Mortal Kombat 4

Mortal Kombat 4 (1997) was the last game in the Mortal Kombat series to have an arcade version and is the fourth game in the series. It was updated into Mortal Kombat Gold. MK Gold ' s story overrides MK4. It is one of the few 3D fighting games to have been described as having "2D gameplay".

Development
Mortal Kombat 4 saw a handful of revisions in its arcade lifetime.

The first incarnation of the game was toured around America to hype the game's official release. The game was noticeably incomplete, featuring many bugs and a relatively small selection of playable characters. The selectable characters were comprised of Shinnok, Fujin, Scorpion, Raiden, Sonya, Liu Kang, Sub-Zero (masked but missing his scar), Quan Chi and Noob Saibot, along with 6 "?" character slots. Each character had a weapon and one Fatality.

The first version of the game to officially enter arcades was Revision 2. In this version, Noob Saibot was completely removed, but Kai, Reptile, Jarek and Tanya were added to the selectable characters while retaining 3 "?" character slots. This version was later modified (though still referred to as Revision 2), bringing back Johnny Cage and Jax while introducing Reiko, as well as editing Sub-Zero's appearance to include his scar and changing his 2p outfit to a look resembling his MK3 appearance. Several characters receive new weapons, such as Sub-Zero's Ice Scepter.

The final version of MK4 to appear in arcades was Revision 3. Revision 3 added a new second Fatality for every character, further fixed existing bugs left over in Revision 2, changed more character weapons and added the secret character Meat as an alternate skin to the selectable characters. This version also introduced several new costumes for the existing playable characters.

Gameplay
Early on, the development team at Midway decided to make a 3D Mortal Kombat to capitalize on the rising popularity of 3D games at the time. However, Midway decided to develop its own hardware (named "Zeus") from scratch, resulting in development delays (a large amount of the game was tested on two dimensional hardware using pre-rendered characters).

As revealed in later interviews, programmer Ed Boon was particularly concerned with maintaining the gameplay feel of a 2D game but with 3D graphics. He at first was worried that there was some intrinsic property of 3D graphics that would make this impossible. Essentially, the major gameplay difference between 2D and 3D fighting games of the time, was that up to that point all 3D fighting games had attempted to somewhat simulate realistic martial arts. One of the reasons this was done was to take advantage of the fluid keyframed and motion captured animation that was now possible using 3D models. For example, in Virtua Fighter, a real martial artist was filmed performing the moves, and this movement was imposed on the 3D model in the game. Thus, while a punch in a 2D game might be a rapidly responding move with two frames of animation, a punch in a 3D game might have a delay between when the button was pressed and when the opponent was hit, owing to the realistic animation.

This delay however fundamentally changed the gameplay experience. Boon eventually decided to use the non realistic 2D rates of animation and movement, simply imposed onto 3D graphics. Thus the gameplay experience is nearly identical to the 2D versions of Mortal Kombat. While this was attempted before with the Street Fighter EX series, that series used more complex animation which did change the gameplay somewhat. Some critics however, were disappointed that Mortal Kombat 4 did not play like other popular 3D games of the time.

New characters
MK4 introduced:
 * Fujin (God of Wind, ally of Raiden)
 * Jarek (the last Black Dragon)
 * Kai (Shaolin Monk and friend of Liu Kang)
 * Reiko (Shinnok's general)
 * Quan Chi (mysterious evil sorcerer)
 * Shinnok (imprisoned Elder God, playable and can be fought on the ladder only as the final opponent.)
 * Tanya (a traitor to Edenia)
 * Meat (a bloody skeleton)

Returning characters

 * Jax Briggs
 * Johnny Cage
 * Liu Kang
 * Raiden
 * Reptile (noticeably devolved from UMK3/Mortal Kombat Trilogy)
 * Scorpion
 * Sonya Blade
 * Sub-Zero
 * Goro (not featured in the arcade version of MK4, added as a sub-boss for the console versions of the game.)
 * Noob Saibot (as a secret character)

Boss

 * Shinnok

Sub-Boss

 * Goro (Home Version only)

Arenas
thumb|300px|right|MK4 ENDINGS
 * Elder Gods' Arena


 * Goro's Lair


 * Ice Pit


 * Living Forest


 * Reptile's Lair


 * Shaolin Temple


 * The Prison


 * The Tomb


 * Fire Well


 * Wind World

New to the series

 * First game to have entirely computer-generated characters, although the texture maps of the characters were taken from most of the live-action actors of the previous games and animations were all generated via motion capture.
 * First game to introduce a limited weapon system to the series.
 * First game to introduce 3D combat, although limited to sidestepping.
 * First game to add a 'Maximum Damage' cap to the game's combo system, automatically breaking off combos if they deal over a set amount of damage to a player and thus preventing infinite combos (although this cap can be removed with a code).

Storyline
Thousands of years ago in a battle with the fallen elder god known as Shinnok, I was responsible for the death of an entire civilization. To rid all realms of Shinnok's menace I waged a war that plunged the earth into centuries of darkness and banished Shinnok to a place called the Netherrealm. Now after Shao Kahn's defeat at the hands of the earth warriors, Shinnok has managed to escape his confines of the Netherrealm. The war is now being fought once again, only this time, it can be won by mortals. - The Words of Raiden

Alternate Costumes
Some players have 3 costumes to play with any of them do the following : In the arcade mode highlight any character then press start and hold it.

