Competition & Controversy

Even though Street Fighter 2 found massive success it still found healthy competition. It was inevitable that there would be imitators and as the game became popular a variety of clones started to appear to challenge its fighting crown. No other franchise quite gave Street Fighter the competition that Mortal Kombat did as the two games vied for control of an audience which was divided. Some wanted precise gameplay and cartoon visuals, others wanted to rip out their opponents spine and show it to them.

Mortal Kombat became the yin to Street Fighter's yang. "...a programmer and designer tasked with coming up with a new game to capitalize on the sudden popularity of Street Fighter II and the fighting game genre. One can imagine their thought process: "Well, we can't do what Street Fighter does, because they're better at it. We have to be something else entirely."" [1]. The result was a realistic, gory game with digitized graphics of real people based on the Street Fighter one-on-one mold. The game gave Street Fighter 2, the game that popularized the fighting game genre in the first place, its competition as arcades would fill with teenagers hoping to pull off a mutilating fatality on their rival. Mortal Kombat's success stemmed from this. Seeing the (relatively less in comparison) controversy that Street Fighter had created from its portrayal of violence, the creators of Mortal Kombat saw the opening for free publicity, and lots of it.



"Outraged parents led to outraged news outlets which led to more notoriety than Midway ever could have paid an advertising agency for. Nothing is cooler for kids than something that an authority tells them they can't do." [1]. It was a complete success and helped establish the fighting game genre as a whole as a noteworthy new area of video gaming while giving Street Fighter a run for its money a more and more people flocked away from its arcade machines. Mortal Kombat inspired many changes in the subsequent installments of Street Fighter 2. Hidden characters would be introduced, while the character roster would be increased to a high 16 to respond to the amount found in Mortal Kombat 2. However both franchises would find it difficult to follow their initial successes and would struggle to break into the realms of 3D allowing others to take their place.

It's interesting to hear that, almost two decades later, the competition Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter went through would be welcomed today. At a time where one-on-one fighters have become something of a underdog, Chris Kramer, Senior Director of Communications at Capcom, hopes to reignite the genre and recapture the popularity of the Street Fighter franchise, ""I think we'd welcome the return of a rivalry like that," says Kramer. "It would be good for and fun for both companies." [2]. A competitive market in the fighting game genre would generate much more interest in the games which suffered after "arcades up and vanished in North America and Europe..." [2]. With the recent release of Street Fighter 4 and the possible release of a new Mortal Kombat after Midway were taken over by Warner Bros. there are hopes that the genre will take the centre stage again as it did in 1991.

It's also interesting to note that Ed Boon, creator of Mortal Kombat, hoped to create a crossover game, Street Fighter vs. Mortal Kombat, in a similar vein to the Capcom vs. Marvel games [3]. It will probably never happen, but if it were to be created it would most likely become a sales juggernaut and could single handedly bring the one-on-one fighter back to the forefront of multiplayer gaming. One can hope!

[1] Ben Gelinas, Style vs. Substance, Round 2, FINISH HIM!, 16/06/2009, retrieved 16/12/2009
[2] Leigh Alexander,Interview: Capcom 'Would Welcome' Return Of Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat Brand Rivalry, 21/08/09, retrieved 16/12/09
[3] Wesley Yin-Poole, Ed Boon tried to make Mortal Kombat vs. Street Fighter, 18/04/09, retrieved 16/12/09