In the beginning ...

I can still remember the first time I ever saw Mortal Kombat. My father had taken me to Coconut Grove for some reason, which brought us by an arcade I’d never seen before.

Yes, this was before people had any kind of video games at home, and you needed to go to an arcade to play. I was so young I wasn’t tall enough to see over the joystick. But I spotted Mortal Kombat right away. It was the newest machine in the arcade, and by far, it had the best graphics.

This was an era when video games were horribly pixelated. But Mortal Kombat looked like real people. It might’ve been the first game to use rotoscoping. Of course my father gave me some quarters and I started to play. I don’t think it was long before someone got knocked into the pit, and I saw my first fatality in a video game.

I was hooked.

Eventually the pizza place by the movie theater got a Mortal Kombat game, and every Saturday and Sunday I’d ride my bike there and play. I got good. I came to learn how to play every character. I knew all of the fatalities and special moves. It got to a point where I’d go to the arcade with a few bucks, knocking I’d only need a few quarters. That’s because I could play one game, and then continue to beat a long line of competitors. Winner stays, loser gets to the back of the line.

And right there I think I’ve hit upon one of the best aspects of the arcade era that sadly, is nearly extinct. The fact that, back in the day, if you were good, you would gain some street cred. You would be able to play for forty five minutes on a single game. People would know you as that guy. The incentive to win, so that you could keep playing for free, that’s what’s missing today.

Anyway, a few years later, my dad got a job in Arizona. In the middle of the desert on the Navajo Indian reservation. Shortly after that, Mortal Kombat 2 came out. But because it was now a two hour drive to the arcade, I was unable to practice. Home consoles weren’t yet good enough to play Mortal Kombat. My love of fighting games was forced to take a hiatus.

Which brings us to the present. Mortal Kombat X is upon us. I was really into StarCraft 2. But my PC was barely good enough to play it. I decided to get a new PC, just to play Mortal Kombat X, with the added benefit that I’d also be able to play the new StarCraft when it came out.

I bought the PC, and a fightstick to go along with it. Sure, I could have used a controller. But I hadn’t ever played fighting games with controllers. I’m now the proud owner of a Qanba fightstick. It works great on my PC. It doesn’t appear to work on an Xbox One, but they never said that it would. Still, I’m anxious to take the stick over to a friend’s house and see if it works on his PS4.

When I bought MKX on Steam, I went ahead and sprang for the deluxe pack, so that I could play with all of the characters.