Mortal Kombat 11 gameplay as seen by a ‘90s arcade rat

Enlarge / Scorpion has come a long way in Mortal Kombat 11, but he's still a golden ninja with flaming powers, so it works for me.

I was 15 when Mortal Kombat first hit the arcades in 1992. It was a different era then-no social media, no modern Internet to speak of, and we didn't have year-long teaser campaigns for new games. You would just walk into the arcade one day and there was a new cabinet sitting there, maybe back in a corner, like a secret, or maybe in the center of the floor, already gathering a crowd.

Being nostalgic for your teenage years is easy, and I don't want to over-mythologize the arcade of my youth. But there was something special about getting those surprises, and we've lost that. It seems rare now to be hit with the unexpected-dodging spoilers is practically a contact sport. Here was this game like nothing else we'd seen before, and it just appeared.

We were already fighting-game players. Street Fighter II, Fatal Fury, World Heroes-we dropped our quarters into every game we could get our hands on. But Mortal Kombat was different.

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