More so than other fighting games at the time, Mortal Kombat was famous for re-coloring certain sprites to appear as different characters. The first few games of the main Mortal Kombat series in which characters had their color palette completely swapped around, rather than creating new character models for them. Palette swaps are commonly used to distinguish between first and second players, for creating visual hierarchies, and for making visually distinct areas for levels in games. The different palette gives the new graphic another set of colors, which makes it recognizably distinct from the original. All the Palette Swap characters featured in 2D MK games, except Khameleon and Chameleon.Ī palette swap is a technique used mainly in video games, whereby a graphic that is already used for one element is given a different palette, so it can be reused as other elements.
