[Commlist] New book: Mortal Kombat: Games of Death

David Ryan Church is pleased to announce the publication of /Mortal 
Kombat: Games of Death/, a short monograph in the Landmark Video Games 
series at University of Michigan Press.

_Description:_

Upon its premiere in 1992, Midway's /Mortal Kombat/ spawned an 
enormously influential series of fighting games, notorious for their 
violent "fatality" moves performed by photorealistic characters. 
Targeted by lawmakers and moral reformers, the series directly inspired 
the creation of an industrywide rating system for video games and became 
a referendum on the wide popularity of 16-bit home consoles. Along the 
way, it became one of the world's most iconic fighting games, and formed 
a transmedia franchise that continues to this day.

This book traces /Mortal Kombat/'s history as an American product 
inspired by both Japanese video games and Chinese martial-arts cinema, 
its successes and struggles in adapting to new market trends, and the 
ongoing influence of its secret-strewn narrative world. After outlining 
the specific elements of gameplay that differentiated /Mortal Kombat/ 
from its competitors in the coin-op market, David Church examines the 
various martial-arts films that inspired its Orientalist imagery, 
helping explain its stereotypical uses of race and gender. He also 
posits the games as a cultural landmark from a moment when public policy 
attempted to intervene in both the remediation of cinematic aesthetics 
within interactive digital games and in the transition of public gaming 
spaces into the domestic sphere. Finally, the book explores how the 
franchise attempted to conquer other forms of media in the 1990s, lost 
ground to a new generation of 3D games in the 2000s, and has 
successfully rebooted itself in the 2010s to reclaim its legacy.


_Endorsement_:


“The book captures the excitement and dynamism of actually playing 
/Mortal Kombat/ while describing the game, its appeal for players, and 
the reasons why the establishment (parents, cultural critics, US 
senators) found it objectionable. Church places /Mortal Kombat /squarely 
in its sociopolitical context to introduce the game to the general reader.”
—Rachael Hutchinson, University of Delaware


In addition to the usual print formats, the whole book is available as 
an open-access title, so enjoy a free copy!
https://www.fulcrum.org/concern/monographs/3484zk03x 
<https://www.fulcrum.org/concern/monographs/3484zk03x>

UofM Press webpage listing: https://www.press.umich.edu/11477677 
<https://www.press.umich.edu/11477677>

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