Mortal Kombat 1’s first gameplay is full of blood, guts, and nostalgia

NetherRealm Studios gave Mortal Kombat fans a first glimpse of the gameplay of its next fighting game, Mortal Kombat 1, show off the rebooted roster and reveal what “Kameo Fighters” is all about. There were also a ton of signature Mortal Kombat deaths, with decapitations, crushed skulls, broken bones, and very wet noises, as fans expect.

Mortal Kombat co-creator Ed Boon joined the Summer Game Fest live stream on Thursday to show off the 12th mainline MK game. MK1The gameplay reveal showed off some familiar faces, including Scorpion, Sub-Zero, Liu Kang, Kitana, Mileena, Johnny Cage, and even Kenshi, the blind swordsman.

As further revealed during a match set at Johnny Cage’s Hollywood home, Mortal Kombat 1 takes the franchise back in time, seemingly in the late ’80s/early ’90s, well before the story and cast of characters blew up – and needed a reboot. MK1 looks like a back-to-basics approach to Mortal Kombat’s broadly compelling fighting game, thanks to familiar faces and what appears to be a scaled-back fighting game system.

A wrinkle that keeps things fresh is Mortal Kombat 1‘s Kameo Fighters, a separate roster of auxiliary characters that, based on NetherRealm footage, includes old-school versions of Kano, Sonya Blade, and Jax. Those three showed up in their earliest costumes, and only as auxiliaries. These pop-in, pop-out kombatants assist players during matches and can be summoned with a single button press, Boon said.

NetherRealm has not revealed how big the Mortal Kombat 1 roster will still be, but a menu screen for Kameo Fighters indicated at least 16 characters on that particular roster.

Mortal Kombat 1 coming to Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X on August 18. It’s the first new game in the franchise since 2019, when NetherRealm and Warner Bros. Mortal Kombat 11.