Mortal Kombat : games of death /

Upon its premiere in 1992, Midway's Mortal Kombat spawned an enormously influential series of fighting games, notorious for their violent "fatality" moves performed by photorealistically rendered characters. Targeted by lawmakers and moral reformers, the series directly inspired the c...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Church, David, 1982- (Author), Church, David (Author)
Format: Book
Language:English
Published: Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, 2022
Ann Arbor, Michigan : 2022
Series:Landmark video games
Landmark video games
Subjects:
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100 1 |a Church, David,  |e author 
245 1 0 |a Mortal Kombat :  |b games of death /  |c David Church 
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264 1 |a Ann Arbor :  |b University of Michigan Press,  |c 2022 
264 1 |a Ann Arbor, Michigan :  |b University of Michigan Press,  |c 2022 
264 4 |c ©2022 
300 |a 1 online resource (viii, 151 pages) :  |b illustrations 
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490 1 |a Landmark video games 
504 |a Includes bibliographical references (pages 139-151) and index 
504 |a Includes bibliographical references and index 
505 0 |a Intro -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: ABACABB -- One. Ludic Precursors and Generic Innovations -- Two. Cinematic Influences and Cultural Politics -- Three. Mortal Kontroversy -- or, Dispatches from the Console Wars -- Four. Imitation, Derivation, and Reinvention -- Notes -- Glossary -- Mortal Kombat Ludography -- Bibliography -- Index 
505 0 |a Intro -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: ABACABB -- One. Ludic Precursors and Generic Innovations -- Two. Cinematic Influences and Cultural Politics -- Three. Mortal Kontroversy or, Dispatches from the Console Wars -- Four. Imitation, Derivation, and Reinvention -- Notes -- Glossary -- Mortal Kombat Ludography -- Bibliography -- Index 
506 0 |a Open Access  |f Unrestricted online access  |2 star 
506 0 |a Open access 
520 |a Upon its premiere in 1992, Midway's Mortal Kombat spawned an enormously influential series of fighting games, notorious for their violent "fatality" moves performed by photorealistically rendered characters. Targeted by lawmakers and moral reformers, the series directly inspired the creation of an industrywide rating system for video games and became a referendum on the wide popularity of 16-bit home consoles. Along the way, it became one of the world's most iconic fighting games, and a transmedia franchise that continues to this day. This book traces Mortal Kombat's history as an American product inspired by both Japanese video games and Chinese martial-arts cinema, its successes and struggles in adapting to new market trends, and the ongoing influence of its secret-strewn narrative world. After outlining the specific elements of gameplay that differentiated Mortal Kombat from its competitors in the coin-op market, David Church examines the various martial-arts films that inspired its Orientalist imagery, helping explain its stereotypical uses of race and gender. He also posits the games as a cultural landmark from a moment when public policy attempted to intervene in both the remediation of cinematic aesthetics within interactive digital games and in the transition of public gaming spaces into the domestic sphere. Finally, the book explores how the franchise attempted to conquer other forms of media in the 1990s, lost ground to a new generation of 3D games in the 2000s, and has successfully rebooted itself in the 2010s to reclaim its legacy 
520 3 |a Upon its premiere in 1992, Midway's Mortal Kombat spawned an enormously influential series of fighting games, notorious for their violent "fatality" moves performed by photorealistically rendered characters. Targeted by lawmakers and moral reformers, the series directly inspired the creation of an industrywide rating system for video games and became a referendum on the wide popularity of 16-bit home consoles. Along the way, it became one of the world's most iconic fighting games, and a transmedia franchise that continues to this day. This book traces Mortal Kombat's history as an American product inspired by both Japanese video games and Chinese martial-arts cinema, its successes and struggles in adapting to new market trends, and the ongoing influence of its secret-strewn narrative world. After outlining the specific elements of gameplay that differentiated Mortal Kombat from its competitors in the coin-op market, David Church examines the various martial-arts films that inspired its Orientalist imagery, helping explain its stereotypical uses of race and gender. He also posits the games as a cultural landmark from a moment when public policy attempted to intervene in both the remediation of cinematic aesthetics within interactive digital games and in the transition of public gaming spaces into the domestic sphere. Finally, the book explores how the franchise attempted to conquer other forms of media in the 1990s, lost ground to a new generation of 3D games in the 2000s, and has successfully rebooted itself in the 2010s to reclaim its legacy 
542 1 |f This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License  |u https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 
588 |a Description based on information from the publisher 
588 |a Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed 
588 |a Description based on: online resource; title from PDF information screen (JSTOR, viewed May 16, 2023) 
596 |a 22 
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