September 1993: Mortal Monday



In my time at Elbo there was never a game launch as grand as Mortal Kombat. It spent the several months gulping quarters at the arcade with a fury. The long lines of gamers, eagerly waiting a turn to play, revived memories of arcade classics like Pac-Man or Dragon's Lair. When a home version was announced there was a buzz in the stores that went on for months.

We took more pre-orders & reservations for Mortal Kombat than any other game, except its sequel. Our reservation system was rather crude. We had a gigantic, heavy, over-stuffed red binder on the front counter where customers would leave their name and phone number for an upcoming release. We'd take a reservation on any game even if only one person cared about it, there were a lot of mostly blank pages. The Mortal Kombat reservation list took up more pages than an unabridged copy of Dune. A reservation meant we'd hold a copy for 48 hours, a pre-order guaranteed a copy on the release date. The idea of pre-ordering a game was still kind of new so some shoppers were skeptical. It was about a 10:1 ratio of reservations to pre-orders. Over time that would flip in the other direction as new games came out in short supply.

The controversy around the violent content only fueled sales. Senator Joseph Lieberman sold more copies of Mortal Kombat than every video game store employee combined.

The store phone rang off the hook with kids asking when Mortal Kombat would be released. Never mind that the entire marketing campaign revolved around the "Mortal Monday: September 13" theme. The volume of calls got so bad that we starting answering the phone like this:


I too had been swept up in Mortal Kombat madness. During my brief enrollment at CLC, I easily spent more time in the arcade playing Mortal Kombat I & II than I did in class and studying combined. In the basement of the main building there was a dark, smoky game room filled with slackers. There was a regular group huddled around fighting games like Street Fighter II, King of Fighters, Samurai Showdown, and of course Mortal Kombat. Titles like NBA Jam and Lethal Enforcers had a few faithful players, but nothing compared to the manic following of the fighters. From the time the doors opened at 8:00 to their closing at 7:00, there was a steady line waiting for their turn to release virtual brutality on their peers. At the risk of boasting about something not worth boasting about, I can say I became nearly unbeatable at it. I often played for over an hour on a single quarter, leaving behind a wake of frustrated opponents. I was borderline obsessed with the Mortal Kombat games, it's not a stretch when I say I played for 4+ hours a day. Now I don't play 4 hours of anything in a week or two. What the hell though, I was 18 and didn't have the motivation to do anything serious. I guess most males go through a phase like this.

The first release on September 13 included versions for the Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo, Game Boy, and Game Gear. A debate raged among gamers on whether to buy the Genesis or Super Nintendo version. The Super Nintendo version had superior graphics, but it was well-known that Nintendo forbad the inclusion of blood & fatalities. Gore won out over graphics as the pre-sales of the Genesis version dwarfed the Super Nintendo one.

It turns out the Super Nintendo version wasn't just missing fatalities, it replaced them with comically bad ones. Johnny Cage wiggling his foot in his opponents torso was my favorite. More importantly, the game play was different than the arcade. It was like playing a poor imitation, Pac-Man for the Atari 2600. It was almost as though the programmers thought "screw Nintendo" when they were forced to censure the game. The Genesis version, on the other hand, played almost exactly like the arcade. It wasn't long before many of the Super Nintendo pre-sells were exchanged for the graphically inferior Genesis version. I'm rarely critical of Nintendo but their botched handling of Mortal Kombat set themselves back in the 16-bit war.

Shortly after the home version of Mortal Kombat hit the shelves, Mortal Kombat II started appearing in arcades. Later that year two of the actors from Mortal Kombat I & II popped-up in our store. It wasn't a planned event or anything. Carlos Pensina (Raiden) and Richard Divisio (Baraka, Kano) were out shopping with their girlfriends and another employee recognized them. They were both cool. They asked if they could get some free Mortal Kombat hats that were a promo item for pre-sales of the PC version. We gladly parted with a few in exchange for autographs. Yeah, getting the autograph of a game actor is dorky but I don't care.

An interesting note about the magazine cover to the left. Richard Divisio is dressed in the Scorpion outfit instead of Daniel Pesina who's posing as Cage. Daniel played Cage and all the ninjas in Mortal Kombat II. Since they wanted Scorpion on the cover they had Richard don the attire instead.