Mortal Kombat is Midway's 1992 arcade fighting game that introduced digitized fighters, fatality finishers, and one of the genre's most recognizable tournament casts.
Mortal Kombat is a fighting game developed by Midway Manufacturing and published by Midway Games for arcades in 1992. Built around a supernatural martial arts tournament, it lets players choose from fighters such as Liu Kang, Johnny Cage, Sonya Blade, Raiden, Scorpion, Sub-Zero, and Kano while battling toward Goro and Shang Tsung.
The game uses one-on-one best-of-three-round matches with punches, kicks, throws, blocks, special moves, and projectiles. Its control layout includes separate high and low attacks, and each fighter has a small move set designed around timing, spacing, and reading an opponent's jump-ins or sweeps.
Mortal Kombat became famous for its finishing moves. After a decisive round, the announcer calls for the victor to finish the opponent, giving skilled players a short window to enter a character-specific fatality command.
The arcade original used digitized footage of actors instead of hand-drawn sprites, giving its fighters a distinct look compared with other early 1990s fighting games. Its dark fantasy tone, sharp sound effects, and exaggerated violence helped separate it from the tournament-fighter boom that followed Street Fighter II.
Mortal Kombat became a major arcade hit and a flashpoint in public debates over video game violence after its home-console ports. Its place on Time's 2016 list of the 50 best video games reflects the original arcade game's long influence on fighting games, ratings debates, and pop-culture memory.