When MK1 first came out way back when, I was impressed by the visuals, and while I dug the fatalities and the moves, it was the storyline that really sucked me in. Characters had depth. Sub Zero worked for a secret shadowy organization, Scorpion had an aura of mystery about him, Liu Kang was the chosen one, Sonya was out to get Kano etc etc. Never before in a fighting game had the world seen the kind of secrets, intrigue, plot twists, backstabbing and other aspects in this kind of game. You look at plots/storylines in other fighting games and they're an absolute joke. Most are incoherant at best, and pointless wastes of time spent by programmers simply looking to show off their graphics engine at worst.
MK's arrival back then signaled several new innovations in the genre, and arguably video games as a whole. MK didn't take the easy route and just stuck a bunch of characters into various arenas. They didn't confine themselves to genre conventions or videogame conventions (ie only RPG's could actually have plots, and most of those plots were, at the time, unforgivably derivative and cliche). I'm not trying to say that plot, character depth, and storyline are the most important aspects of MK. Indeed, the gameplay (which has fallen off steadily since...oh...MK2) is what matters most. But as far as what makes this series unique from the Virtua Fighter's, DOA's, Soul Calibur's and Street Fighters of the world is the fact that MK has a coherent plot with characters that die, disappear, and have actual motivation, where winning is not the only storyline that matters.
If you don't care about MK's storyline, then you never played MK1 and 2 back in the day when video game plotlines, especially in fighting games, were an absolute joke. MK is one of the main reasons why video games became the mainstream phenomenon that they are today, and I think that at least a small part of that is due to the storylines. For me at least, they fueled my imagination, and actually made me care about the characters. It wasn't just Street Fighter. It wasn't just two cartoons characters squaring off. It was an adventure; a story that unfolded every time I picked up the controller. I know, I'm being melodramatic, but for a 12 year old that had never seen anything like this in a video game before, well, I'll say this: I began writing because of MK. By the time I was 13, I had written 350 typed, single spaced pages of the story of Mortal Kombat. I lost that "book" a long time ago, but the desire to be creative and to write has never left me. That's just my experience though.
I like to think now that MK's storyline is what keeps me coming back to the series. I think that ever since John Tobias left the MK team, the characters have been significantly worse, and the overall level of creativity has been less than what it once was. But even while the MK team's energies seem to be misplaced (stupid minigames, the krypt etc), I still hold out hope that the MK series can be what it once was in terms of creativity and gameplay. Until then, I know that the story can at least hold me over until such a time that the MK team wakes up and realizes what's important. 1) Gameplay 2) Creativity with characters and storylines 3) graphics and 4) everything else.
