How To: A Crash Course On MK1’s Reptile

I created this video back in 2010, but apparently I never posted about it here. By now, everyone knows how to fight Reptile. I did this for two simple reasons: 1) I never actually fought Reptile on the arcade version of MK1 and I wanted to scratch it off my bucket list, and 2) I wanted to make it a challenge by defeating him with a Double Flawless and Fatality on the hardest difficulty setting (Very Hard). No cheats were used, though I did create a save state right before The Pit stage once I knew the moon silhouettes would appear (see algorithm below). Enjoy.

Finding Reptile

• Must be on The Pit stage.
• A silhouette must fly past the moon before the match begins.
• Defeat your opponent with a Double Flawless without using Block (this means you can’t use Kano’s Knife Toss or Sub-Zero’s Slide). You may lose the first round only.
• Finish your opponent with a Fatality (uppercutting your opponent into The Pit does NOT count as a Fatality). Do not use Block in Scorpion’s case; instead, jump up and tap Up twice, timing the second Up as you land. Sonya can fight Reptile as of Revision 4.0.

Note that Reptile is only present in Revision 3.0 and above.

Defeating Reptile

Reptile possesses the powers and Fatalities of both Scorpion and Sub-Zero, as well as enhanced speed. I used Raiden in this scenario because his jump kick has the longest reach, but it *should* work with most characters. Wait until Reptile approaches, ducking any projectile he may throw as soon as the round starts, then jump back and do the deepest kick you possibly can, followed by a Torpedo Push (or Superman – whatever you call it in your neck of the woods). If the kick is too high, he’ll have enough time to recover and block your TP. Reptile’s speed allows him to keep pace with your backwards jump, allowing Raiden’s kick to connect. Just don’t get pinned in the corner as I almost did. Make sure to finish Reptile with a Fatality in order to receive the bonus points.

Moon silhouettes

According to the MK devs, “a silhouette will only appear on The Pit stage after every 40 matches of play. The machine has an internal counter that keeps track of how many matches have been played (a match is a complete two- or three-round battle). Once the counter reaches 40, a silhouette will appear the next time a player reaches The Pit, at which time the counter will reset to zero.”

[Source: VideoGames & Computer Entertainment, July 1993, Issue 54]

10,000,000 points bug

The game contains a bug that prevents player 1 from receiving the full 10,000,000 points. MAME developer Phil Bennett explains:

It’s a bug in the original game. See the uploaded text file for a disassembly of the Reptile bonus code.

After the first call to award 2,000,000 points, the register holding the winning player number parameter (A1) will have been overwritten with a non-zero value. If you’re player 1, the subsequent score updates will erroneously award a total of 8,000,000 points to player 2.

It looks like you’ll only receive the full 10,000,000 points if you’re playing as player 2.