We’re lucky that the latest Mortal Kombat games have turned out to be so excellent. There was a stretch during the 90s when the series wasn’t as good — and it’s hilarious to look back on all of it now.
In the last month, a particular Mortal Kombat clip has been floating around on the internet. In it, you can see one of the endings available in Mortal Kombat 4 — and boy, is it terrible:
[Source: MkMaster13]
The cringe-worthy dialogue delivered in the most stilted way possible, the constantly-repeating animations, the terrible twist, the corny as hell line about fatalities, and the awful graphics: all of this combines in a really hilarious way. Thing is, this isn’t an isolated incident. Most of the endings in Mortal Kombat 4 are this bad, if not worse. Let’s take a look, shall we?
Scorpion’s Ending
[Source: MkMaster13]
Ah, yes. The eternal rivalry between Sub-Zero and Scorpion. Should make for a good storyline, right? Well…not so much, apparently!
What I like best about this ending is all the gesticulation. Scorpion points VERY INTENSELY as he tells Sub-Zero about his revenge:
He must really mean what he’s saying, huh?
You gotta love this close-up, too:
Sub-Zero’s ending
[Source: MkMaster13]
This ending is the inverse of the Scorpion ending: instead of having Sub-Zero on the ground while Scorpion points dramatically, Scorpion is on the ground and Sub-Zero points angrily:
I actually love the twist in this scene, but only because having Quan Chi come out of nowhere and punch Sub-Zero in the back of the head is pretty funny.
But the best part about this scene is that it ends in a bizarre whisper from Sub-Zero. ARRIGHT.
Reptile’s Ending
[Source: MkMaster13]
Many of the endings in this game clearly have a formula: two people argue about something, and then a third party appears out of nowhere to fuck shit up. In this case, it’s Shinnok stopping Reptile from elongating every word with an S in it.
This part is definitely the clincher:
Quan Chi’s Ending
[Source: MkMaster13]
OK, the dialogue here is actually great. The nerve, giving someone a prize that’s just “yeah, you can continue to exist!”
Quan Chi’s face after hearing Shinnok say that is the best:
Really, all of his expressions are killer:
Jarek’s Ending
A variation of the Jax ending, this 14-second clip ends with Jarek’s weird laugh.
Raiden’s Ending
[Source: Jorban123]
Raiden gets to ascend into heaven, where the great grey man in the sky bestows him with elder godhood. Seems legit.
I think a large part of what makes some of these clips good is that the N64 can barely handle the graphics:
Amazingly, this one ALSO ends with arright. According to TV Tropes, this arright thing only happens in the N64 and arcade versions of the game — not on PlayStation. Curious!
Tanya’s Ending
[Source: Jorban123]
I love how Shinnok just sort of floats in the background — it almost looks like he’s struggling to maintain his balance:
Liu Kang’s Ending
[Source: Jorban123]
Potentially the most awkward ending of them all, here’s an emotional moment that falls flat almost immediately.
What gets me the most about all of these endings is that I distinctly remember playing through the game as a kid and thinking nothing of them. This was just how how the game was; if anything, I thought it was all serious and dramatic back then. How things change!
Comments
10 responses to “Good Lord, Mortal Kombat 4’s Endings Were Terrible”
I remember this just about ran on my P3 500 lol. It is probably the worst MK of them all, but as you said, playing through it as a kid you didn’t really care. Some things are always better remembered if they stayed in the past the way you remember them 😉
MK4 cops a bit of flak but the gameplay itself was pretty tight. It was one of the first fighting games that did the “2D Gameplay with a 3D graphics engine” thing – alongside games like Street Fighter EX, and tbh MK4 was probably the best of them that did it. MK4 also got rid of a lot of the silly stuff that had crept into the MK series such as babalities and animalities and tried to return to a bit of a darker tone, and was the first game in the series to introduce weapon styles (as simplistic as they were). The graphics themselves were about on par with other games at the time (although had definitely dated quite badly by the time they made MK Gold, which was just a Dreamcast exclusive, higher res version of MK4 with some new characters).
Yes, these endings are bad. Terrible, even. It should be noted though that the majority of these ending videos look to be from the N64 version, which didn’t have the storage capacity to store the prerendered videos that the arcade, PS1 and PC versions had, so they had to use the game engine for them.
Yeah I didn’t remember the endings looking like this.. I had (probably still have lol) a bootleg ps1 version of this game, I absolutely LOVED it, played everyone to completion, unlocked MEAT lol. It was the last MK game I played really until MK vs DC (which I also really enjoyed lol). But I remember this game being up there with Tekken 3 as my two fav ps1 fighting games – oh MK Trilogy I guess counts.. thats the only iteration of the original games I can play now it looks and feels so much better than the standalone versions of 1-3.
MK Trilogy was indeed good and a high point of the 2D MK games, although I also like busting out a few games of MKII. It’s aged really well.
I agree, the gameplay of MK4 was great. Were any of the endings pre-MK4 any better? Ive been sitting here watching “compilation” after another with MK1-3/U make it to every console in existence (presumably because the MAME team discovered emulation), but nobody has bothered to port those early 3D titles like this one. My money is waiting.
The Reptile ending is why Shinnok was my favorite character among other things. Shinnoks ending I still remember vividly to this day (almost like a fever dream)… … … ARIGHT-
I’m assuming these vids are from the Playstation port and not the arcade which had the zeus system which was more powerful than the psx hence better graphics.
Pretty confident that’s the N64 one.
So it’s a tribute to how bad the n64 was opposed to mk4.
I had that on N64. I didn’t mind it. Horrible graphics? It was the N64. All games looked basically the same back then on Saturn, PSX and N64. I thought it played pretty well.