To celebrate both the upcoming release of the 9th(!) entry in the Mortal Kombat series of games on April 19, 2011 (April 21, 2011 in Europe) as well as the fact the franchise is being rebooted/retconned, I thought that it might be fun to take a trip down memory lane and take a look at what the fandom was like when it all began by showcasing some memorabilia from my personal collection.
In the April 1994 issue of Video Games: The Ultimate Gaming Magazine, there was an extremely interesting article called Mortal Kombat II: Behind the Scenes, which, true to its name, featured never-before-seen background information and photographs from the set of the second game, complete with profiles of the actors (and actress) who helped bring it to life. Aside from being truly fascinating stuff, one thing that caught my eye almost immediately was the following sidebar on the first page:
Postcards for entering contests? How delightfully quaint!
Now, I’ve never been a particularly lucky person when it comes to winning things, but I pretty much figured “What the hell?” and sent in a couple of postcards. When the month of May came and went with no indication of whether or not I’d won, I became resigned to my fate as a contest loser and pretty much forgot all about it. Imagine my surprise when, in late October or early November of that same year – a full six months after the drawing took place – I receive the following item out of the blue in the mail:
This is what pure awesome looked like in 1994.
While I didn’t get one of the special five issues featuring a Raiden sketch by Carlos Pesina – if I did, then said drawing is buried so deeply in the magazine that it continues to elude me after 17 years of searching – this was still a pretty darn cool thing to have. What it did come with, however, was a letter from the publisher with a rather unique request: they asked me if I could send in a photograph of myself holding my prize for publication in an upcoming issue. And so, a full year after the MK II Autograph Kontest drew to a close, the following sidebar appeared in the April 1995 issue of Video Games: The Ultimate Gaming Magazine:
Looks like the other six winners couldn't be bothered to send their pictures in. Ungrateful bastards.
So, which one of the four contest winners am I? Well, that would be telling, wouldn’t it…? 😉
The Raging Fanboy 