Mortal Kombat has always been a fighting game franchise that enjoys exploring non-fighting ventures, sometimes with great success and other times not. Of its many ventures in this avenue (MK-themed chess, go-kart racing, and the many “test your” mini games, to name a few) perhaps the single best single player mode the franchise has produced is the Krypt.
The Krypt, as you may know, is essentially a creative approach to unlocking bonus content, but Ed Boon and his teams have long proven they’re amongst the most creative in the fighting game development space. In their latest video PNDKM take a look over the history of the Krypt, which is conspicuously absent from Mortal Kombat 1, to remind us of just how well-executed it’s been.
The Krypt actually started back in the 3D days with Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance. This was the mode’s simplest form, essentially offering a 26 x 26 grid (676) of locked coffins that could be opened with in-game currency and grant rewards of varying worth.
Especially in the days before DLC, the Krypt was where developers could include alternate costumes, colors, and even characters (I still remember that Frost was hidden in coffin IV and cost a surprisingly cheap 208 Ruby Koins). They also filled it in with things like concept art, developer notes, bonus coins, silly video sketches, and even the occasional troll via empty coffin.
Despite it’s repetitive nature, players could get lost unlocking things in the Krypt for long periods of time, often having just as much fun exploring as they did fighting. The Krypt was enough of a hit that Midway (and later NetherRealm Studios) brought it back in every subsequent MK entry until the aforementioned Mortal Kombat 1.
The mode retained its basic concept but evolved in Mortal Kombat 9 with a few more bells and whistles as developers added varying areas to the Krypt, and changed things from simply being seemingly endless rows of coffins. They also added a jump scare that would randomly pop out the moment you forgot about it, which ended up being extremely memorable despite momentarily pissing people off.
The Mortal Kombat X Krypt took things to a whole new level and turned the Mortal Kombat experience into something way closer to Zelda than we ever thought we’d get, asking players to find items and use them to unlock massive areas. The jump scares came back in greater force this time, too, but devs brilliantly tied them to getting currency bundles so we couldn’t be too mad.
The Krypt may have reached its apex in Mortal Kombat 11 in the form of an entire island for players to explore in third person. This is Ketchup and Mustard’s favorite version of the mode, and they explain why (along with offering a ton of details on the previous Krypts as well) in the full video below.