Mortal Kombat

You've just beaten the hell out of your opponent - now what? If you're playing Mortal Kombat - the hottest video game on nearly every kid's holiday gift list - the screen will tell you it's time to FINISH HIM. Rip out your opponent's beating heart, tear off his head and pull out his spinal cord! But watch out: If you're playing another game called Night Trap, a gang of hooded killers might capture a bunch of scantily clad sorority sisters and drain their blood through their necks with a drill.

We're hoping against hope that the old axiom that any publicity is good publicity doesn't apply to Mortal Kombat, Night Trap and a handful of other video games that have been in the news of late. The games are for the Wayne's World set, allowing the players to perform such holiday favorites as rescuing - or abandoning - nightie-clad sorority girls whose blood is about to be drained by crypto-rapists; ripping spinal columns out of rivals, and . . . you get the picture. They're perfect for kids who've been sated by TV violence.

From Paper Boy to Parappa the Rapper, I've enjoyed my share of video games over the years. I have to admit, though, the fighting game genre packs no punch for me. Still, given the popularity of Mortal Kombat and its ilk, plenty of gamers seem to enjoy going mano-a-mano with their joysticks. And since I'd rather fight than switch, this week we'll take a look at four recent fighting games. Perhaps we can learn together what makes them kick, er, tick. Violence, of course, is omnipresent in games of this sort.

Prepare for Mortal Kombat. If you think that's a misspelling, you qualify as an old fogy, and you wouldn't stand a chance against Scorpion, Sub-Zero and the other muscle-popping martial-arts combatants that have made this violent video game a phenomenon. Mortal Kombat is a video-arcade game that became a home-video game and is now a feature film with live actors, starring Christopher Lambert and opening tomorrow. But there's also a video companion to the movie called Mortal Kombat, The Animated Video - The Journey Begins (60 minutes, $14.98)

Here's a partial schedule of upcoming movies on video. Release dates and prices are subject to change. THIS WEEK "An Awfully Big Adventure" - New Line Home Video "Die Hard With a Vengeance" - FoxVideo "The Last Best Year" - New Horizons "Clueless" - Paramount Home Video DEC. 26 "Burnt by the Sun" - Columbia TriStar Home Video ($39.95 laser disc) "Under the Gun" - Triboro Entertainment, $92.95 "Born Wild" - Columbia TriStar Home Video "Mortal Kombat - The Movie" - New Line Cinema "Timemaster" - MCA/Universal Home Video ($44.

In the first few minutes of "Mortal Kombat," a movie based on the gory video game, a young man is beaten to death on the stone steps of a temple. The killing sets the tone for what follows: Scene after scene of kung-fu fighters locked in to-the-death battles set to mind-numbing techno-rave music. Kick, sock, pow. To Jerry Rubin, a crusader against Hollywood violence, that constitutes an unacceptably high level of gratuitous brutality. His Los Angeles Alliance for Survival is already picketing the film, which opened Friday.

Picture this: Your pal, a nasty software pirate, has given you a ripoff copy of that notorious, violent and bloody video game Mortal Kombat, and it's now booting up on your home computer. This will be even more fun because you have saved the $69.95 list price of the game. You are ready to decapitate and break the spines of video villains. You are juiced. But what's this? The screen is asking you a question. It wants to know the third word on the first line on page six of the Mortal Kombat manual sold with the game's floppy disk program.

Mark Chavez is neither a fighter nor a superhero. He performs no back flips or terrifying jabs. And he carries no weapons. But he's singing now of the ultimate martial arts battle, standing with his band Adema at the center of a live multimedia fight fantasy, shouting from the stage grim warnings about imaginary enemies to a crowd thick with video gamers. The song is "Immortal," Adema's brutal rock theme to Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance, the next title in the popular Midway Games series making its debut at the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3)

Although plans for his memorial service are still pending, maybe you have hit Michael Jackson overload by the time you read this. He is all over the place, and while we savor his music, it hasn't taken long for the post-mourning sordidness to surface. But there is one more thing we should consider in this column - MJ was a serious gamer. Legend has it that he was so enamored with Mortal Kombat that he would take it on tour with him. Not the console version, mind you, but the arcade cabinet!

Ah, the holidays. The season of love, joy, peace and Mortal Kombat, Lethal Enforcers and Street Fighter. These last three are the titles of video games sought by many shoppers willing to stand in line under speakers musically proclaiming "good will to man" to get their hands on video games whose labels promise they "show no mercy. " But does all this video violence provoke violence? The verdict is still out. "There are studies," said psychologist Patrick McGuffin, "that say 70 percent of all video games have a violent theme, but there are no studies that have proved that watching violence in any form - video games, television, movies or music videos - causes someone to be violent," said McGuffin, of Upper Providence Township.

