Finish Him Part One: It Begins (Mortal Kombat 1 Fatalities – All Versions)

This is the first in a series of blog posts where I review fighting game fatalities in a retrospective. The factors considered will be:

Blood and Guts: How visceral the fatality is

Originality: Points for creativity

Impact: For lack of a better term, how much oomph the fatality has

2021 Halloween Special: Scary Moments in Non-Horror Retro Games

Content Warning: Violence and Gore, Flashing Lights and Colors

Some games intentionally utilize the horror genre to great effect. But other games outside of the genre occasionally foist unexpected, and unwelcome, surprises and situations upon the audience. So much so, that they become what the game is best known for. What examples can we come up with here?

The World of Drakkhen Hates and Really Wants to Kill You, No Matter How Disturbing It Has to Get

Drakkhen is a clunky medieval RPG that originated on PC and Amiga, and was then ported to the venerable Super NES early on its life cycle. Looking at the game’s box art and some of its screen shots, it appears generic and unremarkable. But the game is like a mullet of sorts; clichèd fantasy in the front, unspeakable horror and weirdness in the back. Part of this is owed to its day-night cycle, ambitious for a title of its age. However, it used its powers to menace and confound players. Even Wikipdia cites:

“Drakkhen’s gameplay is colored by its early-game brutality and surreal enemy encounters, the former especially in the SNES version. One special enemy is relegated solely to appearing when the player kicks one of the many urns in the ground. Upon doing so, a black, stationary canine head rises from beneath the floor to shoot bolts from its eyes. These encounters are quickly fatal to new players who don’t know any better.”

There is also the deadly and invincible Shadow Man, AKA the Shade of Doom, who lives up to his name by appearing as a tall and lanky black silhouette with a red symbol in his chest (though some posit that this is not a completely random monster design, but rather a fine art reference); Some of the constellations in the game will form monsters to menace your party; There is a strange encounter with an “unburnt”, indescribable monster in a fireplace in one area that does immense damage to the party while making strange noises, almost like a frog ribbiting; And then… then there’s the “I Love You” monster in the Fire Area. Clearly an eldritch abomination of pure evil, it looks like a human silhouette that dances on a loop. What really makes it unsettling is what it says: “I Love You” over and over, with the pitch changing up and down randomly. This is only in the PC version, however; in the SNES port, it just… moans, which some say is even worse.

Perhaps the developers of Drakkhen missed their calling in horror, but they later made a spiritual successor called Dragon View to more acclaim. This screenshot LP is pretty positive.

Adaptation April 2021: Alien 3 (NES, Sega Genesis, and Super NES)

“The ALIENS are fast, spit acid, and are right behind YOU!”

Alien 3 (NES)| Developer: Probe| Publisher: LJN| Released: March 1993

Talking about some of the games based on what may be the worst Alien movie out of the original quadrilogy? Sure, why not. Despite… most of the recent flicks in the series, I still love the franchise, and these games have some interesting trivia, like which one adapts the film’s tragic ending. It may not be the one that you’d think.

The NES, Sega Master System, Genesis, and Game Gear games based on the flick have the same basic premise: As Ripley, you have to run around the levels and rescue the other prisoners and reach the exit under the time limit. Depending on which version you’re playing, this is easier said than done.

Contrary to the flick’s premise, there are numerous aliens wandering around instead of just one, and Ripley is packing heat to deal with them, but because all of the prisoners are trapped in Xenomorph webbing, none of them are free to help her. The Super NES version of the game is a bit more involved because you acquire multiple objectives per level, and you can do them in any order you wish.