Mortal Kombat X Joins Superfan's Collection Of Custom-Made Arcade Cabinets

My first experience with Mortal Kombat was on cabinet tucked away in the back of the Drug Fair in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey. My friend Danny told me about the game on the bus one day, and I couldn’t believe what he was telling me. I needed to see it for myself.

I was terrible at the original, but I was hooked. When Mortal Kombat II hit arcades, I made sure it consumed my quarters at Barnacle Bill’s Arcade in Seaside Heights. I was “down the shore,” which meant bugging my dad for dollar bills to shove into the change machine.

Now, I play NetherRealm’s titles at home on my console with fight pad in hand. One intrepid gamer is going to great lengths to recapture the arcade memories of our youth, though. He’s built a custom Mortal Kombat X arcade cabinet.

Mike Jensen reached out to us to share his creations, which include more than just the Mortal Kombat X cabinet. He’s built dedicated cabinets for Mortal Kombat 9 and Injustice: Gods Among Us, too.

Click to enlarge.

This construction is recycling at its finest. “The machine originally began life as a partially-built Midway ‘War Gods’ that was converted to an Atari ‘War: Final Assault’ by Atari in the late '90’s,” Jensen tells us. “Midway struck a deal with Atari to sell them some of the cabinets from their lesser popular games that they overestimated sales on so Atari could use them to house their games without having to construct cabinets of their own in an effort to keep costs down.”

Jensen found the cabinet near his home in Wichita, Kansas. He stripped, sanded, primed, sanded, painted (and then sanded one more time) to get the wood ready for the vinyl art. “I designed all the art myself after having self-taught myself to use Photoshop,” he says. “I wanted to pay homage/honor to Mortal Kombat 2, so I laid out the cabinet art to resemble the Mortal Kombat 2 cabinet. Only the Marquee and Control Panel Overlay are different.”

Unfortunately, Jensen needed to move away from a CRT display because of quality loss in the conversation process. The cabinet sports a 27-inch LED monitor. The MK9 and Injustice cabinets are running on CRTs though, because of the PlayStation 3 component outputs (a feature not available on the PS4). He says there is no visible quality loss on those machines.

These were once Dual Shock 4 controllers.

Audio is powered by a 2.1 speaker system, replacing the default cabinet speakers. The most intricate work comes in the form of controls, though.

Jensen isn’t using fight sticks. Instead, he’s “pad-hacked” two Dual Shock 4 controllers, with no discernible lag.

You can see more images of the work in progress in the gallery below. You can also check out Jensen’s YouTube channel, on which he shows off more of his 33-cabinet collection. You can also visit his Facebook page, where you can see more of his Mortal Kombat collection, many of which he’s restored to near-mint condition.

For more on Mortal Kombat X, check out our recent coverage of the story mode. The game will be out on April 14 for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC. Xbox 360 and PS3 versions have been delayed until summer.