What's your MK story?

[tehdrewsus]

I'll give an abbreviate version, because as a dude in his 30's, I had exposure to the game at a young age when everything was new - I played in arcades and on console. My first real exposure was MK1 on the genesis. Apparently MK players haven't changed much - there was a guy in my boy scouts group that was pretty much the best player on MK1 for the genesis. We'd all play and he'd whip us. When I finally got to the point that I could beat him over half the time, he decided *I* was just obsessed with the game and he wasn't interested in playing anymore.


I played all the 2D MK's (got Trilogy as my first N64 title when everyone else was playing SM64 and Pilotwings), but lost interest once MK4 and the 3D games hit. To make a long story short, I didn't do much with MK until a little bit after my divorce. I downloaded MKAK in late 2012 and started getting serious about UMK3 around March 2013. It was around this time I started playing guys regularly.

Some superlatives (the TYM guys - there are others not on TYM but i'll list members here:

@dubson - probably the first high level player I played against. Wins against him were super rare, and I was amazed how the dude played so well with so many characters. Also one of the few guys that has been playing and has continued to improve. Once I hit a higher level a lot of guys leveled off, but Dubson always gets better too.

@Drakonian - my sparring partner. I learned so much off this dude, and @DemoniChris . Drak and I played on a near daily basis, and we both made the move from PS3 to maining MAME around the same time.

@McLOV1NS - first high level offline experience. Great player, smart, probably knows MU's better off the top of his head than anyone I've met up with.

@NobilityV3 - didn't think CSub was any good till I saw him. Now I plan on showing his viability in tournament.

@Trukuu777 @9.95 - bringing my favorite MK of all time, N64 trilogy back!

@MRIGOTBASS - Brought my burban Kabal out the ghetto. Proved there's more to the game than combos. Precision button mashing.

There are many others - @Ziggy @YourMKArcadeSource @ddy_08 @Juggs and others - great players and pretty chill dudes offline too.

@Spic Unit - that long con game lol. Mark Collins got nothing on you. And a master with every character. My pick to win GIIO2K17.

TWBMK

 

[DC4-3]

MKX was the first fg I had ever played. My brother bought it and wanted me to try it out. With no idea of anything in the game or who characters were I saw Kenshi and thought "Why would an old blind guy be in a fighting game? Why would they give a blind guy a sword? Seems stupid." And from that day on I couldn't drop him. I wanted to learn some stuff about my character and stumbled across tym. So I made an account, but just kinda lurked for a few months because I didn't see the point (for me) in getting better at the game.

Then I was informed about a local tournament by another player from NS and decided to try it out. I've never had so much fun playing a game before and even though I had my ass handed to me in the final I was happy to take home some gas money.

I may not have the money to go to some big tournaments (or the skill to do anything at one) but I now have the passion to get better at fgs while still having fun with them.

 

[YourMKArcadeSource]

I was 12 when MK1 hit the arcade in '92 and I was immediately hooked. My grandfather owned a bowling alley that had a small arcade. One day, a new machine showed up (as a conversion in a Dynamo cabinet because it's cheaper than a dedicated machine was, which of course, I didn't know at the time) and it caught my attention. I wasn't exposed to a dedicated machine until a few months later when my local Aladdin's Castle got one. But that didn't matter. I went with my dad to his Wednesday night bowling league every week and he gave me $20 to play the MK. I blew through the money pretty fast, but I learned quickly. I learned all about the fatalities when the AI performed one against me. Prior to that, I had no idea something like that was in the game. I was then on a mission to see them all. That's when I went to my local Aladdin's Castle. By this time, the game had been out for a few months and people somehow had already found them all out. People who had early internet, I suppose. I sat and watched one weekend and a guy was there demonstrating them all against hapless opponents. I didn't want to play against him at the time because I basically would have been throwing my money away. For the next year or so, I practiced and got decent, but I quickly abandoned all my MK1 skill aspirations when I heard that MK2 was coming out.

