It introduced many key aspects of the Mortal Kombat series, including the unique five-button control scheme and gory finishing moves called Fatalities.

Mortal Kombat further introduced the concept of "juggling", knocking an opponent into the air and following up with a combination of attacks while the enemy is still airborne and defenseless.

Returning to Hollywood, Johnny Cage uses the experience to revive his failing acting career and develops a highly popular film franchise called Mortal Kombat.

[10][11] Ho-Sung Pak plays Liu Kang, a former member of the secret White Lotus Society who enters the tournament representing the Shaolin temples.

Originally envisioned as a monk, Pak refused to shave his head for the role, leading Kang's final design to more closely resemble actor Bruce Lee.

[12] Elizabeth Malecki plays the Special Forces agent Sonya Blade, who enters in pursuit of the dangerous Black Dragon organization.

He is described as a Caucasian man orphaned as a child in Japan, and his vicious nature led him to be raised in the Japanese underworld.

[14] Daniel Pesina also portrays the undead revenant Scorpion, a ninja who was murdered in cold blood by Sub-Zero some time prior to the events of the game and brought back to life to avenge his own death.

The yellow color of Scorpion's outfit was changed to blue to create his rival and murderer Sub-Zero, a ruthless assassin and member of the Lin Kuei, a mysterious clan of "Chinese ninjas."

Armed with ice-generating powers, Sub-Zero has entered the tournament specifically to assassinate Shang Tsung, having been offered an enormous bounty to do so.

[15] The four-armed warrior and a prince of Outworld, Goro serves as the sub-boss of the game; being a half-human, half-dragon beast, he is much stronger than the other characters and can be unaffected by throw attacks.

[18] However, the name Ermac was the result of a text glitch and the character did not really exist, while Nimbus was a prank started by Electronic Gaming Monthly.

[21] According to Tobias, he and Boon had envisioned a fighting game similar to Data East's Karate Champ but featuring large digitized characters even before that, and the success of Capcom's Street Fighter II only helped them convince the management of their idea.

[15] In the end, Van Damme was parodied in the game in the form of Johnny Cage (with whom he shares his name's initials, JC), a narcissistic Hollywood movie star who performs a split punch to the groin in a nod to a scene from Bloodsport.

[21][31] As a demo version of the game, which featured only six characters (all male),[32] became internally popular within Midway offices, the team was given more time to work on it, resulting in the addition of Sonya to the roster.

While the arcade version of Mortal Kombat was unlocalized for Japan, it had an official release there in 1992 by Taito, who published imports of Midway's games in the Japanese market.

A Master System port based on the Game Gear version was released exclusively for PAL regions on the same day as all the aforementioned platforms.

[47] Mortal Kombat was later released in Japan for the Super Famicom, Game Boy, Mega Drive and Game Gear as Mortal Kombat: Legend of the Advent God Fist (モータルコンバット 神拳降臨伝説, Mōtaru Konbatto: Shinken Kōrin Densetsu)[48] and for the Mega-CD as Mortal Kombat: Legend of the Advent God Fist - Extended Edition (モータルコンバット 神拳降臨伝説 完全版, Mōtaru Konbatto: Shinken Kōrin Densetsu - Kanzenhan) with no major changes from their western releases.

Due to hardware limitations from the uncommon processor used by the Jakks Pacific units, the backgrounds are static and feature no parallax scrolling.

After the lukewarm response to the SNES version of the game, developer Sculptured Software, who handled the Super Nintendo port, proposed releasing an updated version for the system titled Mortal Kombat Nitro, which would feature additional content such as new costumes, an expanded story mode with multiple endings, and Goro, Shang Tsung and Reptile made playable in addition to the restoration of the original fatalities and blood.

[63] It was one of America's top two highest-grossing arcade games of 1993 (along with NBA Jam), exceeding the $300,000,000 (equivalent to $630,000,000 in 2023) domestic box office gross of the film Jurassic Park the same year.

Comparing it to the Genesis version, they found that the controls are less responsive but the sound is better due to the higher quality and inclusion of the announcer's voice.

They concluded, "Despite some control glitches and the altered Fatality Moves, Mortal Kombat for the SNES is a great representation of an arcade classic that will more than satisfy most gamers.

"[99] Highly praising the graphical detail and sharpness, as well as the bloody action when the violence code is enabled, GamePro declared the Game Gear version to be "everything its 16-bit big brother is, plus it's portable."

They noted that the audio is fairly basic and, as with all four initial home ports, it has issues with the controls, but considered it an overall impressive achievement for a portable system.

The reviewers of Electronic Gaming Monthly described it as over-hyped with only minor improvements over the Genesis version, and complained of the lag times.

"[104] From retrospective reviews, Nick Thorpe and Darran Jones of Retro Gamer found the game had an interesting character roster and that the blocking ability that was not featured in many fighters[clarification needed] would make players rethink gameplay strategies.

[115] In 2013, the first Mortal Kombat was ranked as the best arcade game of the 1990s by Complex (the sequel, which "took everything we loved about the original and magnified it by about a million," was given sixth place on the list).

[116] In 2019, The Strong National Museum of Play inducted Mortal Kombat to its World Video Game Hall of Fame.

[118] Hearings on video game violence and the corruption of society, headed by Senators Joseph Lieberman and Herb Kohl, were held in late 1992 to 1993.