With the recent revelation of Robocop as one of the playable characters in Mortal Kombat 11: Aftermath, fans of pop culture crossover clashes will have the opportunity to pit the future of law enforcement against an equally powerful, futuristic cyborg in the form of the T-800 Terminator.
This isn't the first time these two titans have crossed paths, either in popular culture or in video games. The two previously clashed in Robocop Vs. The Terminator, a crossover event that started on the comics page and wound up on the consoles of '90s gamers.
In 1992, Dark Horse Comics held the rights to a number of media franchises, Robocop and The Terminator among them. Riding high after the success of its previous property mash-up Alien vs. Predator, the idea of pitting Robocop against the Terminator seemed like a natural fit.
Written by Frank Miller and illustrated by Walt Simonson, Robocop vs. The Terminator hit the spinner racks in 1992 with the force of a Mack truck. The story is a wicked inversion of the traditional Terminator narrative: a human resistance fighter comes back in time to Detroit on a mission to kill Alex Murphy, aka Robocop. In the future, the Resistance learns Robocop is the missing link to Skynet's nigh-invincibility, providing the defense computer with the one thing it lacks: Human ingenuity.
Robocop is successfully killed by the Resistance agent, but the Terminators send back another Terminator to stop her, who Robocop then thwarts. A vicious game of cat and mouse between both parties follows, resulting in a brutal beatdown where Robocop is eventually captured and assimilated by Skynet. However, Robocop manages to upload a copy of his consciousness into the Internet, one that eventually seizes control of a T-800 factory to build an army of flying Roboterminators. The results are as epic as one would imagine.
The series ends with a future Robocop sent back in time to destroy the earliest iteration of Skynet in the form of a flying satellite, ceasing to exist as the timeline is rewritten into a future without Skynet or the Terminators.
Thanks to its combination of imaginative writing and jaw-dropping art, the book became a success for Dark Horse and inspired the creation of a series of video game spinoffs. The results were somewhat mixed, however. 1993 saw the release of Robocop vs. The Terminator on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, with a Sega Genesis release following less than a year later in 1994. Both games struggled with adapting the narrative into a game that would do both properties justice, ultimately resulting in games that felt more like a mixture of Contra and Final Fight than anything comparable to the comics series.
The games received middling reviews from the critics, who felt the intensity worthy of the property just wasn't there, even with the added presence of fan-favorite characters -- such as ED-209 appearing as a powerful opponent, who Robocop could defeat and then use one of the robot's massive guns as a weapon. The games were also cited for their difficulty, which made them a frustrating play for less experienced gamers.
Eventually, the properties faded back into obscurity again, left for later cinematic sequels and reboots. The Terminator saw the occasional video game resurgence, but nothing that proved especially popular or enduring. The Robocop Vs. The Terminator games were noble but flawed efforts to recreate the excitement of the comics crossover, but with Mortal Kombat 11: Aftermath, perhaps now gamers will get the beatdown battle they've craved for decades.