We are taking a break from Even Worse Streams business as usual this week because, on the day before Election Day 2024, I need to vent a little bit. There is precedent for this. Please bear with me, as I believe there is a moral somewhere in here. Anywho…
We are living in Mortal Kombat.
Mortal Kombat was released a little over thirty years ago. Ignoring spinoffs and auxiliary materials, there have been twelve “main” Mortal Kombat titles. Over the last three decades, the franchise has relentlessly “yes, and”’ed its plot. So despite multiple returns to the original concept of “Mortal Kombat 1”, there has been one continuous plot throughout (there just happen to be a trickle of times the universe exploded). Even though the story has been continuous, there have been retcons and “fixes” over the years to guarantee that the latest release is about as exciting as it can possibly be. Many of these changes involve characters (not) dying, but more than a couple have bestowed “chosen one” status on assorted hangers-on, or revealed that some incidental nothing a couple of years back was the secret plan of a rogue god (or titan). Mortal Kombat as an unbroken story has had some brutal(ity) changes over the years.
And this is all preamble for the stated premise that we are only examining the plot of Mortal Kombat (1992) and Mortal Kombat II today. Any later retcons will be summarily ignored. And to that end, allow me to remind you of the plot of Mortal Kombat…
Shang Tsung is an ancient wizard-looking dude that is holding a tournament. He invites seven combatants to his private island, and they will fight for victory. According to the gameplay of Mortal Kombat, the tournament consists of a series of one-on-one fights between every invitee, and then a magical “mirror match” where the potential champion must fight their own double. Then the fighter must endure tag teams of the defeated antagonists before being challenged by Goro, the four-armed monster man that has been “undefeated for 500 years”. The tournament should be won with Goro’s defeat, but our protagonist still must battle Shang Tsung, who has absorbed the souls of the defeated warriors, and now wields the power of an entire tournament of karate magicians. Shang Tsung is defeated, the day is saved, and “the tournament” is now in the hands of… someone.
And that is a consistent “thing” across the multiple endings of the original, 1992 Mortal Kombat. Basically, every selectable character has a different plan for the Mortal Kombat tournament that “Shang Tsung has corrupted”. Liu Kang returns “the contest to its rightful hosts – The Shaolin Temples”. Sonya “puts an end to… Shang Tsung’s powerful grip on the tournament” with no further elaboration. Raiden makes Mortal Kombat a gods-only affair, and Johnny Cage transforms it all into a movie franchise. Kano makes such a mess of things that “it will result in the final dismantling of the tournament”. Only Scorpion and Sub-Zero do not distinctly make mention of their ideas for the future of Mortal Kombat in their endings; they lament being flaming skeletons and roll around on a pile of money respectively. And, while all the fighters have separate plans, it appears the be unanimous that whatever Mortal Kombat is, Shang Tsung was fucking it up.
Mortal Kombat II elaborated on this plot by introducing Shao Kahn. Shang Tsung was always Shao Kahn’s minion, and his purpose with the Mortal Kombat tournament on Earth was to “unbalance the Furies and doom the planet”. The intro and endings of Mortal Kombat II confirm that Shao Kahn’s tournament in Outworld also has the capacity to “unbalance the Furies” and consequently damn Earth to be ruled by a barbarian in a skull mask that already turned his own realm into a giant, purple toilet. Mortal Kombat (1992) implies it, and Mortal Kombat II defines it: this tournament is for the very fate of the world.
And it’s all up to a handful of random morons that happen to know how to throw a roundhouse.
Mortal Kombat (1992) had a limited roster of seven characters. All playable fighters were at least Earth-natives, but only two (maybe three) characters were there for altruistic reasons. Sonya is trying to capture Kano and free her team. That is a lawful good action, even if it is slightly vengeance-based. Johnny Cage is possibly a good person, he’s just incidentally going to get rich and famous off the rights to Mortal Kombat. Is he any better than Sub-Zero participating in an assassination cash grab? At least he is cooler about it. Liu Kang is the unmistakable hero of the piece, as his ending is the most philanthropical, and even his fatality does not dim the lights to showcase that he has noble intentions while uppercutting his victims into oblivion. He’s the good guy! 
But he is also a loose cannon that is off the case, Ninja Cop, because his backstory markedly notes that he has left the White Lotus society to join Mortal Kombat. Our remaining choices are Kano, the piss-soaked criminal, and Scorpion, the ghost out for fiery revenge. And, while later games have drafted Raiden into the ranks of the more noble, his initial appearance was more chaotic. He is a god participating in a mortal tournament, and his ending reveals his “plans for Mortal Kombat” will literally lead to the end of humanity. Have a nice day.
