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Shock & DreemerNJ Present: A Decade of Destruction (UMK3/MKT)

STORMS

Co-founder
Founder
Premium Supporter
Little would then know that ten years later, we'd all be where we are today. Ladies and gentlemen, below, written by Shock is an anniversary post of their work with Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3/Mortal Kombat Trilogy... ~ STORMS

On August 30th, 2003, DreemerNJ and I released the first official, full length DarkTemplarz.com UMK3 combo video, which was very well received by the FGC at a time where most players were only playing older Street Fighter, King of Fighters, Marvel vs Capcom 2, Capcom vs SNK 2 etc. Videos by players back in the day such as NKI and Sicdic inspired us to go beyond short teaser clips and eventually into full length music videos.

You can see ded_'s remastered version of the video here:


These are all redone by ded_

"Service Pack 1"
"Service Pack 2"
"Service Pack 3"
"Service Pack 4"
"Mortal Kombat Old School"

"Kompletions"
"Mortal Personality Disorder"
"Stupid Noob"
"Maximum Damage"
"Shattered"
"MKII Some Kind of Monster"

For a direct list of everything, including videos done after the "DTZ/UMK" Era, mostly by ded_ and Selpex, here is ded_,'s playlist of all videos relevant to this post, minus the last handful

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcpLFKIdj56vFQ41FJ_q1zeIV0UIsl89d

Around the same time, South American players were releasing combo clips for UMK3 as well and this turned into a collaborative effort down the road with Ninja Grinder to promote UMK3 and N64 MKT with full length combo videos and NG would also collaborate with players like RZP and Mgo. This spawned a series of videos that promoted MK and increased interest in running MK games at tournaments, particularly in the north eastern US and and spreading through various countries in South America like Venezuela, Colombia and Chile. As time went on, the combos became more advanced, less practical and completely exhibition level but this only increased the demand for more videos.

This eventually developed into Mortal Kombat centric websites called UltimateMK.com and www.mkkompetitive.com.ve. Today marks the 10 year anniversary of the turning point for the revival of the scene. There were a couple years of build up to that point, and a lot of fighting resistance from the previous incarnation of scene along the way but we made it through, and today the MK scene now spans multiple games and franchises, being played all over the world, in a respected manner while no longer being the red headed step child of the FGC.

During the formative years, DarkTemplarz/UltimateMK joined forces with combo and video making machines like ded_ , Selpex and Frozen Worm. The videos got better, more vicious and more elaborate. The advent of youtube helped reach a larger audience, but even in the days of serve only word of mouth information, these videos would achieve upwards of 10,000 hits a month in what was still not quite a bandwidth hungry internet. DarkTemplarz.com was at one point in the top 10% of websites on the internet for bandwidth usage due to the popularity of combo videos. So much so, that our host had to respectfully ask us to find another one because they couldn't keep up.

Today, things like KombatNetwork, TestYourMight and others exist in part because of the effort put into these videos. Content would spread to match videos, strategy guides, tournament videos, interviews, streams and much more. Without content, it's very difficult to draw an outside audience and display to players what can be done with what were old games even at the time, and was very important to jump starting the scene.

full article credit goes to Shock
 

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AC1984

Kaballin!
Simply Godlike!!! Back in 2004 I wasn't playing any MK games at all but playing ded_ online for the first time and seeing those videos (made by Dreemer, Shock, ded_ and Ryan) are the things that brought me back to the series. Great job Matt!
 

NinjaGrinder

A living, Breathing Piece of Defecating Meat
It was a pleasure to work with you guys. I remember seeing the first NKI and Sicdic videos and then learning of other countries scenes, getting to know Hanzo, Shock & DreemerNJ over at gamecombos.com, there are too many memories!

By the time (2001) the forums were a new thing for me and I think Shock's right: the videos made way for greater things, like tournaments and guides. So thank you to everyone that has ever been involved in this great scene, no matter what country you are from.
 

Mgo

Noob
Wow, many txs for mention, but i just could help a little ninjagrinder with his anitrunjabs video and make a video of Ermac on my own, I would have liked to be part of the litter of umk3 combomaker back in the days, but at that time I had no internet and didnt play the game.
Some videos here are art like Shattered and Infinito, i think the best overall is "Shattered" (many and great combos for that time, edition, incredible music!) , I feel that Ryan could not have had a better tribute, so props to Shock... Also these videos serve much to promote and do players start playing this game.
P.S. you should add the remake of last flame (that is not on internet (?))
 

Shock

Administrator
Premium Supporter
Wow, many txs for mention, but i just could help a little ninjagrinder with his anitrunjabs video and make a video of Ermac on my own, I would have liked to be part of the litter of umk3 combomaker back in the days, but at that time I had no internet and didnt play the game.
Some videos here are art like Shattered and Infinito, i think the best overall is "Shattered" (many and great combos for that time, edition, incredible music!) , I feel that Ryan could not have had a better tribute, so props to Shock... Also these videos serve much to promote and do players start playing this game.
P.S. you should add the remake of last flame (that is not on internet (?))
I think there are other revised versions of the videos but I don't have links to all of them.
 

GLoRToR

Positive Poster!
Kitana's corner infinite is not in this vid, I is sad.
Also. Does the game actually type out "ridiculous victory" or is that an edit? :eek:
 

9.95

Noob
Shock these are like a gateway to the past bro. The combination of being pissed off at runjabs and seeing some of these videos led me to ultimatemk.com

Congrats to you and dreemernj on 10 years of amazing work with MK and the MK Community.
 

dreemernj

Ambassador
I can't believe it's been that long.

