![\"\"](\"http:\/\/totfc.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/noobermac.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t get me wrong, I enjoy the\u00a0Mortal Kombat\u00a0<\/em>games that I\u2019ve played in my lifetime, but this is all really from a creative standpoint.\u00a0 When it comes to character creation, stories and development, Mortal Kombat really is kind of silly, in a stupid kind of way.\u00a0 That\u2019s not necessarily a bad thing, because it shows that they acknowledge errors and roll with the punches in a fashion that so many companies wouldn\u2019t be willing to do.\u00a0 But throughout the years and lineage of the series, it\u2019s gotten to a point where it\u2019s all gone kind of far now.<\/span><\/p>\n All of this came upon because I happened to stumble upon the Mortal Kombat Wikia page, and I spent several hours of my day incapable of escaping the six degrees of Wikipedia whilst in this specialized Wiki.\u00a0 What started out as a little bit of a nostalgia trip ended up turning into this head-tilting, mouth-contorting, WTF-fest at seeing how some of the characters developed, the introduction of newer characters, and how the \u201ccanon\u201d story progressed.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n It\u2019s almost like listening to a seven-year old trying to tell a story, and it\u2019s evidently clear that they have no grasp of storytelling ability, and they often times just make shit up along the way, and instead of trying to fix any holes or gaps or cover their bases, they just pile bullshit on top of it.\u00a0 That really is what the Mortal Kombat \u201ccanon\u201d seems like.<\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019ll look beyond the obvious aspect of how many times Shao Kahn and Shang Tsung have been defeated or been killed at the conclusion of particular games, only to be resurrected or have their deaths\/defeats flat out ignored, only to be the last boss, or the next conqueror of the Earth Realm, Out Realm, or whatever Realm is the one in danger of being taken over en route to the destruction of the world or whatever dominant efforts are in place.\u00a0 Or the fact that the series as a whole has made a very overused practice of introducing \u201cnew\u201d characters that are simply just palette swaps of Scorpion\/Sub-Zero, Kitana\/Mileena, or the robots from MKIII.\u00a0 Their back stories and origins are always elaborate and over-the-top, but their gameplay is always just another re-hashing of another character.\u00a0 Mortal Kombat\u2019s practice of this makes the Shotaklones of Street Fighter look like snowflakes.<\/span><\/p>\n Instead, there are just a few choice characters that caught my attention that I\u2019d like to share some words over.<\/span><\/p>\n Noob Saibot<\/strong>.\u00a0 Originally, he was a hidden joke-caliber character introduced in Mortal Kombat II that was a play on words with the names \u201cBoon\u201d and \u201cTobias,\u201d the two creators of Mortal Kombat, spelled backwards.\u00a0 To get to play against him, I think you had to win 50 matches in a row or something, easily done by simply pushing start on the P2 side, and beating up an immobile, defenseless bot 50 times.\u00a0 He was then, an all-black palette swap of Scorpion, and had all of his moves; he just moved faster and did more damage.\u00a0 He was easily defeatable if using Johnny Cage, where you hang back in the corner ducking, and whenever he approached you, split-punch him in the balls and uppercut him, over and over again.\u00a0 I don\u2019t even remember what you got for defeating him, if anything at all, but for all intents and purposes, he was basically a glorified Easter Egg initially.<\/span><\/p>\n Fast-forward to later games, and now apparently Noob Saibot is a fairly permanent bastion of the Mortal Kombat canon.\u00a0 His backstory goes something like this:<\/span><\/p>\n Reincarnated in the darkest of all realms, the\u00a0Netherrealm<\/a>, Noob Saibot is the very incarnation of evil. Before becoming a wraith, he was once\u00a0Sub-Zero<\/strong>, an assassin among the most powerful of Lin Kuei. As Sub-Zero’s name, clothes, and powers would suggest<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Seriouosly?\u00a0 \u201cThe very incarnation of evil?<\/em>\u201d\u00a0 More like the very incarnation of a lame joke gone overboard, with such a clich\u00e9 and hyperbolic backstory attached to it.\u00a0 Noob Saibot was a joke character, and for some reason, I\u2019m guessing to inflate the number of playable characters for marketing reasons, was integrated into the canon storyline and given an elaborate backstory the equivalent of the seven-year old making shit up on the fly.<\/span><\/p>\n Ermac<\/strong>.\u00a0 Long story short, Ermac stood for \u201cER<\/strong>ror\u201d and \u201cMAC<\/strong>ro,\u201d obviously meaning for an errored macro, which was often times an errored Scorpion sprite.\u00a0 The result was a Scorpion sprite with a red palette instead of yellow, but the name would read \u201cERMAC,\u201d subsequently.\u00a0 Ermac is a glitch, originally.<\/span><\/p>\n So naturally, the Mortal Kombat team needed to channel their inner seven-year olds and make him into reality:<\/span><\/p>\n Ermac is a Fusion of many souls destroyed in Outworld’s wars who came to be controlled by Emperor Shao Kahn and his\u00a0Shadow Priests. Because of this, he refers to himself as “we,<\/em>” “us,<\/em>” and “our<\/em>” instead of “I,<\/em>” “me,<\/em>” and “my<\/em>“. Due to the sheer concentration of souls within Ermac, he possesses<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Yeah, really.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t make this shit up even when I was seven-years old.