Inside a mid-sized arcade in Boston.
A large group of Little Cyan men surrounded the brand-new arcade machine, shouting loudly.
"Use that move again, Johnny, use that move again!"
"Smash his head off! Hurry up, or I'll treat you to this coin!"
They were all incredibly excited as they watched "finish him" displayed on the screen.
However, some passersby who had just been drawn by the commotion looked at the noisy scene with puzzlement.
What are you talking about?
" Finishing Move! Damn, you didn't know that?"
"Boo--You're really out of touch, bro."
The man wasn't angry at being mocked; instead, he curiously stood on tiptoe and peered into the crowd.
On the screen of the machine labeled "mortal kombat," Johnny Cage was facing Scorpion that had been beaten senseless and was now swaying back and forth.
Judging from the amount of health remaining, this player, Johnny Cage, is clearly a skilled player, still possessing more than half of his health. His opponent, on the other hand, has had their health bar completely depleted.
"Isn't he already dead?"
Just as he was wondering, Johnny Cage suddenly clenched his fists and bent down, assuming a posture of gathering strength.
Then...
"Bang!"
A solid uppercut landed on the opponent's chin.
That punch was incredibly powerful; it completely ripped his chin off, leaving only half hanging on his face—it was a truly gruesome sight.
Before he could even exclaim in surprise at the game's exaggerated sense of impact, a gun microphone, the kind used in film shooting, suddenly appeared in the frame.
"Cut! Retake!"
The director's voice came from behind.
Cage shook his head helplessly, looking towards the Mike.
It was as if a blooper had actually occurred on set. " Fatal Uppercut, take 2! Action!"
The clapperboard appeared on the screen.
They actually started all over again.
The poor Scorpion was still standing on the ground when Cage bent down again, gathered his strength, and threw a solid punch.
This time, the force seemed even greater than before, and blood splattered everywhere.
The opponent was also knocked backward and was clearly incapacitated.
"Oh my god..."
The curious passerby was startled and unconsciously shrank back, but then widened his eyes to look at the screen, afraid of missing what happened next.
"Click!"
But the director's voice came through once again.
A hint of displeasure flashed across Cage's face.
He turned to face the camera, ignoring the blood on his hands, and said, "Who the hell hired this guy? WTF?"
" Fatal Uppercut, take 19! Action!"
The camera pans, and the clapperboard reappears on screen.
This time, the column for the number of takes was changed to 19.
It's clear that the filming has been reshot nearly 20 times.
The marks of smearing are clearly visible, indicating that it has indeed been erased and modified many times.
"Bang!"
"Puff!"
Cage threw another punch, this time ripping the opponent's head off completely.
Blood gushed wildly from the joint, and the headless body slowly fell to the ground.
Cage looked at the head in his hand, pulled his elbow back, and then...
"Smack!" His entire head was slapped onto the camera lens, given a huge Close-Up.
"Fatality"
"Fuck!"
The passerby, who happened to be walking by, was clearly startled by the scene and staggered back a step.
What the hell is this?!
He only decided to come and take a look after seeing so many people gathered here.
I never expected this game to be like this.
This is the first time I've seen such a brutal fighting game.
Generally speaking, while these fighting games feature intense battles, they rarely employ such realistic techniques.
Blood is rare, let alone the situation where someone's head is completely removed.
That's incredibly ruthless!
Regardless of the turmoil in his heart, the surrounding crowd immediately became excited.
After waiting the whole game, wasn't this the final Finishing Move we were waiting for?
This is a high-end design that neither Street Fighter nor the King of Fighters has, it's so cool!
Among the onlookers were quite a few teenagers.
As an ESRB-M (17+) video game, this scenario is clearly problematic.
In particular, Gamenova and the ESRB organization have issued explicit bans, requiring arcades to strengthen censorship and restrict player groups through rating systems.
But that's the nature of the Pandora effect.
Instead of being lifted, these strict restrictions have only fueled public backlash.
You won't let me play?
Well, I'm going to give it a try anyway.
Whether it's trying to persuade the store manager, bribing the staff, or sneaking into the restricted area from the crowd.
They always find a way to get to these machines. Even if they don't play, just watching them is enough to keep them entertained.
It's like a videotape.
If you just leave it there, these noisy guys probably won't even glance at it.
But what if someone says that what's in here is absolutely not worth watching?
Everyone would probably want to take it and see what's inside.
Under this strong forbidden fruit effect, the glaringly obvious esrb-m rating has ironically become a free GG for Mortal Kombat.
Everyone wants to see what kind of fighting game it is that can be rated 17+.
