Fighting games and hip hop have been interlinked for decades at this point though it’s certainly not every day things are taken quite this far.
Megan Thee Stallion just dropped a new music video for her track BOA, which features a bunch of fun and overt references to Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter and plenty of other games.
The music video itself begins with three friends sitting down to play “The Curse of the Serpent Woman” that manifests itself as different games for each and includes a cheeky Scott Pilgrim vs. The World reference before the action kicks in.
A pixel art Megan lures the trio into a deadly game before the song blasts off with a giant Dance Dance Revolution-like stage and the rapper in a sexy bunny costume.
Our first fighting game reference is a bit multi-layered with Megan popping out of the TV and blasting a hole through the chest of one player with a snake staff followed with a K.O. screen, which looks to be another callback to Scott Pilgrim.
The shot from the back through said chest hole appears as multiple references to Mortal Kombat Fatalities throughout the years like Cassie Cage in MK11 — along with maybe the Roomba at the end from Johnny Cage’s MK1 stage too.
He also gets Street Fighter’s spinning stun stars above his head for good measure.
There is an actual fighting game, however, that one is playing, which looks to be pulling from Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, and maybe Killer Instinct among maybe a few others.
Megan performs an acid spit attack like MK’s Reptile and stretches her arms like Dhalsim before using her finishing move on him in the real world — squishing his head under her butt.
That’s certainly a way to go.
The dude wasn’t playing on no arcade stick or leverless controller because he was using motion controls with the Power Glove. Maybe that’s why he lost.
As for other references, we see Megan-themed parodies on Crash Bandicoot, Nintendo 64, classic light gun shooters, Snake and maybe even Neon Genesis Evangelion with that skin-tight body suit with the cable.
The rapper has long been outspoken about her love of video games and anime, so a move like this isn’t surprising for her.
A few years back Megan even cosplayed Mortal Kombat’s Mileena, and she’s worn plenty of other costumes since.
The song itself doesn’t really have anything to do with fighting games or games in general really, but maybe it does if you view it as a battle against her haters playing stupid games with the artist.
BOA 🐍 5/10 🎮 PRESAVE NOW HOTTIES 😈 ORDER YOUR SPECIAL BOA CD NOW https://t.co/R4n3ASdzBk pic.twitter.com/eZ0jL2PfOF
— TINA SNOW (@theestallion) May 7, 2024
To take things a step further, Megan is releasing special edition CDs for BOA nostalgically designed like PlayStation 2 games with further references to MK and other titles.
You can check out Megan Thee Stallion’s new video below, but be warned it contains graphic language and imagery throughout. It’ll still probably go over better with the fighting game community than Nicki Minaj’s Chun-Li at least.
