In the arcade version of Mortal Kombat 1, the early versions of Mortal Kombat have a rare glitch called "Error Macro" which means an error in the machine. It was a glitch that turned Scorpion's outfit red instead of his plain regular yellow outfit. It was merely a bug that had so much controversy and rumor spread amongst the Mortal Kombat fans that later on the rumored character known as Ermac came to life in UMK3.

Yeah, it said Error Macro in one of the menus for the game, but no sighting of a red ninja was ever confirmed. That all pretty much grew from a bad picture of scorpion with some text editted in, probably in MS Paint. So many things grew from that one bad picture that they eventually put a real red ninja in for fun.

Wasn't it EGM that ran that fake picture? (Scorpion in Red)

Scorpion picture fake.

ERMACS listed in all versions of MK1 up until T Unit 4.0 and 5.0.

No red Scorpion ever seen with human eyes. I really hate seeing people say that the red Scorpion glitch actually happened when it didn't and everything we know about this is based on, as DreemerNJ said, a bad fake picture with edited text.

Matt

Your signature is so proper for this thread MK2Kung.

Yes, but the saddest part is it wasn't even a picture of Scorpion in Red. It was just a picture of normal Scorpion, only the whole picture was darkened (so the yellow banners in the background also looked reddish).

If I had to guess it was a glossy polaroid scanned on a scanner. If you've ever scanned a glossy pic on a cheap or old scanner (like mine which is cheap and old) you know the kind of weird darkness I mean.

The ONLY thing that was done was to stick the words "Ermac Wins" on the screen in Paint or something.

Actually though, considering the tiny effort that went into it, its pretty cool how many people became convinced that a red ninja appeared in MK1 because of it. I have a definate respect for the fake-maker.

According to the EGM magazine it was a guy named Tony Casey, but I think they just invented the name, the story, everything about it, to get something going and they made the fake themselves, because the text is too perfectly placed.

If you google +"tony casey" +ermac you get 4 matches. FOUR matches. For the guy who supposedly started the biggest rumor in MK history. One of those pages is the MK bible, one of them is a thread *I* posted in on this website but the words Tony Casey are nowhere to be found, however I have mentioned the name before. One other site is Polish, and the other is Dave's MK with a direct excerpt from something about the whole thing including Ed Boon's statement (cover up/lie) as well.

"Possibly the biggest MK rumor of them all - Ermac, a red ninja, was discovered by Tony Casey, also responsible for the only existing proof of Ermac, a Polaroid which was posted in the October, 1993 issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly (page 98). The name Ermac is short for "Error Macro", according to Ed Boon, and is the result of the machine having some kind of error. In the Game Audits located in the Test menu, "ERMACS" is listed below "REPTILE BATTLES". However, it was removed on the T-Unit releases, which could explain the board switch (no more "Error Macros"). Ermac has also been known to be a red version of Scorpion, with "SCORPION" in the life bar."

Can I get a "woah liar"? If the only existing proof is a fake picture, how can the whole rumor in general be true? Hmmm...

Matt

I remember EGM posted other fake images claiming that readers found them out. Dreemer, and MK2Kung, do you remember when EGM released the Nimbus pictures, and Liu Kangs double Dragon fatality pics? I hate EGM.

When I was 4, I remember playing as a red scorpion...





















...or he was yellow, hell I don't fucking know

I can't believe people still pass off this "red Scorpion" trash as fact. It never happened and never will. Just fucking drop it already.

Yes prove there is was no Ermac until UMK3. Your signature tells it all! Cool Signature.

There's two major options to how you can get "ermac" in MK1.

1. Pallet error. You've probably seen MK actors appear in their outfits, but the outfits are red. That's so they can film them in one color, then have the game replace the red with appropriate colors. Game gets an error loading a pallet, or loads it wrong, can cause incorrect colors. Wether this is a possibility or not on the Y-Unit hardware is hard to say, since it's never been seen directly. Someone probably saw one of the MK actors in their red outfit, then applied that to Ermac.

