Joker vs. Sub-Zero? Why the Hell Not?

For those dudes ages 24-34 that grew up playing video games, there are some games that were gamechangers.

Punch Out on the NES, for example. My neighbor getting the game for Christmas in 1987 was singluarly one of the better moments of my young life. So much so that I downloaded that game on my laptop while in law school and used to play during Contracts my first year. That game was just amazing; the characters were memorable, the stereotypes blatantly racist, all the things you need for a game. I remember finally beating Tyson right before the end of my 1st semester of law school. Sure I didn't remember crap from that class, but finally taking down Iron Mike -- even at age 22 on a mcgraw laptop -- was the highlight of that semester.

Many of us remember Goldeneye, or, as everyone called/calls it, "Bond" for the N64. That was a game that not only facilitated friendships and rivalries in dorms and frat houses around the country, but it was so universal that you could be visiting your buddy at another college, get turned around (read: butthoused) and lost in someone else's frat house on a campus you don't know, and still easily slide into some choder's room and mingle whilst grawing through people with the assault rifle.

But for me, the 2 gamechangers have and always will be Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat. They both came out around the same time, and were to the fighting genre what Nirvana was to music in the 90s: a signal of things to come, a changing of the guard. The games were pretty simple actually, different characters with different strengths and weaknesses, killing each other. I especially liked Mortal Kombat for its humor and gore. The movies never did the games justice; I'm pretty sure that Jean Claude Van Damme as Guile or Pete Sampras' wife as Sonya Blade is not exactly what the developers had in mind when they were programming the games while living in their parents' basements.

With the advent of Xbox and more recent gamechangers like Halo and Rock Band, fighting games pretty much fell off of the map. So I was very interested when Mortal Kombat vs. DC Comics came out for Xbox 360 a couple weeks ago. They played it to the bone well, choosing only to include a handful of MK originals and DC comic staples like Batman, the Joker, and the Flash. The voice acting kind of sucks, but having the Joker beat up on Raiden and Wonder Woman get into it with Catwoman is a novelty that hasn't worn off. Even Melissa, who had just arrived home tired from a business trip, sat there watching me play the story (yes, I consider myself lucky for marrying a woman with the good sense to appreciate a well made and well played video game [or at least pretend to if necessary]).

With this game and next year's Street Fighter 4 coming out, it seems safe to assume that the fighting video game is alive and well. Even if the games are only surviving with ridiculous premises like having SuperMan team up with SubZero to save the Erf from some fat dude that can shoot lasers out his butt.