Mortal Kombat 4

Mortal Kombat 4
Sales flyer for the arcade game of Mortal Kombat
Developer(s)	Midway Games, Eurocom
Publisher(s)	Midway Games
Series	Mortal Kombat
Platform(s)	Arcade, Game Boy Color, PC, PlayStation, N64, Dreamcast
Release date(s)	October 15, 1997 (Arcade) June 24, 1998 (PlayStation) July 31, 1998 (PC) June 23, 1998 (N64)
Genre(s)	Fighting
Mode(s)	Up to 2 players
Media	CD Rom (PlayStation, PC), GD Rom (Dreamcast), Cartridge (N64, Game Boy Color)
System requirements	System: Pentium-133 or equivalent RAM: 32 MB Video Memory: 2 MB Hard Drive Space: 25 MB
Input methods	8-way joystick; 6 buttons Gamepad
Cabinet	Standard
Arcade system	Midway Zeus hardware Main CPU: TMS32031 (@ 50 MHz) Sound CPU: ADSP2104 (@ 16 MHz) Sound Chips: (2x) DMA-driven (@ 16 MHz)

Mortal Kombat 4 is the fifth and final arcade game in the Mortal Kombat series of fighting video games. It was later ported to the PlayStation and Nintendo 64. An updated version titled Mortal Kombat Gold was released a year later exclusively for the Sega Dreamcast.

Gameplay

Mortal Kombat 4 is played in a similar way to the previous titles from the series. It introduces a limited weapon system, allowing one to take out a weapon using a set button combination, having an almost completely new movelist for the said character. The weapons can also be thrown and dropped, in similar fashion as the arena objects. If an opponent's weapon is dropped the other character is able to hold it and use it. By sidestepping the player is able to move the camera, making both characters unable to hold up the weapons or objects they had in the ground. MK4 added a "Maximum Damage" cap to the game's combo system, automatically breaking off combos if they deal over a set amount of damage to a player and, thus, preventing infinite combos (although this cap can be removed with a code). Unlike Mortal Kombat Trilogy which contained several finishing moves like fatalities, animalities, etc., Mortal Kombat 4 only gives two fatalities per character and two "stage fatalities", fatalities that can only be done in a certain arena and involve the character throwing the opponent to part of the arena where he can die.

MK4 also contains a Game Over countdown which showed the player's defeated character falling down what appears to be a never ending well. When the timer hits zero, the camera pans to the character's side. The character then screams as they hit a spike pit with a crunch. Game over then appears.

Plot

Thousands of years before the start of the series, Shinnok, one of the Elder Gods who control the six realms from the Mortal Kombat, attempted to become the conqueror from all of them. Thunder God Raiden fighted defeated Shinnok in a war and sent him to the Netherealm, where would be trapped forever. Now, Shinnok managed to escape from the Netherealm with help from the sorcerer Quan Chi, and seeks revenge to the Elder Gods who defeated him. In his plan, he first conquers the realm of Edenia, while he prepares to attack the Elder Gods. In order to stop Shinnok's menace, Raiden requests the help from the Earthrealm's warrior who managed to save the realm from Emperor Shao Kahn in previous titles.

Characters

The following is a list of the characters included in the Mortal Kombat 4 character selection roster.

Character selection screen.

New characters

MK4 introduced:

• Fujin - God of Wind and ally of Raiden.
• Jarek - Last of the Black Dragon.
• Kai - Shaolin monk and friend of Liu Kang.
• Quan Chi - Mysterious evil sorcerer. First appeared in Mortal Kombat: Defenders Of The Realm and then would later reappear in Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero as the main antagonist. Quan Chi poses as the final boss when Shinnok is used by the player.
• Reiko - Shinnok's general.
• Shinnok - Imprisoned Elder God. First appeared in MKM: SZ as the final boss. Shinnok appears as both the boss and sub-boss character when playing as Goro.
• Tanya - Traitor to Edenia.

MK4 also included the following hidden characters:

• Goro, the 4 armed menace, giving the game a new style in playability. Playable only in home versions.
• Meat, a bloody skeleton.
• Noob Saibot, 1st hint of his relation to Sub-Zero, due to an ice fatality.

