Mortal Kombat Vs. Street Fighter 2

Release

• Street Fighter 2 was developed by Capcom and released in arcades in 1991. The game was a sequel to Capcom's modestly successful original Street Fighter, which had been released in 1987. A home console port for the Super Nintendo was released in 1992. The game's success led rival developer Midway to create its own fighting game franchise. The result was Mortal Kombat, released in arcades in 1992 and ported to the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis in 1993.

Gameplay

• Street Fighter 2 introduced many of the gameplay elements that have become staples of the fighting game genre. Players fought each other or the computer AI in one-on-one combat. Players could select from multiple characters, and each character had a different fighting style. There were six different attack buttons, which could be pressed separately or strung together for attack combos. Players could input button commands to perform special moves, such as throws or projectile attacks, and players also could block enemy attacks. Mortal Kombat used many of these same elements, though it only used four attack buttons instead of six. One of the most important gameplay inclusions in Mortal Kombat was the fatality system, where victorious players could input a command to perform a bloody finishing move on their opponents.

Style and Design

• Capcom used a colorful, cartoonish design scheme in Street Fighter 2, with characters and arenas being animated and brightly colored. The lighthearted fantasy of Street Fighter 2 stood in stark contrast to the dark realism of Mortal Kombat. Midway used digitized photographs of actors to create the characters in Mortal Kombat, heightening the game's realism. The graphic violence displayed in the fatalities added to the game's grim style.

Story and Characters

• The story in Street Fighter 2 centered on a fighting tournament that pitted the world's greatest fighters against each other. Each fighter was from a different part of the world, and characters included Japanese martial arts master Ryu, the Brizilian monster Blanka and Indian yoga master Dhalsim, among others. The story of Mortal Kombat also focused on a fighting tournament, with the evil Shang Tsung attempting to take control of the tournament in order to conquer Earth. Characters included the ninjas Sub-Zero and Scorpion, Hollywood movie star Johnny Cage and Kung Fu master Liu Kang.

Legacy

• Street Fighter 2 was enormously successful upon its release, spawning numerous sequels, spin-offs and imitators. Street Fighter IV has since been released on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 game consoles. Mortal Kombat became infamous for its violence. When the game was released on home consoles, the uncensored Sega Genesis version greatly outsold the censored Super Nintendo version, single-handedly increasing Sega's market share and ushering in an age of violent video games.