On this day, in 2011, Mortal Kombat 9 as we call it, was released and set to revolutionize the MK tournament scene. For a decade, interest in MK games was kept alive by a small group of players in the North East running arcade Mortal Kombat wherever people would tolerate it and surprising players from other games who never knew there was anything like it.

Unforunately, in that time, the 4 games of the “3D Era” would pass the FGC by and never really get attention they deserved, being contained in what was mostly an online community. After a lot of trash talking, resentment, many different forums developed, disappeared, combined, replaced, rebranded, a content creation explosion, finally the MK Community had a game that was ready to be played out of the box, in-person as well as online, in a 2D format and the feel of the good old days with a new finish.

The Nexus of this, would come 2 months earlier, when a handful of players from across the near 20 year history the franchise already had, would be invited to beta and bug test the game in Chicago, outside the scope of the normal salaried testers, and give direct feedback for the concerns of what was a tiny segment of the market. MK9 was the SFIV of the series, and would go on to produce comepetitive hit after competitive hit for the next 15 years to follow, in addition to a further exponential explosion of content creation and analysis of each game going forward, with thousands of players contributing to the effort, while also reaping the rewards of games supported by developers in the eSports era in the form of cash prizes and pop culture notoriety.

Here is a picture taken by Shock of the sign at NetherRealm Studios, upon arriving at the building.