This week’s release of the latest Mortal Kombat game (MK X) caused me to reflect on my own memories of the Mortal Kombat franchise.

I don’t actually remember the first time I saw Mortal Kombat in an arcade, which is a terrible way to start an article about my memories of Mortal Kombat.

I do however remember the launch of Mortal Kombat on home video game systems, which took place in September of 1993. I didn’t own any modern consoles at the time (I was a PC guy and a retro console gamer), but I remember seeing magazine ads and television commercials everywhere. Since I didn’t have any of those consoles, I didn’t get to play Mortal Kombat until 1994, when it was released for DOS.

The first time I actually saw Mortal Kombat running on a video game console was at the hacker conference Hohocon on New Year’s Eve, 1994. At the front of the room, connected to an overhead projector, was a Super Nintendo with a console copier connected to it. Console copiers were devices that allowed people to dump programs stored on video game cartridges (ROMs) to floppy disks and play them back without needing the cartridge. Because 16-bit cartridges often held more information than the average 1.44 floppy disk, the games often spanned two or three floppy disks. In between presenters, a couple of guys loaded up a copy of Mortal Kombat on a Super Nintendo using a console copier and proceeded to brutally smash one another until the next presenter took the stage. Within a couple of months, I had acquired a Super Nintendo, a console copier, and a copy of Mortal Kombat.

I just checked my old, old archives. The first Mortal Kombat for DOS came on three 1.44 MB floppy disks. Mortal Kombat II, the sequel that shipped in early 1995, came on eight. Mortal Kombat III, with the digital (CD) music removed, spanned fifteen floppies.

MK X for the PlayStation 4 takes up 33.5 GB. Fortunately it’s available to download, as that would take up 24,676 floppy disks. Don’t copy that floppy — you’ll throw your back out.

Along with MKII and MKIII, Mortal Kombat (the movie!) also debuted in 1995. I’ve always felt like that movie got a bad rap. It’s silly, yes, with lots of in references to the games. If you want to see a terrible movie, watch the sequel sometime. Oof.

One of the most controversial aspects of Mortal Kombat was its fatalities. After winning a battle and quickly punching in a series of joystick directions and buttons, players could perform gory fatalities like punching people’s heads off or electrocuting them. Performing fatalities required knowledge, timing, and a lot of quarters. Most gamers thought they were funny. Most parents didn’t. Nintendo certainly didn’t.

About ten years ago my sister hooked me up with a guy getting rid of a broken Mortal Kombat arcade cabinet. The cabinet turned out to be a (poorly) converted Atari Black Widow cabinet with a bad power supply and monitor. After adjusting the power supply and swapping out the monitor, I did get the machine up and running.

It’s funny to think of Mortal Kombat 4 as “one of the newer ones,” but that’s when the series made the initial jump from 2D to 3D. That was 18 years ago, in 1997. Along with the arcade version, MK4 made its way to the Nintendo 64, the original PlayStation, and Windows. Somewhere around that time, I lost interest in the series. Unfortunately that means I don’t have a lot to say about all the versions of Mortal Kombat since then. I played one or two of them on the PlayStation and XBox before shelving them once again. I did think the MK vs DC fighting game was unique, and I ended up picking it up from some bargain bin eventually.

To say Mortal Kombat has come a long way in 20 years is quite the understatement. We went from 2D digitized sprites beating each other up to the following clip from MK X, which I almost hesitated to post. Pixels are pixels I guess, but the light-hearted spirit of the early games seems to be totally gone.