Then press any action button once, twice or thrice.

Ports
Mortal Kombat 4 was ported to the Game Boy Color, Playstation, Nintendo 64, and PC.

Impact
Initial reaction to the new 3D look of the series (as is often the case with long running series) was negative, but MK4 managed to be a financial success due to an aggressive advertisement campaign which included a set of live action adverts filmed in Mexico and a US-wide tour of the arcade version by the game's creators which helped spread the word.

Although the game was hugely popular, it failed to pull Mortal Kombat out of a slump that began that same year. In fact, from 1997 to 1999 the series waned due to several Mortal Kombat projects that were either short lived, mediocre in quality, or shoddy all together. It was also the time in which John Tobias, the main storyteller, and much of Midway's staff resigned since the industry had recently made one flop after another.

MK4 was also to be the last Mortal Kombat game released in the arcades due to a dramatic drop in arcade popularity around 2000.

Trivia

 * MK4 was actually not the first game that was created by Midway with the new Zeus software. A fighting game titled War Gods was released several months before MK4's debut. Unfortunately, it bombed in arcades.
 * Reptile makes his first playable appearance in the series without his mask.
 * Kitana was originally planned to be in Mortal Kombat 4. However, due to there not being enough new characters in the game, her color palette was changed to brown to make Tanya. Her coding is still in the N64 version of the game, and she can be accessed with a GameShark. Her coding is also in the PC version, but it can be only accessed via a trainer. While Kitana's model and textures were deleted from the Playstation version, her moves were left in, and can be assigned to any character with a GameShark.
 * None of the game actors from the previous MK titles were used in MK4. Ed Boon, John Vogel and several other Midway employees provided motion-capture footage for the characters. In the end credits, several past actors such as Carlos Pesina, Tony Marquez, Kerri Hoskins and Sal Divita are mentioned as providing motion capture.
 * Sindel was supposed to be featured in the game with Kitana, but was scrapped out due to Fujin resembling her and having a similar Fatality.
 * Scorpion's "Get over here!" audio clip from this game was recycled in future games, notably in Mortal Kombat (2011).
 * Though the character Reiko is male, Reiko is actually a feminine Japanese name.
 * Sareena was considered to be added to the roster (the MK team wanting to include another Mythologies character in addition to Quan Chi and Shinnok), but they decided to use Fujin instead.
 * First MK game to have animated endings.
 * The Game Boy Color version of MK4 uses a modified version of the Game Boy's port of MK3's game engine. Due to the lack of power behind the Game Boy Color versus the PlayStation and Nintendo 64, the game itself was not in 3D, but boasted "full video" Fatalities (grainy renditions of certain MK4 Fatalities). This port is also one of the few (if not the only) Game Boy/Color titles to have voice-overs ("Round X", "Fight!", "Finish Him/Her!", grunting when getting hit, "Fatality!"), albeit the more discernible words used are from Shao Kahn's voice over effects from MK3. Interestingly enough, Tanya (a female) has the same male grunting sounds when she takes damage (possibly due to memory constraints on a Game Boy Color title).
 * In the CD-based versions and the N64 version of the game, the backgrounds of Goro's portrait is different, depending the version. In the N64 version, the background has flames in it, while on CD-based versions it is purple.
 * Kano was also planned for MK4, however, due to there not being enough new characters in the game, they left Kano out of the roster and put Jarek instead of him.
 * This is the only main game in the series so far to not feature Shang Tsung as a playable character, nor in the form of a cameo. Though, in MK Gold, he is mentioned in Mileena and Kitana's endings.
 * Some male characters, when performing a throw (or a special move), will say a gibberish statement that sounds like, "Hey I'm gonna throw you over there!" Also, Sub-Zero will say "Toca el hielo" (Touch the ice) when he does his Ice Clone move. Strangely enough, some other characters will say this statement when they do certain moves. It can be noted that although these characters are English/Asian speakers, they will speak Spanish (with the exception of Liu Kang and Shinnok). An example of this is when Scorpion takes out his sword he says "Mira que yo tengo".
 * This is the only main game in the series (along with its update MK Gold) to not feature the screen going dark when a Fatality is performed.
 * Shinnok is playable in the Game Boy Color version with a Gameshark code, also his specials moves and his Fatality can be executed by the player.

Glitches

 * Sometimes, when a character comes to deliver a neck-breaking move to the opponent, the other will say "Don't touch my head". When the move is performed, the player might be treated to a rare occurrence. Despite the opponent's neck being broken, he/she will scream out "AAAAH! My legs!"
 * When a character is defeated and falls to the ground, they will sometimes get back up, but then fall right back down. Other times, the defeated opponent will repeatedly rise and fall to the ground (this could happen when the camera pans in on the winning character's victory pose, showcased by the screen shaking with the fall over and over).
 * When a character is knocked to 0 HP using an uppercut and the "Finish Him!/Finish Her!" text appears, the character can sometimes still use an attack right after getting up. This can kill the other player, but the win is still awarded to the correct player.