Gaming off the Beaten Path

  It's come to my attention that last week was the 30th anniversary of one of gaming's most iconic franchises: Mortal Kombat. I can't believe it's been 30 years since the bone crunching, blood gushing debut of MK, a franchise that's now a household name even outside of gaming circles. It may not have always given us the best games, but few IPs have had as much impact on media as a whole as Mortal Kombat. Not going to lie, I wasn't quite there from the beginning. I was only 4 in 1992 when the original game hit the arcade, I was dabbling in video games at the time but it's not like I could get in the car and drive myself to an arcade. It wasn't really the next year, when MKII hit the arcades where I got found the franchise for the first time. I will never forget walking into the arcade at the now-defunct Bowcraft, seeing the cabinet with Raiden calling down thunderbolts and thinking to myself "I have to play that." Of course my parents let me, th

 Mortal Kombat is back baby! I hope everyone is excited as I am about the new movie. It came out last week but at the time of this writing, I still haven't had time to watch it. As to why, well, we'll get to that later. But I've heard good things. The original MK film was great, it had some really great fight scenes and memorable moments, but as a PG-13 rated movie it had to scale back some of the blood and guts that the franchise was known for. Not this time though, the new version is R-rated and apparently features more of the copious amounts of viscera we've come to know and love from the franchise, including some fatalities that are true to the ones you see in the games. In a way, it's something of a reboot of the franchise. Honestly, I can't think of any franchise that reboots itself more frequently than MK. It's like a cycle at Netherealm Studios, they make an MK game, add whatever insane or ridiculous ideas they can come up with to its sequels, realiz