Returning characters

• Liu Kang - Shaolin monk who seeks to destroy Shinnok.
• Jax - Special Forces who finds out that Jarek is still alive.
• Johnny Cage - Hollywood movie star who will produce his next movie.
• Raiden - Thunder god who again guides the mortals.
• Reptile - Zaterran warrior who seeks to serve Shinnok to save his realm.
• Scorpion - Undead specter who again seeks revenge on his nemesis Sub-Zero.
• Sonya Blade - Special Forces lieutenant who seeks to destroy Jarek.
• Sub-Zero - Lin Kuei again stalked by Scorpion.

Development

Co-creator from the series Ed Boon found difficulties to lead the team in charge of developing Mortal Kombat 4 due to how large had to the staff had become since the first Mortal Kombat title with him being the only programmer. Therefore, Todd Allen and Mike Boon (Ed's younger brother) joined on as programmer with Ed noting the staff was more than twice its original size.^[1] The Midway Staff wanted to remove the comical elements from the previous Mortal Kombat titles. Therefore, they focused in the making of the fatalities.^[2] On the other hand, the animalities finishing moves from MK3 were removed since the transformation of a character into an animal was considered to be hard to made in 3D graphics. In order to make fatalities more entertaining, it was decided to make a few replays from different angles of the scenes where the characters' bodies explode or a ripped off. Since actors were no longer needed to make the characters' movements, the staff found it easier to make fatalities as it was all done by animation.^[3] The gameplay was planned to be similar to the prequels although this would be the first game from the series to be made in 3D. Another desire from the staff was avoid making all the mistakes they made in War Gods, Midway's first 3D title. To advertise the game, Midway organized a 35-stop road tour of the United States. The version of the game shown in the tour had nine characters, and within these nine one was Noob Saibot, who would become a hidden character in the arcade and console ports.^[2] The staff had trouble making the 3D graphics as they them on custom hardware rather than their V-Unit. As Ed Boon was skeptical about the quality of the result noting that the gameplay would slower than previous titles, he decided to hand-animate frames with timings in a similar fashion to Street Fighter EX.^[4] Art director Tony Goskie created a 3D model for each character of the game, whom he called "Meat". It was later decided to make him a playable character as part of a hidden Easter egg.^[5] Players first learned of the character's given name after the text "Meat lives!" was placed on Ed Boon's website promoting Mortal Kombat 4's 3rd arcade revision.^[6]

Eurocom was in charge in the making of the homeversions from the game and they worked for eight months to finish the Nintendo 64 port. One of their main objectives was to maintain 60 frames per second as they never did it with a 3D fighting game. While all the traits from the arcade mode were added to the homeversion, Eurocom had to change the to polygon count to "squeeze into the resources of the Nintendo 64". Eurocom was also assisted by Ed Boon and the lead artist on the coin-up, Dave Michicich. While the home versions were still in development, Ed Boon gave fans hints about what were the things that would be in the ports of the game. These hints included Goro being a playable character and the extra costumes.^[7]

Ports

Mortal Kombat 4 was ported to the PlayStation, Nintendo 64, and PC. An upgraded version titled Mortal Kombat Gold was also released exclusively for the Dreamcast. A Game Boy Color game based on Mortal Kombat 4 was also released as well.

All the home ports of MK4 are notable for containing exclusive content not featured in the original arcade version. Possibly the biggest inclusion to the ports is Goro. He was not featured in the arcade game, but now serves as a playable sub-boss who is fought before Shinnok in single player mode. Also added to the ports is the Ice Pit, which is a snow-filled arena taking place in an icy, carved-out pit. Another new feature added to these ports are a second set of alternate outfits for all characters. The arcade version provided only one set of alternate outfits which the player could unlock. The PC and PlayStation versions run FMV intro, bios and endings, due to the CD-ROM media. The Nintendo 64 version, being a cartridge game, uses the in-game character animations to run them just like its arcade counterpart.

