Top 10 Old School Mortal Kombat Characters

Posted on Thursday, February 3 @ 14:29:42 Eastern by Anthony Severino

6.) Raiden

The god of thunder himself was never awesome for the reasons you would expect. The dude could teleport in a flash and shoot lighting from his fingertips -- but his real claim to fame was the strange, obscene-sounding words he would yell while performing his flying torpedo move. A simple google search for “what does Raiden say” doesn’t provide a real answer, with people most coming up with their own comical take on what he said. The truth is, what he was saying had no meaning at all. The MK team revealed that it was nothing more than gibberish. Who knew gibberish could sound so frightening and angry? It usually sounds a lot more like Adam Sandler.

Not only could Raiden shoot lighting from his fingertips, but his Friendship proved that he could shoot children out of them too (or was that not his fingertip?). In the Sega Genesis version of MKII, he performed the most dreaded of the “alities” -- a Fergality -- where Raiden turns his opponent into this guy. No seriously!

Test Your Might Fast Fact - Raiden was also a playable character in NBA Jam, NFL Blitz and Unreal Championship 2.

5.) Reptile

In Mortal Kombat, Reptile was such a bad dude, you could only fight him if silhouettes were flying by a full moon, and you beat the CPU with a double-flawless victory and a fatality. He wanted you to find him just so he could kick your ass. The green palette-swap ninja would jump into the center of a stage, taunting you with hints on how to find him -- like “look to la luna” and “Tip eht fo mottob”. When you finally caught up with him, shit got scary -- you fought him among a bed of spikes strewn with the corpses and limbs of less fortunate pit-goers. Later when Reptile became playable in Mortal Kombat II, he could spit acid, turn invisible, and eat your face off. In Mortal Kombat 4, Reptile started hanging around with the Parthenogenesis crowd and started dressing a little bit more like the the cowboy from the village people.

Test Your Might Fast Fact - In Mortal Kombat and Mortal Kombat II, Reptile had red blood like a human. In later games, Reptile had green, reptilian blood.

4.) Kitana

You’ve got to be a pretty tough chick to hang with the other kombatants, but what was really deadly about Kitana was hear beauty. If you happened to earn a smooch from the princess of Edenia, you’d swell up, pulsate and explode into a mess of bones and flesh.

Kitana became a fan-favorite thanks to her having the most devastating combo in the history of the franchise: fan lift, jump-kick, fan throw, square wave punch. Kitana was so hot, Shang Tsung tried to clone her, but he got her face all wrong. He must have wanted a woman with a smile like his mother’s.

Test Your Might Fast Fact - Kitana is 10,000 years old. That means you’ve fantasized about nailing a very old lady.

3.) Shang Tsung

Shang Tsung as himself wasn’t so cool. You had your choice of 3 not so formidable special moves: one fireball, two fireballs, or... get this... three fireballs -- at once! Well, not really at once -- but in succession! What really made Shang Tsung the man, and a common choice for seasoned MK vets, was because this wizard could morph into any other character in the game, perfectly mimicking their entire move set, including fatalities.

One of his own fatalities had you holding the low punch button for 30 seconds or more and unable to perform any special moves or morphs. The reward? Tsung will the morph into MKII sub-boss Kintaro, punching his opponents torso right off his lower half and across the screen.

Test Your Might Fast Fact - Though he’s a non-playable boss in the first game, Shang Tsung has been playable in the same number of MK games as Kano: 5 games.

Comments

UghRochester
Joined: Jun 2006

Posted: Feb 3rd, 2011 at 3:39 pm
Good feature, but my question is why wasn't Liui Kang in the top list?

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UghRochester
Joined: Jun 2006

Posted: Jul 26th, 2011 at 11:52 pm
just realized I added an extra "i"

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danielrbischoff
Joined: Nov 2009

Posted: Feb 3rd, 2011 at 4:18 pm
Whoever wrote this should get their name on it. Great feature.

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bigdrew
Joined: Sep 2006

Posted: Feb 3rd, 2011 at 4:25 pm
This feature is so full of reminiscing win! I never log in and had to go through many old emails to find my user name and password to post this comment. But this feature brought back the many hours and quarters I spent learning special moves in the original MK!

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Yoshi
Joined: Nov 2005

Posted: Feb 3rd, 2011 at 5:43 pm
@Daniel - It's Anthony Severino, evident by his full name up there.

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Ivory_Soul
Joined: Nov 2005

Posted: Feb 3rd, 2011 at 5:47 pm
Another Fact: A female version of Chameleon called Khameleon was only Playable in the MK: Armageddon version for Wii.

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Paulmichael
Joined: Oct 2010

Posted: Feb 3rd, 2011 at 6:13 pm
Nice, lots of backstory behind how this game began!

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Lenin17301
Joined: Jan 2007

Posted: Feb 5th, 2011 at 8:48 am
Great list Anthony!, Game Revolution doing an article on Mortal Kombat bring up my hopes even higher that' this year will be truly be the rebirth of MK, and the series will finally get the respect it deserves back from the people who never liked the 3D games, but played the first and second Mortal Kombats. And of course for people like me who ACTUALLY liked the 3D games, but acknowleged that the ones with the 2D plane of fighting are the best, can't wait for April 19th to play what's shaping up to be the ultimate MK game, with 2D gameplay, awesome 3D graphics, classic characters and the old-school gore and fatalities all combined.

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Longo_2_guns
Joined: Jun 2003

Posted: Feb 5th, 2011 at 10:39 pm
Fun fact: you list Classic Sub Zero and Noob Saibot as two of the palette swap ninjas, when technically they're the same person. When the original Sub Zero died, he became Noob Saibot. His brother then became the Sub Zero that was in every game. So really, Classic Sub Zero need not be mentioned as much.

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UghRochester
Joined: Jun 2006

Posted: Feb 6th, 2011 at 9:58 am
Also, your Fan favorite reference link for Kitana is broken, Anthony.

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BigTruckSeries
Joined: May 2006

Posted: Feb 6th, 2011 at 3:31 pm
My Favorite was Kabal because of his dash attacks in MK3, but, the developers crippled him in Armaggedon. Now, my favorite is the FLASH in MKvs.DCU because he's so tricky. I think my all time favorite is Sub Zero, but, every other game he loses some charm. Sub Zero was best in MK3.

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