The fighting games craze may have been fully underway by 1992, but it’s safe to say no title spawned as many clones, knock-offs, rip-offs, cheap imitators and expensive failures as Mortal Kombat and Mortal Kombat 2 did.

In a five-year span, video gamers in arcades and their homes were overrun by fighting games that followed the same format: battles to the death, often organized by some supernatural being; a sinister announcing voice commanding players to execute a helpless opponent; gratuitously brutal finishers that seemed designed to provoke outrage and controversy, and secret moves with inside-joke meanings.

Here is a timeline of nine unapologetic Mortal Kombat ripoffs. It’s noteworthy how many of them had launches that were scrubbed, and how many are linked to a platform’s demise in the late 1990s.

Time Killers (1992)

Time Killers is noteworthy for two reasons: One, it’s a fighting game brought to you by Incredible Technologies, the same people who make Golden Tee. Two, it was a “weapons-based” fighting game, and the combatants could fight on even after having both arms severed, which makes me wonder if this seed of an idea could have found better purchase with a Monty Python license.

Time Killers’ roster of heroes ranged from Thugg (20,000 B.C.), who battled alien invaders in his time, to Mantazz (4002 A.D.), a magenta praying mantis with two blade-like appendages. The closest fighter to our time is Rancid, basically Duke Nukem with a prison tattoo carved into his forehead. He’s from 2024 A.D., so look for him in the next presidential election.

Time Killers’ time as a Super Nintendo/Sega Genesis port didn’t go so well. It was actually reviewed by Electronic Gaming Monthly six months before it launched, and the poor marks caused THQ to shitcan the actually finished project. Nintendo bailed on a port around the same time. Black Pearl Software eventually published the game in 1996, but by then it looked seriously dated, on top of being a gratuitously violent, un-fun trash heap.

Survival Arts (1993)

Survival Arts was the first of four fighting games built by Scarab, three of which were critical flops. The fourth, Fighting Vipers 2, was a middling port that launched on the Dreamcast two months before the console was discontinued.

In Survival Arts, pretty much everything ended with an over-the-top fatality, which of course waters down the appeal of a staple feature in fighting games. All you had to do was drain your opponent’s health bar to see them electrocuted, beheaded, set on fire, or otherwise mutilated.

Scarab was eventually bought up by a holding company and renamed Feelplus, where it was responsible for the Wii port No More Heroes: Heroes’ Paradise that launched in 2010, shortly before Feelplus was closed.