The Game Boy Color version of MK4 is in 2D instead of the others' 3D. It features nine selectable characters: Raiden, Quan Chi, Fujin, Liu Kang, Sub-Zero, Reiko, Tanya, Scorpion, and the hidden character Reptile. Shinnok is still the final opponent. In addition, there are a few speech clips, and instead of using the in-game graphics for the fatalities, the game uses short FMV clips.

Mortal Kombat Gold

Cyrax uppercutting Baraka in the Soul Chamber

The Dreamcast version, titled Mortal Kombat Gold, was released on September 9, 1999 as a launch title for the console in North America. The game retains the character roster from the previous versions of Mortal Kombat 4, along with six additional characters from previous Mortal Kombat games. These new MK4 characters are Kitana, Mileena, Cyrax, Kung Lao, and Baraka, and one unlockable character, Sektor. Gold also includes new levels not seen in Mortal Kombat 4 and a new weapon select mechanism.

A new character named Belokk was intended to appear in the game, but was cut from the released game.^[8][9] The developer of the game, Eurocom, sent information about the game with Belokk in it to Game Informer, and as a result, six screenshots of him were published.[1] According to Ed Boon, Belokk was cut due to time constraints during development.^[10]

Mortal Kombat Gold did not receive high marks for visual quality; Game Revolution commented: "The graphics are inexcusably horrible [and] it's quite a depressing let-down on Sega's 128-bit masterpiece, especially when compared to Soul Calibur". The weapons that characters can use during the game are "dull and uninteresting", often have little relation to the characters, and are "either a sword, axe, or club".^[11] IGN had similar bad reviews about Mortal Kombat Gold, particularly regarding the poor weaponry: "Readying your weapon is a slow process in which one can be hit any number of times during the attempt". Although they commented on the improvements from previous Mortal Kombat games, the lack of depth was considered somewhat inexcusable.^[12]

A second revision of the game, known as version 2.0, was released about a month after the initial release intending to address some of the major issues in it.^[13][14] This version fixed the most severe bugs and glitches in the game and added VMU support, which allowed saving to work properly. The revision is identifiable by a red tinted disc, as opposed to the original's gold tint, and a green sticker saying "Hot! New!" placed on the instruction manual cover.^{[citation needed]}

Reception

In October 1998, Midway announced the home venues revenues thanks to the release of various titles including Mortal Kombat 4.^[28] Mortal Kombat 4 was ranked having the 3rd best Game Over screen of all time. It was only behind Street Fighter II's and Super Mario Bros.'s Game Overs who placed second and first, respectively. ^[29]

GameRankings had an average of 76.07% from 20 reviews for the Nintendo 64 version of the game.^[15] The PlayStation and PC ports received smaller averages with the PS having 75.75% with 16 reviews, and the PC 72.14% with 14 reviews.^[16][17] The game has received positive response due the new 3D graphics, the improvement of combos, and how all the characters "are still as cheesy as ever" and that they still have their original movements with a few updates.^[24] Although various reviewers did not find it more entertaining than previous games, they still praised the gameplay. On the other hand, the gameplay was commented to very similar to the previous Mortal Kombat titles.^[19] The Nintendo 64 port received positive response for being faithful to the arcade version with GameSpot giving it a "Great" 8.9 and IGN a "Great 8.8", though they noted that the graphics were not as good as the ones from the arcade.^[20][24][22] Despite receiving a little lower scores from critics, the PlayStation and PC ports have been commented to have improvements over the arcade game and the N64 port such as having more responsive controls or the FMV scenes which were not in the others.^[25][21] However, IGN mentioned that playing the PC port would become "stale" unless the player "had an extra pad and a friend".^[26]

The Game Boy Color version received only an average of 46.00% with 3 reviews by GameRankings.^[18] It received poor reviews from publications such as GameSpot whose editor Jeff Gerstmann gave it a 3.5 out of 10 due to how different it is the game from the other ports and how unresponsive are the controls.^[23] Similarly IGN's Peer Schneider criticized how limited the gameplay had become in the Game Boy Color and that defeating the opponent was relatively easier. He gave the game a "Poor" 4.0 out of 10.^[27]

References

External links

• Mortal Kombat 4 at Eurocom
• Mortal Kombat 4 at MobyGames
• Mortal Kombat 4 at The Killer List of Videogames