In 1991, four developers developed the original Mortal Kombat, a fighting game that upset adults because of its ultraviolence before growing into a massive media franchise. The characters were digitized sprites (two-dimensional bitmaps) based on the above video recordings of live actors kicking, punching, jumping around, and walking on a treadmill. (It wasn't until Mortal Kombat 4 (1997) that motion capture technology was used to animate 3D polygon models of the characters.
(via r/ObscureMedia)
