Mortal Kombat 1 has a visually interesting and unique main menu screen. You see, when you first begin the game you’ll witness a brief video that details how Fire God Liu Kang created the new timeline.
At the end of it, the camera pans to a wooded area surrounded by a massive lake within this new world, and after settling in a singular spot this becomes the back drop for Mortal Kombat 1’s main menu. Well, a crafty PC modder by the name of Ermaccer has figured out a way to play actual matches on this unique back drop.
What makes MK1’s main menu special is that it has seemingly seamless transitions into various aspects of the game. For example, if you head to local versus mode from the main menu, you won’t see a black screen transition or anything like that, but instead you’ll see the options melt away as the two combatants walk into frame from their respective sides.
From here, you’ll be able to select your character and see them essentially standing in the wooded area from the intro before the bout begins. Other modes, like customization, also work similarly but see the camera pan to different places within this area and feature a fighter standing there.
This is actually the key to how Ermaccer was able to make the main menu into a playable stage.
The modder explained in a response on Twitter that while most Mortal Kombat main menus have a valid backdrop that you theoretically could do battle on, most times the characters are hidden away somewhere far off screen. In a game like Mortal Kombat 11, the fighters are present, but they are fully silhouetted and just floating somewhere off screen.
Because the main menu in MK1 utilizes the characters in several ways, though, converting the area into a playable stage is much easier and makes things look as close to normal as they can probably get given the circumstances.
Ermaccer shared some footage of this mod in action, and at the top of the video we see standard character intros for a team of Sub-Zero and Kano going up against Geras and Khameleon on the main menu stage.
What’s cool is that this does look like an actual playable arena when the fighters are engaging around center stage. At one point, we do see them move to the right side of the screen and become obstructed slightly by shadows and trees in the foreground, but for the most part, this looks like an awesome new backdrop that, with a little work, could probably be fully converted over.
According to Ermaccer, this mod will become accessible with the next MK1Hook update. You can find more details about it in the video’s description.