Ermac

Ermac ( ) is a character in the ''Mortal Kombat'' fighting game franchise by Midway Games and NetherRealm Studios. Debuting as an unlockable secret character in ''Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3'' (1995), he is an amalgam of the souls of deceased warriors and possesses telekinetic abilities.

The character originated from rumors alleging he appeared in the original 1992 game as a glitch, which were perpetuated by video game magazine ''Electronic Gaming Monthly'' (''EGM''). His name was derived from a diagnostics menu in the first game that displayed the text "error macro" as ''ERMACS''. Although the rumors were false, growing interest led to him becoming an official playable character.

Ermac has additionally appeared in alternate series media including the animated series '' Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm'' and the web series '' Mortal Kombat: Legacy''. He has received positive reception for his special abilities, character development, and Fatality finishing moves, while his origins are considered among the most memorable legends of video gaming.

History and conception

In the diagnostics menu of the 1992 original ''Mortal Kombat'' game, an audits screen displayed a macro created by ''Mortal Kombat'' co-creator and programmer Ed Boon in order to log coding errors. This practice was employed by series developer Midway Games since their 1990 arcade release ''Smash TV''. It was spelled as ''ERMACS''—a pluralized contraction of ''error macro''—as in the number of times the program would execute. In early revisions of the game, it appeared on the audits screen beneath the counter "Shang Tsung Beaten" (in reference to the game's final boss fight). After Boon added the hidden character Reptile to the third revision, ''ERMACS'' was now listed below the counters "Reptile Appearances" and "Reptile Battles", which provoked players into searching for a second secret character called Ermac.

Midway removed the ''ERMACS'' listing from the game's fifth and final update in March 1993, but speculation about the character intensified after ''Electronic Gaming Monthly'' (EGM) published a submitted screenshot from the game and a letter from "Tony Casey" that claimed he had played against a red ninja named Ermac and taken a Polaroid of the screen as evidence. Unbeknownst to the magazine, the photo was a doctored image of yellow ninja character Scorpion in the "Warrior Shrine" stage from the Super Nintendo version of the game that was tinted red with the added caption "Ermac Wins". Reader responses contained varied complex instructions for accessing the character. With the still-nonexistent Ermac now visualized as a red ninja, players then claimed sightings of a random glitch that would cause the game's ninja characters' graphics to flash red, with "Error Macro" or "Ermac" replacing their name in their energy bar, but such an occurrence was not possible as the macro counter could not increase in the event of a genuine glitch while no red palette for the character existed.

A scrambled message was included in the ending of the 1993 sequel ''Mortal Kombat II'' that read "Ermac does not exist", but neither Boon nor Midway marketing director Roger Sharpe denied outright the character's presence in the game. In October 1995, two years after the ''EGM'' incident, Ermac was added to the selectable roster of ''Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3'' (an expansion of ''Mortal Kombat 3''), as the developers felt that he had transformed from myth to urban legend and therefore warranted his inclusion in the series. In 2011, Boon clarified the rumors on Twitter, and said he had kept the meaning of the ''ERMACS'' listing secret in hopes of stirring up fan speculation about the character.

Midway alluded to the rumors and ''EGM'' hoax in subsequent ''Mortal Kombat'' games and related media. Ermac appeared on one panel in a ''Mortal Kombat II'' comic book prequel that was written and illustrated by series co-creator John Tobias. '' Mortal Kombat: Deception's'' training mode contained a message that read, "It is a little-known fact that 'Ermac' is short for 'Error Macro'", an homage to his origins that was revived in ''Mortal Kombat X'' for a pre-match introduction sequence between Ermac and series newcomer Takeda

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