Mortal Kombat (commonly abbreviate as MK) is a popular series of fighting games made originally by Midway Manufacturing Company. Mortal Kombat began as a series of arcade games, which were picked up by Acclaim Entertainment for the home console versions. Now Midway exclusively creates home versions of Mortal Kombat. It is especially noted for its digitized sprites (which differentiated it from its contemporaries' hand-drawn sprites), and its high levels of blood and gore, including, most notably, its graphic fatalities - Finishing Moves, requiring a sequence of buttons to perform.