Mortal Kombat Vs Street Fighter

Script Written by Jamie Leslie & David Thibault

Street Fighter vs. Mortal Kombat

There’s only two franchises that have the calibur to not be taken out at this level. Welcome to WatchMojo.com and today we’re pitting the 2 biggest fighting game series against each other: Street Fighter vs. Mortal Kombat.

Round 1: Characters

FIGHT!!!
Choosing the right fighter can be important, whether you have trusted standbys or prefer an improvisational approach.

The Mortal Kombat universe is populated by supernatural ninjas and cyborgs who all dress exactly the save for a color swap or two. But, to be fair, each does have their own unique abilities and back story to make them unique. You also have your more vinalla, human characters like Sonya and Johnny Cage to boast an ever-increasing roster of fun fighters with unique abilities. With the release of every new game, players are eager to take new characters for a spin. Though when it really comes down to it though, were all just deciding between Sub-Zero and Scorpion.

Street Fighter on the other hand goes for a more contemporary feel with the combatants representing different nations taking part in an international fighting tournament, sorta like the Olympics only with less sex. The series is also guilty of palette swap characters, namely in the from of Ryu and Ken, but unlike Scorpion and Sub-Zero these 2 have exactly the same move set just with different stats for each attack. Then there’s 2 other characters with similar moves, the first being the Overpowered Badass Akuma, and Dan … who intentionally sucks. Really Capcom you had to call him Dan?

Seeing as the Mortal Kombat takes place across multiple realms, their franchise is given a little more flexibility when it comes to creative character designs, ranging from from Reptile’s recent… umm reptilian design to the 4 armed behemoth Goro. Sure Street fighter has Blanka, but he alone can’t carry the team on this one.

Mortal Kombat wins the first round

Winner: Mortal Kombat 1, Street Fighter 0

Round 2: Balanced Gameplay

Fighting games are only as good if everyone is on a level playing field. If one playable character is untouchable, it can bring down the entire experience.

The characters are only as good as the people who play them, but every now and then there comes along a case where a character seems a little less balanced than the rest. One good example is Kabal in Mortal Kombat 3 thanks his dash attack and combo’s that could cause 75% damage, a flaw that series co-creator Ed Boon admitted had to be toned down in later games. Another is Kitana in MK2 who’s fan throw and trap abilities allowed for some unintentional cheap juggling.

Street Fighter 2 on the other hand had its ups and downs. Championship Edition, which brought in the 4 boss characters from the first Edition was notably unbalanced as the Boss characters were never meant to be controlled by human players. This was later tweaked in the Hyper Fighting Edition, a version that is considered the most balanced out of all the retro Street Fighter games. It’s only when one comes across a dreaded Hadouken or Sonic Boom spammer that the odds begin to cheapen, though some characters like Zangief can counter these with his spinning lariat. It’s very easy to sit back and coast on one repeated attack but if you know how to handle your character you can easily overcome this sorta cheese.

While its become easier for both franchises to balance tweeking in the more recent titles thanks to online patches, this round goes to Street Fighter who got the balance done right early on.

Winner: Street Fighter 1, Mortal Kombat 1,

Round 3: Story

One on one fighting can be fun and exciting but sometimes you need a little extra narrative to carry you through a game when you’ve got no-one to play with.

As you might expect from a game whose characters for the most part come from different supernatural worlds, Mortal Kombat’s story can get a bit convoluted. So let’s see what we’ve got here: Held once for every generation between the Realms of Outworld and Earth, each Mortal Kombat brings the greatest warriors from their respective realms in a fight to the death to determine the fate of each realm. After the tournament for this generation is won by Liu Kang for Earth, the evil Shao Kahn of Outworld ends up being pretty sore loser and bends the rules to force a second tournament in Outworld. Liu Kang still wins the 2nd tournament and I’d keep going but we’d be here all day.

Street Fighter is a little more grounded in reality but not by much. Every game has a different plot, often having to retcon previous events since the story for each game is different for each character, in some cases being unrelated to one another. Overall, the Combatants face off in a no holds barred tournament to crown the best fighter in the world. There’s also criminal organization going by the name Shadaloo headed by M.Bison who plans to use the tournament to take over the world, there’s the power hungry human/demon Akuma out on a rampage, and then there’s Blanka who just wants to find his mother, yet all these storylines hold very little connection to each other. What can I say? Japan.

Because of Street Fighter’s rather disjointed storyline, most gamers often ignore the story, where as the more centralised and arguably more intriguing story structure for the recent Mortal Kombat games give the single player more replayability, as players have more of an incentive to try new characters to find out more about what’s going on.

Winner: Mortal Kombat 2, Street Fighter 1

Round 4: Levels/ Backgrounds

In the early games, Each Street Fighter stage was designed to represent each character on the roster, being designed after their respective countries. For example you have Chun Li’s stage on a busy Chinese Street, Balrog on the Streets of Las Vegas, and Blanka on the Amazon River. While the more recent installments no longer assign one unique stage to every character, they still offer a wide variety of vibrant vista’s and locales.

Mortal Kombat’s stages on the other hand are a bit less consistent. The first 3 Games were all set around a themed location based on the overall story we mentioned earlier, just in different areas. These range from an exotic island, to another realm full of death and deadly apparatus’s everywhere, to our own world devoid of life. Buuuut from Mortal Kombat 4 onwards, the series started to move into 3D, and with that much less interesting designs thanks to limited technology at the time. Mortal Kombat Deception did change things up a bit by including dynamic instant death stage traps, but those were hit or miss depending on who you ask.

In term of the music for each stage; Street Fighter easily has the upper hand thanks to catchy and memorable themes that relate to each character or stage really well, where as with Mortal Kombat’s themes have less of an identity to them since you can mix up which song goes on what stage and it wouldn’t make that much of a difference.
Street Fighter takes this round with a Perfect Bonus.

Winner: Street Fighter 2, Mortal Kombat 2

Round 5: Special Moves

In order to stay fresh and fun, fighting games need to diversify their combat rosters by adding interesting and unique new moves. For Street Fighter, it’s most iconic special move comes in the form of Ryu and Ken’s “Hadoken” which is simple to pull off, but did little damage, to more complex moves like Zangief’s Spinning Pile Driver which is more tricky to pull off, but does a great deal of damage. Starting from Super Street Fighter 2 was the inclusion of Super Combos that could only be delivered once the gage at the bottom of the screen was filled. Pulling of these devastating moves that ccould turn the tide of a battle.

Mortal Kombat on the other hand takes a wider approach to the way it handles special moves. Sub Zero’s iconic freezing ability and Scorpion’s spear, for example, do little damage but leave their opponents stunned, allowing for easy execution of combos. Characters like Shang Tsung can transform into any fighter and can quickly change the flow of battle. While special moves were more cumbersome to pull off in the original games thanks to weird combinations, MK9 made said combinations more streamlined to match Street Fighter, and included the brutal “X Moves” bringing them to the an even playing field.

But of course Mortal Kombat has one last trick up its sleeve that we all now know as its most iconic feature, the incredibly brutal yet disturbingly satisfying Fatalities, the perfect way to humiliate your opponent at the climax of a battle.

Winner: Mortal Kombat 3, Street Fighter 2

Mortal Kombat Wins! Fatality

Well there you have it folks, Mortal Kombat wins this versus in the brutal and stylish fashion we all know and love, thanks in no small part to learning from the mistakes of its earliest entries far better than its opponent.

What did you think of our verdict? Be sure to debate in the comments and for more entertaining versus battles, be sure to subscribe to WatchMojo.com.