So fast forward to 1993. I was 13 at the time MK2 came out. There were two machines within 2 miles of my home. One was a local bowling alley (not my Grandfather's), and the other was a gas station. The first time I spotted MK2 was at the bowling alley. I was bowling in a Saturday morning league and I always went to the arcade before it was time to start getting ready to bowl to play a few games. They had the 6-player X-Men cab and a lot of the other most popular games at the time. One morning, right next to the staircase to the sunken level, was a brand new MK2. I actually said "Holy Shit" out loud when I saw Raiden and the "MKII" on the side. I immediately lost all interest in bowling. I just wanted to play the MK2. I got in a fair bit of trouble because of that. I convinced my mom to give me a couple bucks and went to play the machine in between my frames. I was late getting back more than a few times and no one appreciated it. It didn't take long before my money was gone, so I finished bowling, went home, waited until I got some allowance money, and headed back to the bowling alley. On my way, I stopped at a gas station on the way to get something to drink (because it's cheaper than buying drinks at the alley) and discovered that there was a dedicated MK2 in the gas station lobby! That was awesome since it was closer to my house. So my friend and I would ride our bikes to the gas station nearly every weekend to play the machine. That was a steady occurrence for pretty much two years until the next chapter in the MK series was bestowed upon me.

April 1995. I was 15. There was a local miniature golf place within a mile of my home called "Golf Park." They had a pretty big arcade with all the popular games of the time...except MK1 or MK2. I always asked them why they didn't have them and they said it was "too violent." Well, I guess they saw how much money the games were bringing in because in April 1995, I went there with some friends and sitting there by the entrance was a brand new MK3. I couldn't believe it. I was within walking distance of the newest MK game. Now since I was a little older, MK3 was the game I fell in love with the most and have the most memory of playing. I thought it blew the first two out of the water. The combos, the fatalities, the updated game play, the addition of the run feature...I loved it all. Again, I spent two years learning everything I could and practicing almost daily. I got so good that no one would play me. An opponent would walk up, pop $.50 in, and I'd destroy them, then they'd walk away, so I spent all my time beating the AI. Got old after a while but that's pretty much all I did. I remember many times when my friends and I would go to the local pool hall to shoot some pool on Saturday nights. There was a UMK3 machine in there (UMK3 was out by this time) and I had more interest in playing UMK3 than shooting pool with my friends. After beating the game a few times, I eventually meandered over to the pool table and finished the night doing that. But MK3 will always be my favorite and hold the most nostalgia for me.

1998. I was 18 and a freshman in college. When MK4 was released, I had a lot of things going on in my life and I didn't have time to really play arcade games anymore so I didn't get a chance to play MK4 until roughly a year after it had already been out. When I was a freshman in college, my first day at school, I went down to the student rec center and discovered they had a small arcade with about 20 machines. One of them was MK4. I had never seen one up to that point but even after a year of being out, there were still people crowded around it. I just watched for about an hour and eventually my quarter was up next. The very first time I played the game was against a real person and he promptly kicked my ass. That, coupled with the 3D and the whole deal with that really didn't sit well with me. For that reason, I was turned off MK4. I played it occasionally, causally, but nothing on the level of the first three. That changed a few years later. Fast forward to late 2001. I was in the Navy down in Pensacola. The base there had a Morale, Welfare, and Recreation center. In there was a rather large arcade containing an MK4. After discovering the machine in there, I developed a new love for it. I had time to play it by myself and get some practice. It wasn't as bad as I thought and I actually started to get into it. Got pretty decent but it was strange. NO ONE played it but me. Now that I had some skill, no one was around for me to play against. So ironically, the tables had turned. I played it whenever I could, but as time went on, and it was time for me to transfer to San Diego, my opportunities to play MK in the arcade were gone. It wasn't until 2005 before I had the chance to play MK on an arcade machine again.

I was still in the Navy, stationed in Hawaii. I had some money in my pocket and I wanted to buy an MK machine. Unfortunately, the pool was dry when it came to that sort of thing out there...so I built my own from scratch. Since I was building one, I turned it into a Mame cab so I could play all the MKs. It turned out OK, and actually survived the trip from Hawaii to Kansas, but when I got out of the Navy and came back home to Kansas, one of the first things I did was try to find a dedicated MK cabinet. I did just that and from that point on, the obsession with having them all grew. Now I find myself with 30 arcade machines in the basement, including the four holy grails...

 

[NinjaGrinder]

I first saw MK1 back in 1992 (or maybe 1993, can't recall exactly), I was 12 at the time and actually I met the game by accident because some friends from school kept telling me about this game "street fighter", they would tell me all about the characters and stuff so I got curious and we went to this arcade when we got out of school but shortly after that, I noticed this wierd, realistic-looking game and the rest is history. I got instantly hooked up. I played MK1 for months but I was terrible at it, mostly mashing and not realizing who I was when I was playing a mirror match jajaja

