Gamers of a certain age probably remember paging through dog-eared copies of GamePro and other monthly magazines to discover the numerous hidden characters and secrets embedded in the highly popular Mortal Kombat games. There's at least one Mortal Kombat secret that never made the pages of those magazines, however. It's a secret that was just recently revealed after over 20 years of secrecy.
The "EJB menus" (named for series co-creator Ed J. Boon) have been sitting unknown and unloved in the first three Mortal Kombat arcade cabinets since their release in the early '90s. They weren't known to the public at large until last October, when the code-crawlers at the invaluable Cutting Room Floor website revealed their existence. The menus are getting widespread attention now thanks to a long-winded video demonstrating the method to unlock them on real arcade hardware, which involves quickly tapping both players' block buttons in fast a precise sequences (the codes also work on MAME, where they can be simplified with some XML hacking).
The options in the menus themselves are mainly devoted to diagnostic testing and internal management for arcade owners, but you can also use the menus to jump directly to the endings for specific characters, cheat your initials into the high score screen, and view some secret thank-you messages from Boon himself. In Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, you can also use the menu to view a quick fatality demonstration and play a punishing, hidden Galaga-style shoot-'em-up.
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