I can't believe I'm still using the same Microsoft ergo keyboard that I used for the first combo video. It appeared to die 4 times, but then magically came back to life. I've gone through 4 "replacements" that have all now died. But this fucker keeps on going.

I still remember how painful it was making combos work on a keyboard that can ghost with 3 simultaneous button hits. Especially when the buttons for P2 were mapped all around the P1 buttons so that I could control both to set up the combos.

Shock - I assume you remember how painful the whole process was because I was on dial up at the time. Do kids these days know what dial up is? You see kids, back when I used to know something about video games, you got on the internet by handing your computer the telephone so that it could yell at other computers.

Netplay was awesome with 250ms lag.

Back then, people argued about damage protection and about what caused some moves. There were so many mysteries and when source code leaked years later so much of what we thought turned out to be true. There was something incredibly entertaining about exploring the limits of UMK3. I still haven't found any other game that was as entertaining to mess with.
 

Shock

Administrator
Premium Supporter
Kitana's corner infinite is not in this vid, I is sad.
Also. Does the game actually type out "ridiculous victory" or is that an edit? :eek:
There were more videos after these 10, I believe Kitana infinite came up.

And no, the text for that was edited in.
 

Shock

Administrator
Premium Supporter
I can't believe it's been that long.

I can't believe I'm still using the same Microsoft ergo keyboard that I used for the first combo video. It appeared to die 4 times, but then magically came back to life. I've gone through 4 "replacements" that have all now died. But this fucker keeps on going.

I still remember how painful it was making combos work on a keyboard that can ghost with 3 simultaneous button hits. Especially when the buttons for P2 were mapped all around the P1 buttons so that I could control both to set up the combos.

Shock - I assume you remember how painful the whole process was because I was on dial up at the time. Do kids these days know what dial up is? You see kids, back when I used to know something about video games, you got on the internet by handing your computer the telephone so that it could yell at other computers.

Netplay was awesome with 250ms lag.

Back then, people argued about damage protection and about what caused some moves. There were so many mysteries and when source code leaked years later so much of what we thought turned out to be true. There was something incredibly entertaining about exploring the limits of UMK3. I still haven't found any other game that was as entertaining to mess with.
Pain is a good terminology. I also remember on some videos making super low quality versions of the clips and sending them to you so you could add them to your own timeline and tweak stuff so we could exchange edits down the road before a final cut. There were even videos where ded and I would record the clip online and play it back offline to get it at regular speed because there was a part of a combo he could do that I couldn't and vice versa. One of us would perform one part, pause it, and then resume and continue it, and remember this was huge lag from the US to Bulgaria.

I would love to write up an entire article about everything we remember from making each video. Fun facts like going to work, brainstorming combo placement with a specific song, coming home and working on a video from midnight to 8AM without taking a break because I didn't want to leave it in the event I never got back to finishing it. That almost happened several times.
 

dreemernj

Ambassador
I would love to write up an entire article about everything we remember from making each video. Fun facts like going to work, brainstorming combo placement with a specific song, coming home and working on a video from midnight to 8AM without taking a break because I didn't want to leave it in the event I never got back to finishing it. That almost happened several times.

Yeah, shit was crazy. I remember building something to convert MAME replays from one version of MAME to another. Did we ever use that? Or did I do that for Battousai?

We definitely took a very scientific approach. Formed hypotheses away from the game. Got to the game. Tested extensively. Decided whether we had proved or disproved anything. I did more research on UMK3 than I did earning my BS. Priorities man. Priorities.
 

Shock

Administrator
Premium Supporter
Yeah, shit was crazy. I remember building something to convert MAME replays from one version of MAME to another. Did we ever use that? Or did I do that for Battousai?

We definitely took a very scientific approach. Formed hypotheses away from the game. Got to the game. Tested extensively. Decided whether we had proved or disproved anything. I did more research on UMK3 than I did earning my BS. Priorities man. Priorities.
I remember the MAME replay converter, it would only work when it wanted to.
 

Tim Static

Adminerator
Man reading Shock & dreemernj go back & forth about this stuff takes me back. Oh, to those days. Haha I still consider one of my most awesome tourney moments was getting to chat with these two at the same time. Wowsers, lol

Why does nobody play them anymore? Do people even play umk3 at casuals?
Depends on whether or not you make sure its there. Unless you're in the NE, probably not. But again, bring it to gatherings & get people back into it :)

Sent from The Turk
 

NinjaGrinder

A living, Breathing Piece of Defecating Meat
going to work, brainstorming combo placement with a specific song, coming home and working on a video from midnight to 8AM without taking a break.
jajajajaa same here, by that time I used to work the night shift and I remember not being able to concentrate, thinking of combos and setups. Sometimes I had to take some notes so I wouldn't forget what the combo concept was. Then coming back home and running to the console and try the combo out and recording it right away.

The bold part still happens to me! every video I make, it just consumes me and I can't stop until I'm finished/satisfied. For "Deranged Kombat Trilogy", I worked on the video from 12am to 1pm, without taking any breaks!
 

EdFig81

Original OBS mbr/VSM/G4S
Honestly Shock videos got me back in to MK after yrs of not playing it at a competitive level. I watched these videos on the original website that shock uploaded them on. Its nice to see them get the front page treatment on TYM they deserve. :)