Once you've seen even one game, or just a fleeting glimpse, you're destined to be captivated by the game's flashy characters and breathtaking visual effects.
This generation, which grew up in the culture of superheroes, wrestling, and Hollywood action movies, is the perfect natural audience for Mortal Kombat.
Reporters, parents, and organizations have taken turns criticizing Mortal Kombat for its lowbrow and unethical nature.
However, due to the armor laid out in advance by esrb and Gamenova, they could not find a place to strike and could only keep attacking the Mortal Kombat game.
They tried to kill the game this way. But no matter what they tried, these efforts were absorbed by the terrible game and turned into marketing fuel for it.
There was no advertising, no traffic.
It entered the arcade quietly, just like a normal R-rated game should.
However, within just a few days, it achieved viral marketing and entered everyone's field of vision.
It is constrained by its subject matter.
This game may ultimately become Gamenova's most polarizing work in history.
Perhaps it will never be able to step into the open and face the public honestly.
But it will also become a long-lasting emperor in the underground world of video games.
In the realm of R-rated content, its influence is no less than that of Doom.
However, besides gamers, this work also has another group of people paying attention to it.
In other words... hardware manufacturers, whether they are designers or manufacturers.
Gamenova has always been a leader in semiconductor technology related to video games.
If you can get your hands on their substrates and reverse engineer them, you can learn something, more or less.
The architecture is the most valuable part.
Athena's heterogeneous concept remains a hotly debated topic in the industry.
Some believe this is a marketing strategy devised by Gamenova to promote its graphics cards.
Some people believe this is definitely the direction of the future.
However, with the advent of the Intel i486 and the availability of higher-frequency DX versions...
The balance of the discussion began to tilt in the opposite direction.
At least while Moore's Law is still in effect, the importance of heterogeneity doesn't seem... that obvious.
Redwood City, California.
The 3DO engineering team stared at the Mortal Kombat board, which sold for less than $1,000, exchanging bewildered glances. There was no doubt that the board was an original design.
It contains many of Gamenova's unique engineering philosophies.
It is a product of the clash between United States and Asia ideas on semiconductors.
It is both elegant and technically superb.
But... why does this look so familiar?
"This 2-micron custom chip is likely used for decoding, specifically for reading video footage from optical discs in real time."
"This 68030... is responsible for handling the game's main logic."
Arcade game boards are usually not very complex.
Since arcade machines themselves aren't particularly sophisticated devices, reliability is their primary requirement.
When developing arcade game boards, people usually don't put too much Kung-Fu Master into the level of integration.
By consulting the datasheets published by various manufacturers, you can easily obtain the relevant information for the corresponding chip model.
If you only need to understand the basics, this step is already sufficient. A simple deduction is enough to reverse-engineer the entire structure.
The next step is simply to use a multimeter to test continuity and understand the wiring situation.
PCBs in the 1980s and 90s were not as complex as they are now, so it was not difficult to do this.
But it was precisely because they understood it that they had such a strange feeling.
Rather than calling it a video game... it's more like a challenge from Gamenova.
No, no, no, calling it a challenge is really giving 3do too much credit.
In a sense, this is entirely a sarcastic letter.
Trip, who was sitting there, clearly realized this as well, and his expression was not very pleasant.
"You mean... they did all this using an architecture similar to Madam Cilo?"
"... Basically yes, there are some FPGAs inside, but they're mostly peripheral circuits. As for the core components... that's correct."
The supervisor nodded.
Gamenova's solution was very ingenious. They simply took the 3DO solution, studied it, removed all the parts that 3DO was proud of, and kept only the seemingly worthless parts.
Then they did a simple repackaging and added some of their own self-developed "tricks".
They just crammed all the technical expertise that Gamenova had already accumulated into it...
boom!
Mortal Kombat was born.
In a sense, this is probably Gamenova's least technically sophisticated work to date.
The biggest challenge in developing this game was probably finding so many Hollywood stars willing to join a mature-rated film.
The remaining part is simply a continuous reuse of their existing mature industrial technologies.
But they actually succeeded.
Trip clenched his teeth.
He has a strange feeling right now.
It was as if... as if Lin Lixin was his teacher, who had just finished grading his homework. And he only got an F, a complete and utter failure.
I felt both angry and humiliated.
But this anger had nowhere to be vented.
Gamenova wasn't targeting them at all.
This game has a very clear target audience: it's designed to fill the gap in the mature-rated market within the fighting game genre.
But every detail of it seems to be a slap in the face to 3do.
Interactive entertainment... what a stupid idea!