to kill off her opponents by opening the front of her top and exposing her rack to an unsuspecting opponent who falls over dead. Damn, they’re either that good or that bad.

Eternal Champions

Eternal Champions is a game that is probably still fresh in the minds of diehard Sega Genesis/Megadrive fans. It was a game with style, and it borrowed from Mortal Kombat to create something that Midway would actually borrow from it years later: stage fatalities. The stage fatalities were called Overkills, and players had to knock their opponent onto a certain area of the stage at the end of the match. If this was achieved, the opponent would be murdered in a rather brutal manner by some portion of the stage such as being frozen by robots or eaten by a dinosaur.

In later versions of the game, actual Fatalities were introduced in the guise of “Vendettas.” These were accompanied by Sudden Deaths(a stage kill that can be performed even if the player has life left) and Cinekills(a conditional finisher where the antagonist, the Dark Champion, appears and murders the opponent in a cutscene).

This is a game worth mentioning simply because it took the Fatality idea from Mortal Kombat and put a twist to it. The twist was so good that Mortal Kombat adopted the idea in Mortal Kombat: Deception. The stage fatalities were for MK weren’t character specific and possessed a little less imagination than the ones shown in Eternal Champions.

Tattoo Assassins

Some Mortal Kombat ripoffs are so blatant that it makes me want to vomit, and Tattoo Assassins fits that description perfectly. Developed and published by Data East, this game was never released to the public. There is only one cabinet in existence, and I wouldn’t mind if a flood came along and destroyed it. Tattoo Assassins rips off the digitized sprites that MK is known for, the gameplay that MK is known for, the Fatalities, and it even went so far as to take the sexual fatality rumor and bring it to life in a very unnecessary way – titled “Nudalities” - along with moves that involve cars, giant hamburgers, cooked turkeys flying out of someone’s ass, and diarrhea. That’s what this game is: diarrhea. Oh, they also decided to bring in the Animality rumor before MK III released. Is it me, or is this shitbomb trying too hard?

I honestly don’t have anything nice to say about this game. It’s well documented that the game was a half-assed piece of garbage that just wanted in on Midway’s success. Data East should be ashamed of creating such an atrocity in the name of greed. But you don’t have to take my word for it. There are plenty of places online to find a working version of this game to try. Just don’t blame me if you’re never the same again.

Bloodstorm

Making quite a name for itself early on, Bloodstorm is a game to talk about. This is the game that got actor Daniel Pesina shown the door at Midway. Pesina played Johnny Cage along with the ninja characters before appearing in an ad for Bloodstorm while dressed as Cage. Midway fired Pesina as soon as they saw the advertisement.

Overall, the game isn’t bad. It was published by Strata, and it aimed to knock Mortal Kombat off its pedestal. The game used animated characters rather than digitized sprites, and it was able to be far bloodier and gorier because of this choice. The fighters were fairly stock, but the action and special moves weren’t bad at all. The big eye catchers were the Fatalities and stage fatalities that the game offered. Every Fatality had its own special title, and the stage fatalities were downright sick at times.

I’d go so far as to say that Mortal Kombat got an idea from Bloodstorm for a stage fatality. Sure, the Pit existed way before this game came out, but a stage fatality in this game actually has the character being impaled by a single spike and the body splitting open in order to fit. Doesn’t this sound like a stage fatality found in MK: Deception?

Double Dragon V: The Shadow Falls

Not many people would expect to see this game land on the list simply because it plays more like Street Fighter II or World Heroes than Mortal Kombat. But were you able to pull off the Fatality inspired Overkills?

A feature that wasn’t even mentioned in the manual(as I remember it), the Overkills were actually pretty cool. Each character had a specific animation for their Overkill, and the animations were kickass while still being kid friendly. The Trigger Happy would suddenly explode and leave ashes, Icepick would melt to a puddle, Bones would fall to pieces before you, and lots of other great animations. Midway, try to look toward this game for inspiration when trying to create teen-friendly Fatalities. Leland Interactive and Tradewest did a great job.

War Gods

What did War Gods rip from Mortal Kombat? Everything. This game was designed to be a test run for the new engine that would eventually be Mortal Kombat 4. The game plays like MK 4 and even has Fatalities – and they’re actually announced as Fatalities. I’ve covered War Gods in a previous Mortal Monday, so I’m certainly not telling my older readers anything new. However, I don’t want to alienate… here goes. Imagine a very, very bad Mortal Kombat 4. Imagine craptastic characters that you don’t care about and lackluster Fatalities. Imagine a stock announcer with an Asian accent announcing the rounds and winners. Welcome to the global suck known as War Gods.

Bio F.R.E.A.K.S.

Yet another title that I’ve mentioned before on Mortal Monday, Bio FREAKS was a cool game. Also published by Midway, it brought a different edge and feel to fighting games with its over the top flying and ability to severe limbs. Sure the limb thing was done before…but in 3D? I think not. The game also used what was called Finishing Attacks that would kill the opponent and end the round.

Unfortunately, this title came and went. It really didn’t offer much that was new, and it didn’t offer anything to be copied or to be nostalgic about. I think it was okay, but a lot of people will say that the game all out sucked. To each his own, but it’s obvious this game didn’t make a mark in history.

Thrill Kill

Well now… this is a controversial, little gem. Thrill Kill was a title that never saw the light of day other than a few screenshots and a leaked alpha version that played like garbage. The game was set to pit four fighters in a closed dungeon to duke it out until only one fighter survived. This was considered to be revolutionary because no other game had ever offered the chance to have four fighters battle at once.

The game consisted of extremely violent or sexual moves performed by handicapped or deformed creatures. Life bars were absent in this game and were replaced by a kill meter. Once the meter was built up to full capacity, a Thrill Kill move could be performed to kill off one of the other fighters – an obvious nod to MK’s Fatality system.

I remember writing this game off as nothing more than something that wanted to create hype and controversy through violence when I was a kid. The graphics looked like a shoddy, polygon mess, and even the guys over at Gamepro were extremely skeptical. But Paradox and Virgin Interactive got the attention they were begging for – just in the form of sheer outrage. There was so much protest against the game that it was eventually scrapped. I think it would have sucked balls either way, so let it stay dead.

Using ideas from other games isn’t always a bad thing. Look at some of the great things that were created because some guys decided to take some aspects of Mortal Kombat and get creative with them. I encourage others to follow creativity wherever it may take them. If somebody doesn’t like it, ask them if they can do better. I happen to like playing cool games more than bitching about ripoffs.

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