Nearly 2½ decades after Mortal Kombat first hit arcades, players are still discovering long-hidden features of the game.
YouTube user “YourMKArcadeSource” has made the world aware of a series of hidden menus in not only the original Mortal Kombat game, but MK2 and MK3 as well. Called the EJB Menu—after Mortal Kombat creator Ed Boon—the menus are accessible on the arcade versions of the games (though not old console ports).
While the menus are generally diagnostic tools, there are some perks for players. Players can view the end game screens for each of the characters as well as a curious “hello” option where Boon, apparently, gave shoutouts to friends and family. (One of the first names on the list, fittingly, is “mom.”)
Players can also cheat and enter their own initials in the high-score menu—something that could have given you big bragging rights in the 1990s.
While the menus for the original Mortal Kombat and Mortal Kombat 2 are generally the same, things get a lot more interesting in Mortal Kombat 3. That hidden menu, which labels itself the “Ultimate EJB Menu,” also includes an impossibly hard clone of the Galaga arcade game. The menu also lets players unlock hidden characters (who were previously accessible through codes) and view the “fatality” moves of all characters.
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A separate YouTube video of Mortal Kombat 3’s “Ultimate EJB Menu” shows it can also be used to enable unlimited free play of the game.
While the YouTube video has brought the hidden menus to widespread attention, they were actually first discovered last October by The Cutting Room Floor, a site that focuses on discovering unused content and hidden secrets in games and movies.
Perhaps more mind boggling than the discovery of a hidden feature more than 20 years after its release is the chance that there are more secrets still to unearth in this arcade classic. Boon hasn’t commented about the menus, but he has said in the past that there were still things players hadn’t discovered about the game. The question is: Was this it?
