Sonya Blade (Mortal Kombat). The best heroines before Lara Croft

In the first Mortal Kombat, she was the only female fighter. Then other, even stronger heroins joined her, but Sonya Blade remained one of the icons of this franchise, receiving quite an important role in the recent film adaptation of the game (which was over the top, but also really effective).

Next to Chun-Li, she is the most important character of the early installments in the series. If you've played the first Mortal Kombat games, you've probably used the services of this well-trained soldier more than once. Yes, the series featured stronger characters (and certainly some with more brutal finishers), but Sonya was one of the most reliable. She made up for the shortcomings in finishers later, for example in Mortal Kombat 11. From the beginning of the series, her attacks, especially with legs, could bring almost opponent player to the floor.

Her origin was also interesting for games of this type. Its aim was, above all, to fight criminal organizations, and she ended up in the first tournament... by coincidence. Blade is a down-to-earth woman, a fighter, and a wife of another fighter from the world of Mortal Kombat – Johnny Cage; she's also a caring, though demanding mother, and finally a trainer, who eventually decides to leave her family and continue the service. Was that a good decision? Considering her motivations, it's not easy to give a straight answer. Suffice it to say that Sonya rules in the ring. And she has been since 1992.

The idea of placing the action of the game in a distant future, where the world is reigned by dinosaurs may seem a bit bizarre. In the case of an arcade combat game, it turned out a great decision. Anyway, the game was supposed to be only an addition to the animated series, also called Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, which in turn was based on comic books from the Xenozoic Tales series. In practice, the dystopian world worked even better in coin-op games than on the TV. One of the four playable characters in Cadillacs and Dinosaurs was Hannah, specializing in hand-to-hand combat, knocking out both dinosaurs and gangsters (and even the final boss, which was, essentially, both).