Long Live Mortal Kombat, Round 1

The Fatalities and Fandom of the Arcade Era

By: David L. Craddock, John Tobias - foreword, James Rolfe - foreword

Narrated by: Andy Ingalls

To politicians and parents, Mortal Kombat was a menace to society. To gamers, it was a way of life. From dedicated hustlers who put thousands of miles on their odometers driving coast to coast to challenge the top players in arcades, to fans who devote their free time to collecting action figures, setting world records, and plumbing the depths of its lore, the Mortal Kombat franchise has topped sales charts for thirty years, and its popularity shows no signs of waning.

But before Mortal Kombat offended politicians and sold over 12 million units (and counting), executives at Midway saw it as filler—a stopgap between more promising games like NBA Jam.

Cocreators Ed Boon and John Tobias felt differently. But not even they could have imagined the phenomenon Mortal Kombat would become when it hit arcades in October 1992, or the controversy that would follow in its wake.

Based on extensive interviews, Long Live Mortal Kombat: Round 1 chronicles the arcade era of the video game industry's most infamous fighting series, the creative and technical hurdles its team had to clear, and the personal stories of the fans whose passion has made Mortal Kombat a pillar of popular culture.

©2022 David L. Craddock (P)2022 Tantor

Amazing book

Such a good time. History of the games and their life cycles was fascinating. The book covers Mk1-MK4 so well. The tech talks could get a bit boring, for me anyways, but the information was fascinating. Would recommend this to any Mortal Kombat fan.

We’ll written, interesting book

I’m not all that big of an MK fan, but I did play the first one a lot on the Genesis, even if I wasn’t that good at it. But I enjoy hearing about the history of video games and I bought this book in a whim, and was really impressed. This book is very well written, and the reader does a great job as well. There’s a few parts here and there that are obnoxious- where he is taking himself way to seriously and doing the ‘games are art’ routine, and he’ll use some woke talking points, but thankfully those parts are spread out and fairly brief - so i won’t knock any stars for that. But overall it’s just a very interesting, well written book, and I highly recommend it.

Amazing resource of information

It paints the picture of the MK scene so perfectly, you can feel like you were there.

An unbiased work

I definitely recommend this book to anyone who has had a somewhat negative vision of the franchise. I appreciate the fact that the writer went out of his way to gather perspectives from every angle rather than just seeking a particular view or set of views. Well done!
Feels great to know quite a few people that were quoted throughout the book.

Long but smooth

Once I heard it was part 1, I thought it might be too much for me; nonetheless, it was effortless to keep wanting to hear more. It covers many details that, as a player, I might have never thought of, but still very interesting.