Goro's Legacy As A Playable Character In The Mortal Kombat Series

Goro started as a non-playable sub-boss who was infamous for being SO HARD to defeat. In Mortal Kombat II, he was rumored to be hidden or even playable which was quickly dismissed, and later, he was added into the Mortal Kombat Shaolin Monks (for PS2, X-Box, Gamecube) adventure game as a key boss. In-between, he became a playable character in these games. He was however playable in the stupid Game Boy version of Mortal Kombat.

Goro's first few legitimately playable roles in fifth-generation and sixth-generation consoles

The infamously-imbalanced Mortal Kombat Trilogy (MKT) came into existence. It was pretty much a copy/paste job so some features were removed since it heavily relied on past digitized graphics. Fan games were able to add in new stuff but I believe memory constraints were a problem. The fifth-generation consoles had the Playstation One (PS1), the Nintendo 64 (N64), and the Sega Saturn. MKT came to be and the PS1 and Sega Saturn versions allowed us to play as the bosses. The bosses were freaking imbalanced. Goro was on the list. The obvious cut/paste was that Goro's name was never announced like was the first game. Laziness or what? Goro had most of his moves except his stomp move. Goro was also given the spinning fists attack which was similar (yet different) to Zangief's spinning lariat attack.

Mortal Kombat 4 (MK4) came and Goro was made a sub-boss AND he was playable via a code. He was now considerably powered down as you could easily defeat him with fast jump kicks and he did a little less damage. I had the PS1 version which, for some reason, didn't allow Goro vs. Goro while the N64 did. Instead, the PS1 version made you fight Shinnok twice. Worse, Goro had no individual ending either.

The Gamecube version of Mortal Kombat Deception and the PSP-exclusive Mortal  Kombat Unchained made Goro and Shao Kahn playable. They were pretty much powerhouses (again) but not as much as they were in the 2D classics. Goro was also playable in Mortal Kombat Armageddon. 

Goro's (short) return to the playable arena during the reboot

Goro was playable in Mortal Kombat (2011) or MK9 but only during the 150th portion of the Challenge. One had to do mods to play as him but as said - I wouldn't risk doing jailbreaks! Goro has incredible damage in that mode making the 150th portion of the challenge tower a no-brainer. The boss characters were also incomplete as they couldn't do normal jumps or have combos. The bosses were overpowered so it was fair not to make them playable. Though, I wished that depowered versions of the bosses were playable since we have a depowered version of Shang Tsung to play as. 

Mortal Kombat X made Goro a pre-order bonus. Was it intended because MKX was basically a remake of MK4 with new characters? MKX takes place 25 years later like how there's a significant time jump between Tekken 2 and Tekken 3. I wonder why Tekken never made a comic series to explain the events in between the time jump? Goro was just bonus content as he was just the sub-boss who NEVER had a role in the story mode. Goro's fate was unknown in the MKX comic though the dialogue in Mortal Kombat 11 reveals that he became Onaga's vessel and DIED as a result. The comic book never continued so we never saw how it happened. 

I felt playing as Goro in MKX was a fun thing. True, he got depowered but it was fun to play as him or to use him in the One Player vs. CPU to get sweet revenge. I enjoyed using the Tigrar Fury variation which made him similar to the MK4 counterpart in gameplay except with some new moves. It was fun to see Goro still be a pain to others even if he lost his SNK Boss stats. I enjoyed playing him because he had such cool powered-down moves. Though, that seems to be the last that we'll ever see of Goro as a depowered playable character. 

Updated: May 1, 2022