I liked the first game a lot, the later games I think went a little too far overboard and the novelty of the fatalities had worn off, and the characters were just progressively less imaginative. Stryker? He's just some random guy! What the heck? (okay, maybe that's unfair, I used to play as him all the time.) As far as the movies go, the second one was crap. And when I say crap I mean SHEER crap. It was just a character introduction cram session with little to offer in terms of plot or character development. The first one was great though. It was essentially an updated version of Enter The Dragon that featured a white guy as a Chinese god with a Japanese name. The effects are pretty bad now, but at the time they were actually fairly good. The laughability of the dialogue is overshadowed by the fight scenes as well as the time tested plot. It's a perfectly good martial arts film. On an ironic side note, the actor who played Liu Kang in the game (Ho Sung Pak) co-starred on a children's martial arts TV show with another actor (Hakeem Alston) who WAS in the film (the nameless staff fighter who Liu Kang fights early on in the tournament), but Liu Kang in the movie was played by a completely different actor (Robin Shou). Trivia is fun, eh?

On another note, the TV series MK Conquest was infinitely more interesting for its plotline than the movie. I used to watch it whenever I could.