<\/span><\/p>\n The funniest thing about these two Easter Eggs gone bad is the fact that despite their humble beginnings as mere palette swaps, the artistic development of their characters\u2019 artwork as the series progressed.\u00a0 Granted, in the gameplay itself, they\u2019re still closer to palette swaps of Scorpion\/Sub-Zero, their conceptual artwork has mutated from one guy wearing the same costume with different colored accents to some truly unique designs.<\/span><\/p>\n Regardless, both these guys are the equivalent of Nintendo taking the guy that said \u201cI AM ERROR.\u201d In Zelda 2, and retroactively creating a backstory for him, and that he was one of Ganon\u2019s telepathic slaves that assisted in the kidnapping of Zelda and the eight crystal maidens, and when he haphazardly touched the Triforce of Power, it punished his evil deeds with an elaborate curse that forced him to live in solitude and made him capable of saying nothing but saying his name, ERROR to anyone who asked, but deep in the recesses of his brain, he knows where the Triforce of Bullshit is.<\/span><\/p>\n Noob and Ermac were the two guys I really had in mind when I sat down and started writing this, but there are two other classic guys, I couldn\u2019t help but wonder about, when thinking about them or their storylines.<\/span><\/p>\n Raiden<\/strong>, the good \u2018ol God of Thunder.\u00a0 The bottom line is that in various iterations of the Raiden character, Raiden often forfeits his status of godliness to become mortal, so he can compete in Mortal Kombat in defense of the Earth.\u00a0 My question to this* aspect is\u00a0WHY???<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n *I realize that in attempting to spell \u201cthis,\u201d my fingers spelled out \u201cshit,\u201d and I just realized now that they have the same necessary letters.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n Raiden is a fucking god, as in eternal, as in lives forever, as in it doesn\u2019t matter if Earth or the various realms are conquered and destroyed, because\u00a0he\u2019d still live<\/strong>.\u00a0 Why he chooses to forfeit eternal life and fight like, and with plebeians is completely beyond me.\u00a0 And for what reason does he have to forfeit his god status?\u00a0 Because of the rules set by Shao Kahn or Shang Tsung dictate that no eternal, all-powerful gods are allowed to compete?\u00a0 Because what, it wouldn\u2019t be\u00a0fair<\/em>?\u00a0 It wouldn\u2019t be\u00a0fair<\/em>\u00a0if some all-powerful gods wanted to stop some megalomaniac dictator(s) from trying to take over the world?<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cUh, sorry Raiden, if you want to stop our conquest for world domination, you\u2019re going to have to turn in your eternal life, and then get in the back of the registration line over there.<\/em>\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Raiden might be a fucking god, but he\u2019s also probably the biggest fucking idiot in the Mortal Kombat universe.\u00a0 When the bad guys tell Raiden he can\u2019t compete in their tournament because he\u2019s a god, that\u2019s where he\u2019s supposed to go all godly on them and nuke them into oblivion.\u00a0 Tournament cancelled, the world is safe.\u00a0 Not turn in your god card and leave yourself vulnerable to Liu Kang bicycle kicks and Jax ripping your arms off.<\/span><\/p>\n Goro.\u00a0<\/strong>Obviously, four-armed half-dragon\/half-man creatures don\u2019t exist, but I can\u2019t help but wonder about the physiology of Goro when I look at original artwork pictures of him.\u00a0 There are muscles in his fictional chest that don\u2019t seem right, but again, no such thing as Goros in reality.\u00a0 But like, clearly, Goro has to work out to maintain the fighter\u2019s physique.\u00a0 I wonder when he does chest extensions or flies, if he uses a machine, if he has to do to separate sets for each pair of arms, or if in his Outworldly wealth if he has a special machine that affords to do flys for all four arms?\u00a0 Or maybe, he just lays down on the bench and does dumbbell flys, but uses like four 85s.<\/span><\/p>\n Regardless, only the top pair of arms are the ones that appear to be directly relative to the pectoral muscles.\u00a0 So when he does flys with the lower set of arms, are those kind of cheating to build up his obliques and abdomen?\u00a0 Or does it simply explain that weird layer of muscle right in between where the pectorals end and the abdomen begins?<\/span><\/p>\n Jesus, I can\u2019t believe I just wrote so much about Mortal Kombat.\u00a0 But that just goes to show how stupid Mortal Kombat really is.\u00a0 Like I said, I have fun playing the games, but the characters and story that make up the Mortal Kombat universe really is kind of lame and silly.\u00a0 I sure as shit wouldn\u2019t have this many words to write about\u00a0Street Fighter<\/em>\u00a0or even\u00a0King of Fighters<\/em>, except for maybe shit involving like Dhalsim.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Don\u2019t get me wrong, I enjoy the\u00a0Mortal Kombat\u00a0games that I\u2019ve played in my lifetime, but this is all really from a creative standpoint.\u00a0 When it comes to character creation, stories and development, Mortal Kombat really is kind of silly, in a stupid kind of way.\u00a0 That\u2019s not necessarily a bad thing, because it shows that … Continue reading Mortal Kombat is kind of stupid<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[45,15,91,19,49],"class_list":["post-33629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-fail","tag-og","tag-pf","tag-video-games","tag-wtf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33629"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33629\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33631,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33629\/revisions\/33631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}