Mortal Kombat 4

About Mortal Kombat 4

Mortal Kombat 4 (1997) is Midway's first 3D Mortal Kombat and the series' last arcade release, adding weapons as the fallen Elder God Shinnok wages war on the realms.

Mortal Kombat 4 in Depth

Millennia before the first game, the Elder God Shinnok tried to conquer all six realms until the thunder god Raiden defeated him in a centuries-long war and imprisoned him in the Netherrealm. Now, with the sorcerer Quan Chi's help, Shinnok escapes, conquers Edenia with the aid of the traitor Tanya and prepares to strike the Elder Gods who banished him. Seventeen other playable characters take sides as the forces of light try to stop him and the forces of darkness seek to rule all the realms.

It plays much like earlier games, with running and combos retained, and despite its 3D graphics characters are mostly limited to a 2D path apart from sidestepping. New is a limited weapon system: each character can draw a special weapon with a button combination and swing, club or throw it with the punch buttons. Weapons can be dropped and picked up by the opponent, as can arena objects such as severed heads and rocks. A Maximum Damage cap automatically breaks combos that deal too much damage, preventing infinite combos unless disabled by a code. Each character has two standard Fatalities, plus two Stage Fatalities that throw the loser into a deadly part of the arena, and unlike the first three games there are no non-playable bosses except Goro in home versions. Next Generation called it "a fast-moving, dark, and disturbing fighter that retains many of the series' best qualities".

Making Mortal Kombat 4

Ed Boon, who had been the only programmer on the first Mortal Kombat, found the much larger team hard to lead and brought in Todd Allen and Mike Boon. Some staff had worked on Midway's first 3D fighter, War Gods, but dropped its "digital skin" technique, and with computer animation replacing filmed actors apart from some motion capture, Fatalities became easier to make. The team removed the series' comical finishing moves to make it more violent, and when news programmes raised concerns, Boon replied that more violent games already existed. Reviews were generally positive: Next Generation lamented the lack of real innovation but said "it's much better than War Gods", while GamePro noted bugs in version 1.0. It was ported to PlayStation, Nintendo 64, Windows and Game Boy Color in 1998, the last poorly received.