In honor of the newly-released Mortal Kombat movie, a video game cover band has performed their own rendition of the classic 90’s theme song. In a twist, though, they included clips of the legendary Gilbert Gottfried reading off the character names to hilarious effect. Gottfried is already beloved for his roles as Iago in Disney’s Aladdin and Kraang Subprime in the 2012 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series, but fans certainly weren’t expecting his iconic screechy tone to show up in a video game theme cover.
While Olivier Adams and Maurice “Praga Khan” Engelen’s memorably catchy “Techno Syndrome” wasn’t in the original Mortal Kombat game, fans have adopted it as the official anthem of NetherRealm’s long-running fighting franchise after they first heard it in the 1994 Mortal Kombat: The Album CD and the subsequent live-action movies. The song has since been given plenty of fan covers and remixes over the years, and eventually made its way back into the franchise proper thanks to being featured in the Mortal Kombat 11 launch trailer back in 2019. Even the recent reboot film by director Simon McQuoid included the song in all of its campy, 90’s-style techno glory.
Now fans can hear this classic geek-culture refrain in a new and unexpected way thanks to video game cover band Lame Genie, who have previously performed renditions of other classic themes from games like Ducktales. As reported by Kotaku, the band recorded a metal-techno cover of “Techno Syndrome” a few weeks ago with an appropriately 90’s twist: the voice of Gilbert Gottfried giving the classic battle cry of “Mortal Kombat!” He then goes on to sing the names of the original Mortal Kombat’s characters just like in the original, though he makes a few notable mistakes along the way – such as referring to Scorpion as “Scorpio.” Check out Lame Genie’s cover of “Techno Syndrome” in the Youtube video below:
As mentioned before, the new Mortal Kombat movie has just been released yesterday, both in theaters and exclusively on HBO Max as part of a year-long plan by Warner Bros. in the wake of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. So far, critics have praised the film for embracing the series’ trademark gory violence (which earned it an R-Rating unlike the previous movies) but criticized Mortal Kombat's lackluster and formulaic plot of warriors gathering for a mystical martial arts tournament to determine the fate of the world.
Still, hearing Gilbert Gottfried read off the names of Mortal Kombat’s iconic fighters is a hilarious blast of 90’s nostalgia, even with him mispronouncing some of them. Mixed with Lame Genie’s heavy guitar rifts and that classic techno beat, this could be a fun way to get psyched for the new Mortal Kombat movie, whether fans see it on the big screen or the comfort of their living rooms thanks to HBO Max.
Source: Kotaku, Lame Genie/YouTube