Then when I was starting to get a little better at it, some friends from school began spreading rumors about MK2, I just had to see it! It was glorious to say the least and I used to play on arcade and snes virtually every day, learning combos and stuff. Then when UMK3 hit arcades in my country (MK3 was almost nowhere to be seen) in 1996 I played the shit out of it and I still do to this day. I started taking the game more seriously in 2000 because of a fellow player and friend of mine, he used to whoop my ass so bad and teach me really advanced stuff for that time. I played a lot in snes also, but arcade version is just perfect for me. I started running tournaments in 2004 and met dozens of players. Our group is not that big but we are consistent (as you can see from the amount of content I have uploaded to my YT channel since 2006) and now that Hanzo from Venezuela is here in my hometown, everyone wants to take it even more seriously and eventually beat his ass! JAJAJA

As for any other MK version, I played a little arcade MK4, Trilogy (N64), MKDA, MK9 and MKXL but all in all, UMK3 is the only one I have devoted so much time playing and the most fun for me. I hope I never stop playing that shit (I'm currently 36)

LONG LIFE UMK3

 

[Gooberking]

I was some flavor of teenager when the first MK came out. I remember the news freaking out about it, and all the hubbub over Nintendo minimizing fatalities on SNES that sent a lot of people running for the Genesis version even though I thought it wasn't near as faithful a version outside of the gore adjustments. (reference for the young

)

By the time MK2 came out nobody cared about the gore anymore, but us church boys still kept our MK playing a little on the down low. We found lots of time to squeeze it in all the same. I mostly missed MK3. I was pretty devoted to SF my entire teens and wasn't really paying much attention to it, and arcades were starting to change.

I think 4 dropped while I was off trying to do the growing up thing with jobs and an apartment. It was mostly SFA and SF3 in those days. I had no real awareness of MK4, though I saw a machine for it while visiting family. I think we were waiting to go see that new "Titanic" movie everyone was going on about, and it was at the theater. I'd later get to try it on Dreamcast, but it was more a novelty at that point.

I was back with some old friends when Deadly Alliance came out, so I did get to play it a good bit with one of my friends before making a move. I kept playing it by my lonesome, all the while being frustrated by how it felt like it need more content. MK Deception ended up feeling much more whole. I tried to play it over dial up once - I lagged out.

I didn't play MK after that up until about 2 years ago when I played through the story mode of MK9 after picking it up on a Steam sale. I thought it was a good game, but I really didn't play it that long or understand it well.

MKX is where things shifted for me. I got it late (again) but I probably put in at least 20 hours my first three or four days. It's stylish, easy to play, and just fun. I had it on PC so when MKXL dropped I had to go by a PS4 to get current. I'm guessing I'm about a 1000 hours in on it, which I don't think I've done since being a teen when I was playing SF everyday for years. It's also the first time I've ever had any real concept of there being fighting game "concepts" like wakeups, frame advantage, resets, mixups, etc. I'm pretty dense and it's taken a long time for simple stuff to soak in. I'm not as good as 1000 hours should make a person, but I think about FG's differently now because of MKX (and all of the MKX streamers.) For all the crap MKX has gotten it exposes a lot of core concepts pretty well, and it doesn't stray too far from the core concept. Part of that is elaborate training tools that it has. There wasn't anything like that in the 90's. We also didn't have overheads, which is why I still hold downback when I'm panicking.

I was 12 when MK1 hit the arcade in '92 and I was immediately hooked. My grandfather owned a bowling alley that had a small arcade. One day, a new machine showed up (as a conversion in a Dynamo cabinet because it's cheaper than a dedicated machine was, which of course, I didn't know at the time) and it caught my attention. I wasn't exposed to a dedicated machine until a few months later when my local Aladdin's Castle got one. But that didn't matter. I went with my dad to his Wednesday night bowling league every week and he gave me $20 to play the MK. I blew through the money pretty fast, but I learned quickly. I learned all about the fatalities when the AI performed one against me. Prior to that, I had no idea something like that was in the game. I was then on a mission to see them all. That's when I went to my local Aladdin's Castle. By this time, the game had been out for a few months and people somehow had already found them all out. People who had early internet, I suppose. I sat and watched one weekend and a guy was there demonstrating them all against hapless opponents. I didn't want to play against him at the time because I basically would have been throwing my money away. For the next year or so, I practiced and got decent, but I quickly abandoned all my MK1 skill aspirations when I heard that MK2 was coming out.

