People usually say that second parts have never been good, but this game is a great exception to that rule. Many years ago, in 1993, there was no fighting game that didn’t resemble Street Fighter, except for one: Mortal Kombat. This title came to the gaming world by the hands of Midway and the visionary developers Ed Boon and John Tobias, who brought to life an idea as entertaining as it was controversial. In their game, after defeating your opponent, you could perform a Fatality, a move that involved ripping off the rival’s head, heart, or arms.

Leaving aside the violence, this title was an excellent option within the fighting genre, so much that it had a sequel. To this day, I consider it one of the best installments in the series, especially due to its diverse roster of characters and extreme violence, that some may view negatively, but the truth is that it’s perfectly justified within the storyline.

One of the main qualities of Mortal Kombat was its use of digitized graphics. In other words, the developers captured actors’ movements to give the fights a more realistic appearance. For the sequel, they maintained the same graphic style but added textures to enhanced it and also increased the number of characters.

The developers also knew that to maintain success, they had to modify the move that catapulted them to fame; I’m obviously talking about the Fatalities. So, for this second installment, each warrior had at least two of these techniques. Mastering them was challenging, but once you perfectly knew the buttons sequences, there was nothing better or more satisfactory than using them to finish off your opponents.

But things didn’t end there; this game brought two new ways to demonstrate your combat superiority against any rivals, the Friendship and Babality. The first technique was a decent way to taunt your opponent; you didn’t kill them, but rather humiliated them by sparing their life in a humorous manner. For instance, you could give them a gift, an autograph, or create shadow figures with your hands, these situations where completely opposite to Fatalities. As for Babalities, as the name suggests, you transformed your opponent into a baby, however, this move wasn’t as popular as the other two, since it lacked significant variations, because all transformations were identical.

The difficulty was another one of the great virtues or problems of this game, depending on how you look at it. From the first fight, you were already suffering, forcing yourself to truly perfect your skills. However, many preferred to turn things around or used Baraka, a character who had a move where he spun, cutting anything in the scenario with his large ‘swords’, one on each arm. This is why Midway released a second version of the game, to fix bugs and balance the characters moves.

It is also worth mentioning that the game had an adaptation for Super Nintendo, which, unlike the first installment, included all the fatalities, secret techniques, and copious amounts of blood. However, its popularity truly stemmed from the gameplay mechanics and the ways you could leverage your moves to creatively defeat your opponents.

In the end, Mortal Kombat 2 was a great example that sometimes the best is to not incorporate too many options that could confuse or overwhelm the players. Without a doubt, this game marked a significant milestone in the industry, as it opened the door for many similar titles, which also appeared on Nintendo consoles without censorship. If you had the chance to play it back then in some arcade or on Super Nintendo, I’m sure that you had many hours of fun with it.