jcasetnl, feel free…
I think more people got stabbed over MK2 than throws in SF2. All I remember was Mileena vs Mileena.
Also Noob Saibot was annoying to the point where people would jam buttons so the select code would mess up.
Ok, I’ll start…
There was this one comic book store called The Red Planet or Red Planet in Tenant Station in a small town in the South Bay. Within walking distance was a bowling alley, a movie theater, a Mountain Mike’s Pizza, and a Safeway. This was around August or September of 1992. All of these 5 locations had SFII World Warrior and SFII Champion Edition cabs. I was one of maybe three or four people playing SFII Champion Edition at Red Planet. Red Planet was the 1st out of the 5 locations I mentioned above to get an MK cab. The volume was set louder than most of the games in there. I saw about 10 to 15 people surrounding that game. The 3 to 4 of us were the diehard SF people. I told them that because of MK SF2 might be dying then about a second later I told the group surrounding the SF2 champion edition cab that this new game, MK is won’t last long compared to SF. I was just a young whippersnapper then, when this was said. Lo and behold, my predictions came into fruition years later.
I tried it when the crowd died down around 8:00PM or 9:00PM on a Friday night, because most people went to the movie theater next door to watch movies. I 1st picked Sub Zero, and did SF tactics for special moves. Coincidentally found out how to do the ice ball because of doing the hadouken motion. Some guy mentioned fatalities. About an hour later, the only fatalities I saw were Sub Zero’s and Kano’s. I was under the assumption that only those 2 characters had fatalities along with most people huddled around the cab. Some guy came in about 5 minutes later and told everyone that everyone has fatalities. Another person tried the coin on a string trick but only managed to get 5 credits off of 1 coin. By the way, the 5 places I mentioned that were located in Tenant Station all used quarters, no tokens.
At about 9:45PM (I know, probably passed for a twelve year old), I decided to pick Scorpion, but could never get get Scorpion to throw the spear. Some could was like, “Just tap low punch repeatedly and tap the joystick back repeatedly.” So, I tried it and got the spear to work finally. Nobody could pass all 3 endurance rounds successfully that night so we never go to see Goro or Shang Tsung. We did get to see Ruby and Diamond for the bonus stages though… More to follow later…
Didn’t GamePro do a release where they had all the characters with all the moves really early?
I threw out all of them except I ripped out some pages, I think I still have the “guides” they did for Alpha 3 and Rival Schools: United by Fate.
This was before the internet existed for those asking “why did he rip out pages” and back when there were no laptops, desktops were huge, and it took like 26 floppy disks to install an OS.
Game footage was very rare. There was no Youtube.
Whatever guides or “cheats” people had written down were like the bible.
They used to call me the professor in the early/mid 90s because I used to carry this binder that had every game ever and I would collect ALL the information for every game.
I just remembered when MK3: Ultimate just hit the arcade and highest difficulty. First time fighting Jade and her doing invincibility through everything, I remember this fat Russian kid getting owned so bad that I decided to wait instead of beating him to get him off (I was a kid back then so he looked like 10 times bigger than me).
I am somewhat curious about the MK competition during the earlier days…
I know nothing of the Mortal Kombat competitive scene from the past.
But… Every now and then, I do find some interesting videos that relate to them.
EDIT:
This is a little bit off topic, but there are some crazy TAS playthroughs, like this for example:
(This is a TAS Mortal Kombat 2 video showcasing some pretty weird stuff).
MKX looks more and more retro/old school like with its dark feel and storylines…
I’ve beaten 3 friends of mine 99 times in MK1 on the Mega Drive and one of them beat me on the 100th game.
That was the first time that I cracked and I became a local legend.
“The boy who can’t win 100 times” is what they call me around here.
I had a binder also but it was stolen one day in class. Me and my friends used to go to Kmart/Walmart and tear pages out of the magazines and put them in our binders lol. I was a very sad boy when mine went missing.
I remember when MK2 first arrives, my friend had a notebook of all the characters moves and fatalities. Apparently someone copied it from somewhere and gave it to his older brother. But for Jax there was the description: “he doesnt have a fatality”. So for a few years we thought indeed he didnt have a fatality, till internet was available and I told him how to do the arm-rip fatality through the phone. He was left in ecstasy and awe!
Indeed till today the catch-phrase “he doesnt have a fatality” remained as a joke among us…
That actually sounds like a legit line for George Constanza XD
You guys are loosely missing the boat on this thread. Go take a look at the 1st few pages of “Info on the Old School SF Scene?” and then you’ll know what I mean.
I remember a glitch on one of the arcade games that gave you a free credit. Can’t remember if the coin on a string trick worked on the MK games. Will post more later, young padawans…
I don’t know if it was a “scene”, but as a kid, my mom took me to Atlantic City a handful of times around '95, '96. There were arcades everywhere and the games that I remember being most popular were MK3, UMK3, X-Men COTA, and Marvel Super Heroes, with 90% of the attention centered around UMK3. I don’t remember anyone playing SF or any SNK games there…maybe a little Virtua Fighter.
I was a kid that didn’t know shit, but I knew UMK3 looked awesome because it was mature, violent, bloody, etc. and it was what the older kids were playing.
I played Cyrax because he had an easy combo and it was easy to apply it if you hit his net.
I remember there were 1 or 2 gods that just destroyed everyone. One of them definitely played Smoke. My feeble brain (nor anyone else) could not deal with his teleport-uppercut.
i remember mk1…but mk2 had the most impact in my memory. everyone flocked around and watched ppl play and do fatalities. mileena was popular…i played liu kang a lot. i just remember it being really popular at the time. wish i could be of more help.
mk1 was all on the news and the whole blood code thing for consoles was a huge thing via word of mouth. lol those were the days…being in elementary school and hearing rumors about characters and fatality codes, etc.
More in line with the theme of the thread, I frequent Jason Wilson’s (DreamTR) arcade here in Tennessee and he talks about old school MK every once in a while. He was real big in the MK/Fighting game scene, eventually wrote for Tips & Tricks, helped write a few MK strategy guides. He’s very much a hidden gem of the old school fgc. He doesn’t really like attention so he never really puts himself out there, so it’s hard to find videos of him but true old school heads should know who he is.
Here’s some oldschool MK stuff. If you know some of these people and stories then WOW!!!
http://www.trmk.org/forums/showthread.php/7982-Old-School-roll-call!!!
I always watch this thread and say “Im gonna do a BIG update on this” based on my country MK classic scene that STILL is alive at least with MKT N64… But Im always busy at work. Damnit I will someday. I have so MUCH to share, pics and vids up to 2002 in wich w started to get VERY serious about this, and stories since the MK1 days.
EDIT: Not our scene but an awesome reading, by none other than @EWAShock , Godfather of UMK3 on the US.
I’m looking forward to your crazy stories, including those with MKT and the combos that broke the PS1 disc. Seriously, how do you do that??