Great analytical topic. I love it.
Mortal Kombat was inferior on a technical level. I never found the engine to be half as refined as Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting at the time. The Street Fighter games were
Now, Mortal Kombat got attention because of the shock value alone. That's how it drew attention away from the other fighters. I don't think the digitalized characters had much to do with it after the initial "OMG real people are getting decapitated on screen". Pit Fighter had digital character art, and it was garbage. People played Mortal Kombat, and it was a competant fighter, but it was
fun to blow the fu*k out of the characters. It wasn't as good as Street Fighter, but it was
good enough, and it had the added distructive value to make you giddy while playing it. I mean, who wouldn't enjoy doing this sh*t?
http://www.gameklip.com/v/362/
Now, I enjoyed the original games. The wern't that good in retrospect, but I liked spewing the other guy all over the screen, and the game was compatent enough to warrent playing. Still, that dosen't change the fact that the modern games suck. I find the production values to be poor, and the gameplay to be cheezy and poorly thought out. Street Fighter didn't have the ability to yank the skelaton out of Kano, or freeze Sonya and blow her over, causing her to shatter into a thousand little pieces, but Street Fighter had the gameplay, the "down to the frames" level of skill, and the mythology and pure depth to survive. But, Mortal Kombat had the shock value, and that's why it sells today while Street Figher is dying into obscurity. It's easy gratification. Don't get me wrong. Fatalities are fu*king awesome, but they aren't more important than gameplay, and that is something Mortal Kombat lacked, and still lacks....depth of gameplay. It had the storyline, but not the depth. Street Fighter had a story, but that wouldn't have lasted two minutes without killer gameplay.
Gameplay is more important, and Street Fighter had that in spades. How many gamers do you see play Street Fighter II today, and how many still play the original Mortal Kombat? Since Xbox Live is going to have both this summer, why don't we watch and see which gets more attention. I've seen SFII:Hyper Fighting all over the media, but Ultimate MK3 is being pretty muh ignored.