In the 1990s, the arcades were still popular with teens like me, especially during the Street Fighter II vs. Mortal Kombat heydays. Mortal Kombat entered the arcade scene in 1992, and it easily lured arcade players away from other fighting games. A game that could pull people away from the popular Street Fighter II was unheard of. Sometimes people had to unfortunately wait for their turn to play; on occasions I’d even take a peek by looking over someone’s shoulder to see all the action on the screen. Friends and the rest of the people I knew favored Mortal Kombat, but I didn’t. I played the game a few times with my brothers and friends but never on a consistent basis when I was at my local arcade, The Skill Mill.

I was mildly interested in Mortal Kombat and never became a fan. But I was impressed with Mortal Kombat’s graphics, using real life actors to portray the characters. The fighters looked, moved, and talked just like people in real life. Midway’s decision to add buckets of blood and finishing moves to the gameplay was over the top, but very original -- giving the player the power to pull out someone’s heart or spine was something I had never seen in a video game. But I guess the violence was one of the main reasons why it became so popular for kids and young adults at the arcades. Mortal Kombat did take an original approach to the fighting genre, going in the opposite direction of Street Fighter in several ways: the controls were simple to perform and the realistic graphics complemented the blood and gore.

One day during junior high school, me and a few guys had a conversation about Mortal Kombat; one of them heaped piles of praise on the game’s combination of violence and realism, his main reasons why it was the superior fighting game to Street Fighter II. I remember he used the word "cartoons" in a derogatory sense for the Capcom characters. I didn’t think about it then, but the success of a violent realistic looking game like Mortal Kombat was a sign that the future of video games today would feature violence and graphics imitating reality.