promptly picked up the studio that produces the series (now known as NetherRealm Studios). until Midway went bankrupt and Warner Bros. Add that to the fact that virtually no one ever actually died in the story, despite the ultra-violent nature of the games (a move that virtually guarantees stagnation), and you've got a series that seemed to be on its last legs. And while other series have made a successful leap to 3D, MK was "hit and miss". Eventually, the violence grew cartoonish in its excess, and the gameplay engine was not enough to sustain its popularity once other companies caught on to the idea that violence was nothing to be scared of. The designers, encouraged by their success, racked up the body count in subsequent installments, devising entirely new methods of dismemberment and decapitation. The Moral Guardians went through the roof, but the series was a smash hit anyway. Mortal Kombat was the first game to ditch that pretense, with copious amounts of High-Pressure Blood, screaming, impaling, and Finishing Moves that delighted in how many body parts they could sever. Pre- MK, most designers kept some sort of plausible deniability in their games, claiming that nobody was really dead, or it was only monsters, or some other excuse. In its heyday, it was incredibly risqué, especially when Nintendo practically owned the video game market, as most games did not include overt, bloody violence. What started as a fairly typical global tournament clone in the vein of Street Fighter II or Enter the Dragon quickly transmogrified into an interdimensional war and the mass genocide of the human race, which still somehow managed to shake out in the form of a series of one-on-one matches. Packed with secrets, Easter Eggs, and hidden characters (and largely predating the Internet), the first few games lent themselves well to an Urban Legend of Zelda or two, and it seemed like just about anything was possible. It had style that passed for maturity at the time, a certain something that more family-friendly games couldn't replicate. In its prime, for about three games, Mortal Kombat was the very essence of cool. The series is defined almost solely by its uber-violence and the odd spelling of its title. It was started and developed over a long time by Midway Games and has since crept out into other media. Mortal Kombat is a long-running series of fighting games.
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