Mortal Kombat!

At 1:27 in the morning, I was being sucked into my soft couches being pulled into a semi-comatose Mormon hangover induced by Tylenol PM and 5 hours of sleep. Flipping through the fuzzy HD channels, I came across one of the greatest films ever to be adapted from the video game industry; Mortal Kombat.

No question, I can quote the entire film from start to finish. I'm sure you can too LTT. From the opening scene where Shang Tsung defeats Liu Kang's little brother, to the last hurrah as the Lord Shao Khan comes to face the tournament winners, and all of the glorious fight scenes in between. This movie is right up there with "Enter the Dragon" and "The Matrix Reloaded" for its brutality and martial arts. And to think it all stems from the best hand to hand combat game ever made.

You can't be reading this and tell me that you don't respect Ed Boon and John Tobias for their epicness. And yes, I did just use the word epicness. Those two deserve it for bringing forth the greatest violent platform game in our history. I remember how hooked I was to Mortal Kombat when it was released in 1992. As a seven-year old, the blood and guts and fatalities to such characters as Scorpion, Sub-Zero, and Johnny Cage mesmerized me, and I have been a fan ever since. Heck, I've even liked them on Facebook I appreciate them that much.

The characters in this game go down as some of the most brutal and intimidating in all video game creation. These are characters that would put Zelda to shame. That would beat up the gunmen from Contra without blinking an eye. Characters that even a tag team of Alice from Resident Evil, and Lara Croft couldn't take down. Bad guys such as Reptile and Motaro. Good guys like Jax and Kung Lao. Heck, the baddest of them all I was proud to have been named after. The razor-toothed, hand-bladed creep show known as Baraka. Tell me you don't have to change undies after seeing his pic.

I knew all of the phrases, all of the code words, all of the hidden characters that could be brought out of the works. Fifty rounds in a row in MK2 and you could bring forth Noob Saibot. Down, back, B, and either the frozen block of ice, or harpoon would be launched from the Lin Kuei brothers. "Get over here" would be yelled as Scorpion would launch your body across the screen. Epicness I tell you, epicness!

These childhood memories of mine drifted across the screen and my mind last night as I watched terrible acting and poor dialogue in a film that has been stamped into my memory bank. I will always love this film and game. I will always be a Mortal Kombat character in my own mind. I will always suit up to fight Kano, or Sonya Blade, or Goro. I will always wait for Shang Tsung to look me in the eye after throwing a nasty uppercut to my jaw knocking me to the mat, and say, "Your soul is mine!".

My soul certainly is.