‘Mortal Kombat’ was born in 1992 with the intention of competing with ‘Street Fighter II’. Its developers knew that trying to make a normal fighting game wouldn’t get them anywhere and that Midway would end up kicking ’em out. After much thought, they came to the conclusion that they had to differentiate themselves in some way. So they didn’t set any rules, simply creating an imaginative and brutal game where anything was allowed. Thirty-two years have passed and both sagas are still alive… But one, definitely, more than the other.
Fatality!
All you have to do is look at the number of players registered to compete in the game at EVO, the largest fighting-game tournament in the world. And while ‘Street Fighter 6’ will have a macro-tournament of 5,265 people and ‘Tekken 8’ will have 4,646, ‘Mortal Kombat 1’ will have to settle… for 645 aspirants. In fact, this number is surpassed by games like ‘Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike’. That must hurt.
But the pain doesn’t come only from the professional scene: On Steam, only half as many people are playing Mortal Kombat 1 as ‘Mortal Kombat 11’, the previous game in the series, and everything seems to suggest that after less than a year, this new creation by NetherRealm and Warner is already doomed. But it’s not that simple, considering that the competitive variant of ‘Mortal Kombat’ has always been anecdotal. It’s a banned game in Japan, and most players of the series prefer consoles over PC.
We don’t have exact numbers or evidence of the damage, but it’s true that many of the new mechanics have not convinced regular gamers, such as the famous Kameos (characters that provide assistance to the main character with attacks). Or maybe it’s just that we’re not quite seeing the big picture: ‘Mortal Kombat 1’ hasn’t wanted to focus on the elitism of combat in the style of ‘Street Fighter’, trying to be more of a casual fighting game with the goal of having a good time.
Who knows. At the moment, NetherRealm has already confirmed that there are a few DLCs still to come, and they’re actively supporting the community. Assuming, you know, that there still is a community by the end of the year.