So fast forward to 1993. I was 13 at the time MK2 came out. There were two machines within 2 miles of my home. One was a local bowling alley (not my Grandfather's), and the other was a gas station. The first time I spotted MK2 was at the bowling alley. I was bowling in a Saturday morning league and I always went to the arcade before it was time to start getting ready to bowl to play a few games. They had the 6-player X-Men cab and a lot of the other most popular games at the time. One morning, right next to the staircase to the sunken level, was a brand new MK2. I actually said "Holy Shit" out loud when I saw Raiden and the "MKII" on the side. I immediately lost all interest in bowling. I just wanted to play the MK2. I got in a fair bit of trouble because of that. I convinced my mom to give me a couple bucks and went to play the machine in between my frames. I was late getting back more than a few times and no one appreciated it. It didn't take long before my money was gone, so I finished bowling, went home, waited until I got some allowance money, and headed back to the bowling alley. On my way, I stopped at a gas station on the way to get something to drink (because it's cheaper than buying drinks at the alley) and discovered that there was a dedicated MK2 in the gas station lobby! That was awesome since it was closer to my house. So my friend and I would ride our bikes to the gas station nearly every weekend to play the machine. That was a steady occurrence for pretty much two years until the next chapter in the MK series was bestowed upon me.

April 1995. I was 15. There was a local miniature golf place within a mile of my home called "Golf Park." They had a pretty big arcade with all the popular games of the time...except MK1 or MK2. I always asked them why they didn't have them and they said it was "too violent." Well, I guess they saw how much money the games were bringing in because in April 1995, I went there with some friends and sitting there by the entrance was a brand new MK3. I couldn't believe it. I was within walking distance of the newest MK game. Now since I was a little older, MK3 was the game I fell in love with the most and have the most memory of playing. I thought it blew the first two out of the water. The combos, the fatalities, the updated game play, the addition of the run feature...I loved it all. Again, I spent two years learning everything I could and practicing almost daily. I got so good that no one would play me. An opponent would walk up, pop $.50 in, and I'd destroy them, then they'd walk away, so I spent all my time beating the AI. Got old after a while but that's pretty much all I did. I remember many times when my friends and I would go to the local pool hall to shoot some pool on Saturday nights. There was a UMK3 machine in there (UMK3 was out by this time) and I had more interest in playing UMK3 than shooting pool with my friends. After beating the game a few times, I eventually meandered over to the pool table and finished the night doing that. But MK3 will always be my favorite and hold the most nostalgia for me.

1998. I was 18 and a freshman in college. When MK4 was released, I had a lot of things going on in my life and I didn't have time to really play arcade games anymore so I didn't get a chance to play MK4 until roughly a year after it had already been out. When I was a freshman in college, my first day at school, I went down to the student rec center and discovered they had a small arcade with about 20 machines. One of them was MK4. I had never seen one up to that point but even after a year of being out, there were still people crowded around it. I just watched for about an hour and eventually my quarter was up next. The very first time I played the game was against a real person and he promptly kicked my ass. That, coupled with the 3D and the whole deal with that really didn't sit well with me. For that reason, I was turned off MK4. I played it occasionally, causally, but nothing on the level of the first three. That changed a few years later. Fast forward to late 2001. I was in the Navy down in Pensacola. The base there had a Morale, Welfare, and Recreation center. In there was a rather large arcade containing an MK4. After discovering the machine in there, I developed a new love for it. I had time to play it by myself and get some practice. It wasn't as bad as I thought and I actually started to get into it. Got pretty decent but it was strange. NO ONE played it but me. Now that I had some skill, no one was around for me to play against. So ironically, the tables had turned. I played it whenever I could, but as time went on, and it was time for me to transfer to San Diego, my opportunities to play MK in the arcade were gone. It wasn't until 2005 before I had the chance to play MK on an arcade machine again.

I was still in the Navy, stationed in Hawaii. I had some money in my pocket and I wanted to buy an MK machine. Unfortunately, the pool was dry when it came to that sort of thing out there...so I built my own from scratch. Since I was building one, I turned it into a Mame cab so I could play all the MKs. It turned out OK, and actually survived the trip from Hawaii to Kansas, but when I got out of the Navy and came back home to Kansas, one of the first things I did was try to find a dedicated MK cabinet. I did just that and from that point on, the obsession with having them all grew. Now I find myself with 30 arcade machines in the basement, including the four holy grails...

What I'm getting out of all of that is there is a massive cache of MK machines conveniently located in Kansas........

 

[Eddy Wang]

This thread was made on my birthday and no one told me about it.

First contact with the game

Well, i started playing MK at the age of 9, my first MK was MK1 on NES the pirate version we used to play at home with my oldest brothers and cousins who are at nearly or the same age as i am right now.

The MK expert was a cousin of mine who had already played MK2 by then on the Genesis version and he was always talking about characters like Reptile, Sub-Zero, Raiden, Scorpion Mileena, he talked about fatalities and all the good gore stuff, like immortality cheats.

