Watch the live action shots used to animate the original Mortal Combat (1991)

In 1991, four developers created the original Mortal Kombat, a fighting game that upset adults because of its ultraviolence before growing into a massive media franchise. The characters were digitized sprites (two-dimensional bitmaps) based on the above video recordings of live actors kicking, punching, jumping around, and walking on a treadmill. It wasn't until Mortal Kombat 4 (1997) that motion capture technology was used to animate 3D polygon models of the characters.

(via r/ObscureMedia)