Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat were two of the biggest rival fighting games of the early 90s. I remember at school we would ask each other the famous question of that time. ‘What do you think is better Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat’?
Also the other famous question at that time was ‘what do you prefer, Sega or Nintendo’?
I remember playing Street Fighter 2 in the arcades with my older brother. When it came out on the Super Nintendo that was a dream come true for me because that meant you could play the game in the comfort of your own home for free, without inserting coins.
After playing Street Fighter 2 I heard of another fighting that was out at that time called Mortal Kombat.
Mortal Kombat had an age rating of 15 which I was shocked about because I had never seen a game which was for aged 15 and over. When I saw that this game was for aged 15 and over I wanted to play it and wanted to found out why that was the case.
Before playing the game I saw the reviews in the computer games magazines. The game used blood, real people and something called finishing moves which was pretty gruesome and unique at the time. Also I think this was the first time which I saw blood in the game. After seeing the reviews in the magazines I really wanted to play and I could I see why this game had such a big hype.
I remember one day my brother borrowed Mortal kombat from his friend. We had the Super Nintendo version and I was excited play it.
We put it on and started to play. The first thing I saw was this 4 armed being shouting on screen which later on I found out was one of the bosses of the game. After that it went to the title screen and on the title screen you could either select Tournament or options. Tournament takes you to the game.
I selected Tournament and saw 7 characters that you could select. The first character I choose was Liu Kang.
I started to play and pressing the buttons to see what they do. In every fighting game that I play I try to pull of the movements that I would use in Street Fighter to see if any moves come out from the character. When I was Liu Kang I tried to pull of the Hadoken movement on the control pad and hoping something would happen, but nothing happened. I tried to do the hurricane kick movement and still nothing. Then I tried back for three seconds forward and punch and still nothing. For some reason I tapped forward twice and punch and something happened. A fire ball shot out of Liu Kang’s hand. I pressed random buttons while using the D pad and some moves randomly came out. Through time I had learn’t some moves of different characters. I found it difficult to execute the moves on characters and also the finishing moves. The moves were not as straight forward as Street Fighter 2.
I remember once I was facing the computer and I was trying to block the moves by pressing back and found out nothing happened. Then I realised you had to press R to block which I found weird and took me a while to get use to.
Another thing which I found weird was that you could not pause during a match. The only time you could pause was at the battle plan.
Also on the SNES version there was no blood which I was disappointed about.
The answer to the question at the beginning of this blog, I would have to say Street Fighter as it’s easy to play and easy to execute the charters moves, you can pause during the match and also you press back to block instead of R.
What do you guys prefer, Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter?
Sega Game Gear Vs Nintendo Game Boy
Street Fighter 2 The World Warrior
Retro Zone 