When i played the pirate version, there wasn't any of these, but still was fun as hell, i kept playing for about a year and then i met another player who has shown me UMK3 in 1997 he was just testing a controler for Sega Genesis, but the roster was too huge, the biggest roster i've ever seen on a MK game, first character he has shown, Nightwolf, and i good hooked immediately, i remember his mother yelling for him to turn it off, so he did, and we left to met some other guy who played UMK3

And the first question out my friends mouth was "how do you do the red Hatchet?" i was new to all that and didn't knew what they were talking about, he asked me to go over his house in the mourning after, and so we did, we played UMK3 for 6 hours among his brothers and stuff and i became so much more hooked ever since, the codes, brutalities and stuff, there wasn't internet so i had to buy a note book and collect every single code about the game i could find, i didn't had a console back then, it used to be really expensive.

Codes of the game was rare internet was rare console was rare, this gave me a new hobby, to collect codes

Until i one day, i became really ill, not sure what i had but i was really close to the doors of heaven and i was taken into an hospital, and stayed there for nearly 3 weeks to recover.

When i got better, at the exit of the hospital there was a cafe, and they had arcade machines there, my mother took me there for an ice cream and bought two coins so i could play the Arcade Version of Mortal Kombat.

I didn't even past the 3rd guy but i was mad fun, i remember the graphics being too real back then and enjoyed a lot, shared among ppl in my house, and in the next year is when the fun really begun.


Return to UMK3 and making new friends

After School was over, an old class-mate of mine used to see me collecting codes even in School time, i used to transcribe them from notebook to notebook in order to have as many copies as i needed, my dream was, one day i will test those stuffs somehow, i will meet Ed Boon and John Tobias, it was one hell of a dream, in 2001 this classmate of mine came over my house with a redbone guy who had UMK3 and didn't had any code, so i took my bibles and went to his home, we tested the entire book together and we found part of the stuff there wasn't correct at all.

On a time like that internet was gold so who had information about MK codes was willing to sell, we went after and started to find stuff on our own, until there i really wasn't a competitive player, i used to play casually just for the sake of it, our main code was extended fatality time, i got my ass kicked on Trilogy from PSX when someone invited me to play, although i dominated most of my friends back then.


The day war was over, i was introduced to the competitive scene in Angola

This changed a year later when i met Celia and his minions, they had Trilogy on N64 and my friends set a meet with them, since i beat the guy who used to sell the codes to my redbone friend, and they ducked the meet leaving me there alone, they came and this changed my life.

They used to play with Unlimited Run, and explained to me why they use it and in the competitive scene in the country it was a statal rule, i didn't won a single game that day, but got my own taste of what losing and fighting for real was, this started a new process in my mind and i shifted my focus to competitive fighting mostly, in this same day i played MK with them it was the day Jonas Savimbi died and the war was over.

I kept losing to them and other people until my brain allowed itself to evolve and started to see things beyond games and started to focus more on why this combo comes out and this one doesn't, so i figured later that the game had a sort of combo counter, that allowed certain moves to come out only to a certain numbers of hits, when i realized that i started to build my own combos inside our rules and started to win more and made a name for myself over the years, although i didn't really

The China Era (Best moment Mortal Kombat ever had in Angola for nearly 10 years)

When Trilogy was considered the #1 game in the country and among us the best fighting game in the world, Unlimited Run was a statal rule, everyone in the country played and the big leagues were considered monsters, since there wasn't internet or tournaments, name of players used to run on peoples mouths so who had to make a name for themselves had to find these players and defeat them, which is why we called it China Era, each really strong played used to live on a specific region and most people who played Mortal Kombat in the hood knew who they were, they were avoided at all cost by locals and challenged all the time by non locals, defeat was not an option or you wouldn't really be able to walk in the street, the same of defeat was to die for.

By this time i was already a really strong competitor on the big league although i couldn't fight the top 3 on the list i had my own turf as many of them, i got challenged every time, found some really weird players, ppl coming from other corner of the country to challenge you to mortal kombat, we were living.

After i retire, a few years later the China Era ended, and then in 2010 Midway revamped themselves as NRS and announced MK9, this hooked me back in until today, i really wish i could find a good drawer, because my tale as a gamer is worth to tell, as a gamer i learned a lot in this life, met a lot of people and learned a lot from games myself, philosophies and science, knowledge and so on, some angolan players say, if there is someone who is close to what Daigo is in the SF, i'm that person in Angola just has he is in Japan, and this is only MK, i've played a lot of fighting games over the years since my 9 years old, learned from many of them and it would really be cool to share it.