Mortal Kombat: Unchained

We've been discussing Mortal Kombat all week, from its arcade history to elaborate examinations of individual characters. How do you end such a celebration? Why, with a 20 MINUTE video compiling every single finishing move the grisly series has served up since its inception in 1992. Many hours were spent performing these bastards, so please watch it 10 or 12 times.

Brett returns with oodles of Capcom previews, while hilarious blasts from Mortal Kombat’s past, present, and future help wrap up GamesRadar’s Kombat Week...

Much as we love Mortal Kombat, it feels like the series has had a progressively lamer cast of villains with every installment. Shao Kahn? When you get right down to it, he’s just a big, half-naked dude with a hammer and a super-cheap fighting style. Shinnok’s a pale old man in a stupid hat, Onaga’s the kind of villain a 12-year-old would draw on a binder, and Blaze is just another beefy guy made of fire. And don’t even get us started on their henchmen. Drahmin? Moloch? Quan Chi? Motaro? What an ugly bunch of sadsacks.

As far as we’re concerned, Mortal Kombat still hasn’t topped its original villains: the millennia-old shapeshifter Shang Tsung, the four-armed nightmare named Goro, and Shang Tsung’s creepy little helper-ninja, Reptile. And as luck would have it, all three are about to be shoved back into the limelight next week, when the new Mortal Kombat rewinds the series’ clock back to its beginning. Before that happens, however, let’s take a look at the ways those characters have evolved and changed since their first appearances 19 years ago...

Oh, did you think Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm was the first time Sub-zero and friends assaulted the medium of animation with a big fat stupid stick? Before the awful animated TV series, MK brought the absurdity straight-to-video...

After several years of meandering sequels, Mortal Kombat is finally going back to its roots. Just as Street Fighter IV reinvigorated Capcom’s flagging franchise, this year’s new Mortal Kombat hopes to kick-start a brand new chapter for the spine-tearing series. To ensure a successful reboot, developer NetherRealm has wisely chosen to focus on the three original games for inspiration; those three titles gripped arcades, sold millions on consoles and spawned TV shows, movies and comics, so it’s no surprise to see devs mimicking the glory days of the initial trilogy.

But before it erupted into a gaming powerhouse, Mortal Kombat was just one of countless Street Fighter II knockoffs itching for a chance in the spotlight. We’ll spend the most time on this title, then touch on how 2 and 3 set the stage for this year’s edition. Let’s begin in 1992 with…

Liu Kang might be the nominal “hero” of Mortal Kombat, but to fans, the yowling Bruce Lee clone has never really been the star. That honor is instead shared between a pair of palette-swapped badasses whose bloody moves and ever-evolving feud instantly defined Mortal Kombat as a franchise – and continued to do so for 19 years.

Scorpion and Sub-Zero began as more or less the same character, with only their different special moves and shared supernatural-revenge backstory to set them apart. They’ve since become much more, however, and with next week’s sequel/reboot about to knock them both back to square one, let’s take a look at how far they’ve come since the first time we saw them...

There are a billion reasons to make fun of any particular Mortal Kombat game, but it’s harder to knock the series for having a sense of humor. After all, this is a franchise that creates entire characters out of inside jokes, turns violent murderers into babies, and brings out its own sound designer to punctuate your ruthless acts of aggression.

The game’s never taken itself all that seriously, even though we, the fans, do! Looking back on the series as a whole, it’s difficult to see anything other than an incredibly dire bloodbath, especially since the latest Mortal Komabt is an earnest “return to form.” With that in mind, we thought it’d be fun to take a look back at some official MK asides because once you wander off the beaten path, Mortal Kombat gets batshit insane!

With Marvel vs Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds almost upon us and sporting some of the coolest, most fan-pleasing backgrounds ever seen in a fighting game, it's high time we came up with the definitive list of the Top 7 fighting game backgrounds. After all, we know you spend ages deciding where to fight, even though it rarely affects the gameplay in any way. It's OK, we do it too. So let's get started with round 1, shall we? FIGHT!

Fact: Bruce Lee is better than Chuck Norris. Lee never hawked Bowflexes in his quest for the perfect mixed martial arts form. Lee kicked Norris’ ass in Way of the Dragon. And it was Lee who brought his proprietary blend of Kung Fu kickass-ery to the mainstream with his wild whoops, and a roundhouse kick that packed more power than the millions of stale internet jokes about his co-star. So why all the Lee love on a videogame site?