IF YOUR FAMILY is anything like mine, they could be found the day after Christmas working their thumbs. That is, they probably spent the day hunched over a five-inch screen on the latest electronic game or gadget in their collection of virtual realities. I almost sat on my youngest granddaughter, who was on the sofa curled up under a blanket. She was blotting out the light around her to create a sharper contrast for her digital screen. Fortunately, her parents insist that she spend an hour or so reading every day. So she keeps her e-reader just outside the blanket in case her mother or father get medieval on her and enforce their reading rule.

Although plans for his memorial service are still pending, maybe you have hit Michael Jackson overload by the time you read this. He is all over the place, and while we savor his music, it hasn't taken long for the post-mourning sordidness to surface. But there is one more thing we should consider in this column - MJ was a serious gamer. Legend has it that he was so enamored with Mortal Kombat that he would take it on tour with him. Not the console version, mind you, but the arcade cabinet!

Zak M. Salih is a writer who lives in Burke, Va. Halfway through Mel Gibson's new movie Apocalypto, a group of prisoners are spared a literally heart-rending fate atop a Mayan sacrificial altar and brought instead to a primitive arena. With freedom less than a dozen yards away, the released captives hesitantly begin their escape, while behind them their captors prepare to launch a gaggle of spears, stones and barbed arrows at their backs. There is something gladiatorial about the human target practice that ensues.

Mark Chavez is neither a fighter nor a superhero. He performs no back flips or terrifying jabs. And he carries no weapons. But he's singing now of the ultimate martial arts battle, standing with his band Adema at the center of a live multimedia fight fantasy, shouting from the stage grim warnings about imaginary enemies to a crowd thick with video gamers. The song is "Immortal," Adema's brutal rock theme to Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance, the next title in the popular Midway Games series making its debut at the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3)

After Robert Forrest Kocher decided to create a company to build, install and service computer networks and to design and host Web pages, he searched for a name that would be easy to remember. He came up with Camelot Computers. "There was a time when there were not too many computer stores and it didn't make a difference what you called yourself," said Kocher, a resident of Thorofare, Gloucester County. "Now, if you go through the phone book, there are dozens of stores, and most have names like Quantech, Viatech or letters - HHR or HRP - and they are hard to remember.

Mozart had his aristocratic benefactors, Gershwin his Flo Ziegfeld. Today, it's computer software companies like Sony Computer Entertainment, Naughty Dog Productions and Eidos Interactive that are giving seasoned pop musicians a big boost in the commercial arena and pocketbook - by hiring them to score their coolest video games. Were it not for the invitation of Paris-based game developer Quantic Dreams, and the creative inspirations of their PC adventure "Omikron: The Nomad Soul," David Bowie and his musical collaborator Reeves Gabrels might still be chasing the latest techno trend, rather than retrenching into the moody, personal style of singer/songwriter music that was Bowie's first claim to fame.

From Paper Boy to Parappa the Rapper, I've enjoyed my share of video games over the years. I have to admit, though, the fighting game genre packs no punch for me. Still, given the popularity of Mortal Kombat and its ilk, plenty of gamers seem to enjoy going mano-a-mano with their joysticks. And since I'd rather fight than switch, this week we'll take a look at four recent fighting games. Perhaps we can learn together what makes them kick, er, tick. Violence, of course, is omnipresent in games of this sort.

Eat your heart out, Xena. There's a new, tough, fearless and sexy babe in town. Her name is Lara Croft. She's the digitalized heroine of a pair of popular video games called Tomb Raider and Tomb Raider II. And since her new game was released in November, this video babe has become so popular that there's talk of movie and marketing deals. Gary Keith, director of communications in the U.S. office of Eidos, the British company that created Croft, says he doesn't know if Lara is the first video-game leading lady, but she is definitely the first to achieve star status.

A powerful foreign film tops this, the last list of new videos for 1995. BURNT BY THE SUN (1995) (Columbia TriStar) 134 minutes. Nikita Mikhalkov, Oleg Menchikov. Mikhalkov's foreign-language Oscar winner is the first major film about the sins of Stalinism since the breakup of the Soviet Union. Engrossing and powerful, it subtly dissects the fate of a Bolshevik hero who discovers no one is safe. In Russian with English subtitles. R (sex, profanity, adult themes). Available on videodisc.

Here's a partial schedule of upcoming movies on video. Release dates and prices are subject to change. THIS WEEK "An Awfully Big Adventure" - New Line Home Video "Die Hard With a Vengeance" - FoxVideo "The Last Best Year" - New Horizons "Clueless" - Paramount Home Video DEC. 26 "Burnt by the Sun" - Columbia TriStar Home Video ($39.95 laser disc) "Under the Gun" - Triboro Entertainment, $92.95 "Born Wild" - Columbia TriStar Home Video "Mortal Kombat - The Movie" - New Line Cinema "Timemaster" - MCA/Universal Home Video ($44.