TOTAL KOMBASM
This has been a great month for a gamer like me.
First the critically acclaimed new Mortal Kombat game, MK: Deception (technically MK 6) came out. I got the Kollector's edition of course which included an arcade flawless version of the original Mortal Kombat game.
Then, this little $19.99 package called Midway Arcade Treasures 2 appeared in stores. Not only does it have Mortal Kombat 3 AND Mortal Kombat 2, it also has the little known digital precedent to the MK games - Pit Fighter (1990) - the original mixed martial arts game. (Street Fighter II came out 1991. Don't even talk about Street Fighter I.)
[Scott's Arcade Arcana: #1) The kickboxer in Pit Fighter is an obvious likeness of Jean Claude Van Damme. Johnny Cage in Mortal Kombat was also supposed to be played by Van Damme who declined the offer, much to his career's misfortune. #2) The UFC's own Dave "Tank" Abbott's style was supposedly "pit fighting," but the promoters just made this up to make him sound cooler.]
You have no idea what kind of nostalgia heaven I am in with these two discs. Makes me wonder what those other nameless MK players I'd compete with at Pinball Pete's are doing with their lives these days. I didn't know their names or what they did, but I knew their styles - the cheap, the honorable, the flashy, and the humble. Inner personalities through video game tactics. The Rorschach test of a new generation.
(Me as Kung Lao, the guy at the top of the page. Recycled pic.)
I have to admit, part of the reason I got so INTO these games was because I wasn't sure about anything else in my life. Maybe I wouldn't graduate college. Maybe I wouldn't get into medical school. Maybe I wouldn't find someone I loved who would love me back. Maybe I wouldn't get into a residency program. Maybe I'd live in a box behind the local arcade. Buddy, can you spare a token?
Of course, the other reason I got into these games was because the chicks were so damn hot. Plus I could control them at will.
If you could do it all over again, would you?
That's what nostalgia is. Those special things that take you back in time to places that might or might not lead to where you are now. Go back or go forward. Attack or defend. Would you fight your battles in different ways or go with the tricks you already knew?
(This is Ayane's thoughtful pose/pause.)
Whatever. I'm also really looking forward to Dead Or Alive Ultimate coming out TOMORROW (two days later than they promised). And I do mean r-e-a-l-l-y. Sometimes, hot girls who kick ass take precedence over nostalgia. I suppose that's why I married my baby in the first place.
But I won't ask Amy to get dressed in that DOA bikini this time.
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I KICKED THE DOGG FATHER'S ASS, YO!
I also have to give a hollah out to my latest home game, Def Jam: Fight For New York (X-box).
I mostly got this game because I wanted to see how Lil Kim (not Corean by the way) and Carmen Electra fought (and looked) in it, but it's an awesome game. I've actually been playing it instead of the uh ... four Mortal Kombat games I talked about above.
[COMMENTARY: The submission fighting style (arm-breaking, choke-holds, and leg-locks) isn't as developed as say UFC: Sudden Impact (Xbox) or Pride Fighting (PS2), but it's a nice mix of dirty fighting and wrestling (and a little more believable than those WWE games). The hip hop/gangsta background fits in well with the Fight Club/No Holds Barred fighting style actually. In other words, every mutha kind of scares the shizzle out of you (or me).]
Yeah, I could write pages comparing fighting games. Yawn.
But you can't beat a fighting game that has "Momma Said Knock You Out" on the soundtrack. Fo' shizzle my bizzle.
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LATES
I was planning on taking some extra pictures for this entry (and editing out the stupid stuff), but it's after 8 o'clock, I'm on call, and I have to go back to see a patient who supposedly got 8 Liters of blood during a neurosurgery operation today. You don't have to be a brain surgeon* to know that doesn't sound right (considering the human body only has 5 L of blood in it), but we'll see.
*(I never get tired of that "you don't have to be a brain surgeon" joke when talking about neurosurgeons.)
Ah, closing an entry and running off (in this case, driving back to the hospital) to see another patient. Reminds me of my geocity days.
It's going to be another Red Bull night, I guess.
4:45 A.M. UPDATE
Yep. The guy I mentioned above really did lose 8 liters of blood during surgery today (and you really have only 5 liters in your body). He got transfused with nine units of blood with eight liters of fluid pumped into him. Hey, see that thick red pulsating anaconda in his abdomen. That's the aorta. Don't cut that. Thanks.
I looked at the O.R. notes - twelve hour spine surgery, rotating schedule of half a dozen docs during his operation - one of them stayed five hours. Pretty complicated case. Paraplegic with a vertebral infection and infected hardware in his spine. They cleaned him out, took the infected hardware out of his spine, and put in new hardware. They sliced him open down the front (anterior abdominal approach) and down the back (posterior approach).
That's quite a fatality (or near-fatality in this case). Sub Zero can do it in two seconds rather than twelve hours though.
(Scorpion actually does the spine-rip fatality in the newest Mortal Kombat game now.
Those damn copy cat ninjas, I swear.)
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