What does this mean? Well, since Mortal Kombat only has two altruistic participants… Earth has a 28% chance of survival after Mortal Kombat.
And it is starting to feel like our Earth has roughly the same odds.
I voted for Biden in 2020. If I had to go back in time and do it all over again, I would vote for Biden again. There is literally no doubt in my mind that Biden 2020-2024 would be/was better than a theoretical Trump 2020-2024. But, that said, Biden has not been my favorite president. He has accomplished a lot! He (officially) ended the Iraq War (conflict) that had been raging for my entire adulthood. He was unsuccessful on wiping out student debt, but has placed steps in there to lessen debt for thousands of people. He has consistently supported worker’s rights in national strikes. He got a whole program for getting lead out of water pipes. We needed that last one! It helps with the Fall of Rome comparisons!
But, as someone who has some specific “single issue voter” problems with the current state of our government, I do not believe Biden has been a good president. He has been an objectively good president for reasons already noted, but he has been a bad president for not rising to the occasion of this moment. Metaphorically, he has operated like a peacetime president during an epoch where we are 100% at war. Or maybe that is no metaphor, as I just watched the opposition party hold a rally at Madison Square Garden where they actively and unanimously called practically every gender and race that did not conform to their candidate “garbage”. Being a sitting president in a nation where that is happening and doing nothing to combat that kind of hate is gravely negligent. “Gravely” as in “people have died”…
Biden officially took office January 20, 2021, and the only remarkable moment from that date is Bernie’s mittens. Everyone remembers a few weeks earlier a lot more vividly. January 6 was the day Biden was certified as our next president, and it was coincidentally the day Donald Trump led an insurrection that attempted to not only stymy our future, but also maybe murder significant members of our democratically elected government. It was an incident watched ‘round the world. And, miraculously, of the 1,500 people that were charged for attacking the Capitol, Donald Trump was not one of them. He is running for president again because not a single member of our federal government, from President to prosecutor, effectively did a damn thing to punish and/or stop him. The only difference between Trump’s 2024 and 2020 campaign is now Trump has a new VP pick, because, ya know, he tried to have the last one killed. Not liking your survivability rating at the new job, Jimmy!
But while we are addressing Vice President picks, let’s talk about Kamala Harris. Biden is not running for president again. His Vice President, Kamala Harris, is now the woman going up against Trump. Harris successfully ran for District Attorney of San Francisco, and won after a heated runoff finale. She again triumphed and was elected as the California Attorney General seven years later. Six years after that, she “graduated” to the National Senate through another winning campaign. Unfortunately, when she primaried for the Democratic Presidential Nominee in 2020, she failed. Joeseph Biden prevailed there, but Harris was chosen as his running mate. Joe Biden won that presidential race, and Harris served for four years as Vice President. Now, by virtue of President Biden being born the same year as the title of a Capcom shoot ‘em up, Vice President Harris is running for president. After being democratically elected by nobody to be Biden’s second, Harris is now the Democratic candidate for president.
I’m voting for her! I encourage all of you to vote for her, too! Gogglebob.com officially endorses Kamala Harris for President of the United States (eat it, papers of record). I have occasionally been happy about this fact, too! There was about ten minutes there where Biden “retired” and Harris took the stage and Walz started calling Republicans weird where I genuinely had hope for the future!
And then things got a little… Annoying.
I acknowledge that I am a weirdo. I do not eat at popular restaurants, and my favorite meal is a microwavable teriyaki chicken & rice dish that was discontinued in roughly 2010. I rarely have the same taste in music as my contemporaries, and I do not believe I have ever been excited about a single “sport” in my life. I have notably overwritten any concept of a personality with “has videogames” (see also: this entire site). All that is preamble for the acknowledgment that I know I’m “weird”, and I am not some magical “average voter”. That said, the Harris Campaign has outstandingly not appealed to me.
The Harris Campaign has included gestures towards policies I would support (health care, marijuana legalization), but there have also been promoted endorsements of Republicans I have actively hated since my 20’s. They have the unrelenting Democratic urge to appeal to “undecided voters” in an election that includes two very well-established platforms. Fun fact: a lot of those “appeals” are things like “Trump accidentally helped a trans person once, and in this house we follow the law!” Which… What? We are picking on minorities because they are literally minorities? Or because we have to petition… Who? Wealthy cis white guys that are funding the campaign? And never mind the fact that this candidate is a representative of an administration that has supported wars I abhor, “kids in cages”, the somehow enduring border wall, and whatever cowardice that has encouraged the Supreme Court to become an irreproachable governing body comprised primarily of evil wizards. I would be comfortable with a campaign that said, “Whoops, we screwed up in a few places over the last four years, let’s correct some mistakes!” But, nope! I have a choice between the party that actively committed crimes, or the party that chooses not to prosecute those crimes (and is indicating they are never going to change, because nothing was ever wrong with that). Could you throw me a bone, only viable political candidate?
