Mortal Kombat Klones
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Except when it’s clearly a soulless cash-grab that is incompetently produced. With the insane popularity of Mortal Kombat—not just players loving the video game, but also it’s expansion into other mediums and home consoles and political scapegoats—came a wave of would be heirs to the spinal cord-encrusted throne. An April 2021 post by Owen S. Good on Polygon laid out a timeline of all these attempts to clone the success of MK without ever quite figuring out what it was that people liked. Gore? Odd use of photos for animation? Weird mix of characters that seemingly don’t below in the same game? Actually interesting fighting moves?
Unfortunately, few were able to crack the code and reproduce the greatness of Mortal Kombat and Mortal Kombat 2. But man, did they try. In addition to reading that Polygon piece, you can see a fun breakdown of several of these titles in the January 2021 video below from videogamedunkey. It’s an absurd journey through poor concepts and even worse executions that have many a delightful (if unintentional) hilarious aspect. That being said, I would very much love a renaissance of Clay Fighter (minus Earthworm Jim, of course).
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