2. The only close thing that could happen to cause an "Ermac" is an arcade monitor going out of tint and brightness / contrast, causing Scorpion's appearance to come out more reddish than yellow. Nothing wrong with the pallet here, it's loaded yellow, the monitor just loses tint control. This is the more likely (though generally very rare) scenario. But if this happens, everything else comes out wrong colored too, so why not any other rumored characters coming from this problem?

"Ermacs" don't even have to be anything major to mess up a game, they could be anything that occurs invisibly during play. But they were necessary to keep track of bugs until Midway released the T-Unit hardware to take care of them.

If they kept track of bugs, that would be one thing, but no one has ever seen ERMACS listed at anything other than 0.

I believe, in Smash TV, when the game overloaded on sprites (the game boasted more on screen sprites than any other action game) it brought you to a special "bonus" level, that you could actually access and repeat.

Otherwise, any evidence of Ermac in any way shape of form is purely speculation, and to boot the original concept is provably fake! Unquestionably, undeniably, irrefutably, fake. By searching the roms for the text that was supposedly displayed in the method you would to find such a thing, you will discover that it is not there, thus proving the story is fake. The picture tells the whole story though.

Matt

The_Purple_Bunny Wrote:
"2. The only close thing that could happen to cause an "Ermac" is an arcade monitor going out of tint and brightness / contrast, causing Scorpion's appearance to come out more reddish than yellow. "

That seems likely...what I used to do with MK1 on Genesis is play as Sub-Zero and mess up the colors on my TV so he looked like Reptile. So I guess this is possible.

I don't kno if u use zsnes, snes, or genesis, but there is a game genie code to ACTUALLy *yes actually* play as Reptile. He has i think Scorpions spear but not Subbies freeze. And no, this ain't that crappy bug for genesis where if u timed it right u could get Sub-Zero or Scorpion to turn green.

Later

Kung Lao rules!

Either way Ermac was made from the Glitch in MK1,Ermacs debut was in UMK3 of course.There was even a rumor that i read at one point,that he was going to be in MK2,but that was strickly a rumor.Ermac will be even better in MK7,i hope!!!!!!!I vaguely remember seeing that in EGM magazine because i used to buy that mag all the time,every month.I don't like it anymore,its too biased,Gameinformer is much better.

There was no glitch.

Right, also the operator's instructions for MK1 has "Error Traps" listed for "ermacs". Ed Boon and Roger Sharp claimed you would fight Ermac while the game tried to fix itself, like Smash TV, but I don't find this to be very credible. Surely by know we would know how to access or reproduce it. There's plenty of glitchiness in MK yet nobody's actually seen the program that's supposed to save you from glitches? Makes no sense. It wasn't even that rare in Smash TV, sightings and details on the "hidden rooms" are well documented. It's just a normal part of smash Tv, not some uber secret hidden thing so rare that nobody can prove it exists.

A good possibility is that "ermacs" just does NOTHING in MK1. Maybe it was put in to be like Smash TV's and was just never fully implemented.

Yes there was,i have read hardcore proof.Noone loves Ermac more than me,i'm killer with him in every MK game that hes in.

Ermac is not in MK 1. You may have read hardcore proof but Ermac is not in MK 1.

You've never read hardcore proof because there is no proof at all, liar.

Matt

I never said that Ermac was in MK1,i said thats where they discovered the error,matt you even agreed with me a few post ago,now you disagree???Hypocrite,if i'm a liar then your a know it all.

Was an error ever discovered? Nobody has seen the error, nobody has ever had any evidence of one, all we have is an item in a game menu that stays at 0, like all the other joke items they put in the menus of all the other MK games.

Is it just me or should we have an Ermac thread stickied explaining the whole thing?
I mean, you know. We've had hundreds of Ermac threads, so I think we should sticky a thread to stop these hundreds of threads asking the same thing.