Could you make me think I’m voting for a noble Liu Kang, and not an uncaring Raiden!?
I was always told that Watergate and Nixon’s impeachment was a black eye on the face of the nation. But now we have a man running for president that was impeached twice. And the ostensible “people in charge” did nothing to prevent us from winding up in the exact situation. If Donald Trump is elected president again, do you think he is going to do less crimes? You know, because there was such a downside to him doing those over and over again with zero repercussions? Nope! The former president that never won the popular vote is just going to grab an entire palace, fill it up with gold, and sit around while people fight for his amusement. We have a shrinking collection of kombatants that might stand up to this terrible reign. And even if they succeed, they all have their own motivations that might be better, but not necessarily good. We might not quite have Scorpion running for president, but we are lacking a Sonya Blade. Keep the furies balanced, vote to keep the dictator off his own private island, and just hope that the White Lotus Society sticks a candidate up there next time that will actually make life better. In the meanwhile, we have a small collection of people telling us they are going to “handle it” with no evidence they ever will. Harris has given us no hint that she’s Liu Kang, but she is maybe Johnny Cage, and we know the previous administration has used a number of Sub-Zero moves. But at least we’re not simping for Goro! That nepo baby’s Fury policy is awful!
Vote for the best candidate (Harris), and never stop fighting for a better future. We cannot rely on the roster currently available to improve the world. We let this one slide, we just accept “business as usual”, and we’ll wake up one day to learn Kano is pissing all over what’s left of the tournament that is our lives.
It is Mortal Kombat. Fight for a better world.
FGC #679 Mortal Kombat 2
System: Mortal Kombat 2 was disproportionately available on retro consoles versus its modern inaccessibility. Mortal Kombat 2 was released on the Genesis, Game Gear, 32X, Sega Saturn, Master System, Amiga, PC, Super Nintendo, Gameboy, and Playstation. The “for real” arcade edition eventually made it to homes on the Playstation 3. And then, because Midway barely exists anymore, it was never released again.- Number of players: Two. And we are not acknowledging endurance matches again for this tournament.
- Maybe actually talk about the game for a second: Yes, this article was just me venting about my current feeling of helplessness in the face of democracy crumbling. That said, Mortal Kombat 2 is a fun fighting game that I played for millions of hours in its day… and then never again. Replaying it “for real” for the first time since Mortal Kombat 3 was released, I feel it is one of the more rigid 2-D fighters of the era. You have so few options! And such an emphasis on fireballs! And the computer clearly cheats! I remember having an unparalleled entertaining time with Mortal Kombat 2 when I was a kid, but replaying it now just reminds me I have Mortal Kombat 1 DLC to address.
- Favorite Fighter: You can play as Reptile in this one! And he still has his slide! Green ninja forever!
- Favorite Ninja: For a distinctly different category, we have the color-coded ninja finals. Mileena wins this one, as her teleport kick is unstoppable. Conversely, Kitana’s anti-airs and fan tosses are more powerful, but literally never work. Similarly, Scorpion and his one new special move of “throws sometimes” is a goddamned travesty. Sub-Zero is coming in second to Mileena with his ice slick that, like Kitana’s fan moves, is always miraculously avoided by CPU opponents.
- Best Fighter: Liu Kang won the last tournament (and this one!) because he has the most robust moveset. Fireballs all over the place, instant horizontal jump kick, and a bicycle kick that bleeds health off the opponent. Unstoppable lil’ dude.
Did you know? Liu Kang has been the canon champion of multiple Mortal Kombat tournaments, but has never returned as a final boss. He was even the King of Hell for a time there! And he’s currently a god! But during gameplay, the poor dude barely ever gets upgraded to “has a shirt” status.- Would I play again: I am a Mortal Kombat 3 Ultimate/Trilogy kind of classic Mortal Kombat fan. So Mortal Kombat 2 is not first on my list of replays. If I need to beat up Shao Kahn, I would rather he be guarded by a horse man, not a tiger man.
What’s next? I had to get this all out of my head before the election. Normal Even Worse Streams service resumes with Bomb Rush Cyberfunk next week, and we’ll have the Immortal on the usual FGC schedule on Friday. Now please go vote!