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. 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. Along the way, it became one of the world's most iconic fighting games, and formed a transmedia franchise that continues to this day. 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. 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 photorealistic characters.
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