See here for my street fighter character lineups.
Mortal Kombat is a video game franchise originally developed by Midway Games (1992). Following Midway's bankruptcy, the Mortal Kombat development team was acquired by Warner Bros. and turned into NetherRealm Studios.
Note that I have only played MK1 - 2 and 3 and havent touched the franchise ever since. nor that i really wanted to (unlike the street fighter series) so i have no idea if they evolved the characters or story in any other direction since MK3. Stuff I've written below is written according to MK1.
I recall drooling on every MK arcade machine I came across during the 90s. The extreme blood, realistic characters and everything else felt so cool. Now looking back I can say that this thing seriously shows its age now; Retarded story, very poor art direction, careless typos, multiple face actors per character, slow action (compared to SF)... boy, aint this crap...
Johnny Cage - Some B class actor guy fighting in a real tournament. Don't even ask why.
Sub-Zero - Some blue ninja guy who spams ice blasts to freeze his opponents. Fan favourite due to blue colour and easy to perform ice spams and uppercuts, making the game almost unplayable. He was paid a large some of money by one of Tsung's wealthy enemies.
Goro - one of the end game bosses. Unlike most characters in the game, who were digitized representations of live actors, Goro was a clay sculpture animated through stop motion.
Kano - Some bald guy who cuts asses with knives. Game text describes him as a mercenary, thug, thief and generally a very evil dude but his MK1 skin looks more like a beggar wrapped around a white bed sheet. Couldn't resist using his MK2-3 skin instead.
Liu Kang - Kung-fu, karate, whatever, it's your typical martial arts guy. Every game and movie around the 90's had one.
Raiden - Some deity hidden in a human skin. This guy is one of the acceptable ones among the clowns. Looks cool, fights cool, suffers from 90s era lightning bolt fx
Scorpion - Apparently Scorpion was murdered by Sub-Zero. He left behind a wife and child in his former life but was allowed to return and avenge his death. Yea, right... Lazy developers recycling sub-zero skin and painting it yellow.
Sonya Blade - Some special forces chick who tails Kano and ends up in the tournament.
and there is an old fart named Shang Tsung but he is just some old guy wearing rags who morphs into other characters in the game so I couldn't be bothered to draw him.
