Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3

The Good
Absolutely nothing. This game sucks.

The Bad
Where to start? Mortal Kombat on the GBA has some of the worst AI that I have ever seen in a video game. Not that they're brain-dead, no. Not that they're simplistic, no. Not that they're too smart, no. So, what is it that makes the AI so horrible? It's that it constantly cheats in order to win. So, it's more like a horrible excuse for AI rather than actual AI that can actually play by the rules.

Due to the translation to the GBA, the controls have been watered down in order to work with the GBA's built-in controller. Get this: Aside from your movement controls (left, right, jump, crouch), you can only punch or kick. No fatalities, no special moves, no blocking, no nothing aside from those basic controls. Since the punches and kicks are actually the strong attacks in the original Mortal Kombat games, which take a while to wind up, that means that there is an absolutely ridiculous delay between the press of the button and the attack actually registering.

Not that the attack is going to register anyways. Back to the AI, your opponent will block all of your attacks (contrary to the limited controls mentioned above), making him absolutely impossible to destroy, and making the game's existence completely pointless. To top it all off, he will get very close to you and punch and kick the crap out of you before you even have a chance to defeat him. And, despite the fact that the game does look and sound like Mortal Kombat (Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 to be exact), visuals and sound are of low quality, further hampering an already horrible game.

The Bottom Line
Pure, rotten crap in a GBA box that smells so bad, the stink will kill you if you smell it. Actually, that's only the beginning of the sheer awfulness of Mortal Kombat on the GBA. It's just that horrible. You'll be much better off playing all of the other Mortal Kombat games (except for Mortal Kombat: Special Forces). But whatever you do, avoid this game by any means necessary, and don't say that I didn't warn you!!!

Additionally, how could this garbage possibly have been approved for release by Nintendo? This game does not deserve any kind of "Seal of Quality" because, for the record, it is absolutely ROTTEN! I could go on and on about this piece of garbage, but if it isn't clear up to this point: Don't play this game.

The Good
By that time UMK3 was probably the best fighting game for Sega Genesis, though this port was quite lazy generally, but had still very cool pluses.

At first the graphics - the arcade game had impressive graphics, but the Genesis ports graphics were a lot more pixelated, but the frame rate was perfect at least. The blood still looked good as in the arcade game, but effects were dropped down a bit.

The audio was descent as well, but also missed a lot. Gameplay itself was fun - you started with 23 playable characters, + there was 1 character, who could be secretly played when picking a similar character and pressing a button combination at the same time (the secret character was Human Smoke.)

Playing through the arcade was fun, and discovering the secret treasures of Shao Kahn after you beat him was mostly entertaining, though the Supreme Demonstration was dramatically toned down, about that i will talk in the flaws of the game.

The versus mode and the 2 vs 2 player battles were awesome as hell for that time, it was probably the best thing about the game. Also the 8 player tournament was also welcomed good. The fighting itself was interesting, doing special moves and combos (which was quite hard on a controller where u should press 2 buttons at a time to do a HK, HP etc. Especially hard was to do fatalities then.)

The Bad
The graphics of this port were a lot worse than on the arcade, very much pixelated, and some effects looked very bad and strange sometimes (for example, Dan "Toasty" Forden pops out in black and white colour, some fatalities where changed for memory savings, such as Kitana's kiss of death fatality, where instead of the opponent turning fat, his head turned into a balloon like in Kabal's fatality, and Scorpion's fatality where he pulled a hellish hand out, was simply changed into transforming his opponent into Scorpion's Lair and letting him burn there, it was a nice try for some times though. The sound effects where also toned down badly. The announcer never said the names of the kombatants, in fact, the only thing you heard from the announcer were commentaries (Excellent!, Superb!, Muahahahhaha! etc.) and the Fatality announcement. The sound quality was also very bad, the great sounds of screaming, music and stuff were very bad quality also. But non the less, the screams did not sound that bad that they were painful to hear (if not), and the music still sounded descent.

Also i must note that from the playable characters Sheeva was taken down due to memory savings, though its not that sad.

But one thing which was really bad - the finishing moves. Exactly to explain what was so bad - in the Supreme Demonstration you can see all finishing moves which can be done in this game, and there u discover a sad truth that there are no Animalities, and Classic Sub-Zero, Human Smoke, Noob Saibot and Rain don't even have fatalities here. Quite disappointing.

Also as in traditional Mortal Kombat way - the AI is very difficult to beat for the most part.

The Bottom Line
If you are a Mortal Kombat fan and want a good port of UMK3, this is not for you, but if you own a Sega Genesis and want a fun fighting game on it, i cant recommend a better game than this.

The Good
This game has to be one of the best Mortal Kombat games ever created. The charecter choices were great and when u find out how to unlock human smoke there even better.

Gameplay- 9/10 It was awesome no major faults other than the glitch when u go to the 8 player tournament mode

Sound- 8/10 awesome sound good sound effects the only problem is the guy who goes "Whoopsie!!!" when u uppercut your opponent, other than that good music, and sound.

Graphics- 9/10 good graphics for a Snes, the players and there detail are awesome the levels all have nice backgrounds and such the blood effects were cool too.

Replay Value- 10/10 you could play this game until your thumbs bleed its so great.

Overall 9/10- This game is my favourite Mortal Kombat game and the greatest so much to do and so many things to kill

Buy or Rent- I would rent this game first if possible but if you can't then buy it the most i've seen one of these things go for was 15 dollars so thats not bad.

The Bad
"Whoopsie!!!" Man

The Bottom Line
IIIIITTTTTTTSSSSSSS GREEAAAAAAAT!!!!

The Good
When I rented this game, I expected more from Mortal Kombat. It was, as I had heard, a translation of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, and I thought it would be cool. There were good parts to it"

The graphics were summed up nicely. Characters look almost identical to their SNES originals. Playing the game is also very fun, and while the gameplay is not the same as the SNES (VERY not the same) it still goes for a good game. There are lots of characters to choose from, and the stages are created nicely.

The Bad
There were also many bad parts:

It is HARD! I started the game and picked my favourite character, Sektor, and went to the first level. I was matched against Scorpion, who kept on teleporting and punching, then doing his little spear thing. Over and over. It was so frustrating I stopped trying and yelled at the GBA. You would think that MKA would try a little to actually give players a chance to PLAY the game.

Also, where is the link up play? I would think for a fighting game like this they would allow two player linking. That would have been a huge plus to the game.

The Bottom Line
While not exactly a bad game, it definitely isn't good. The gfx and playability was nice, but it still had major drawbacks. I recommend this game even though it has many, MANY flaws. A good try to transform UMK3 to the GBA, but it wasn't perfect. My Score - 3 / 5

The Good
The graphics were decent (for the snes) and, although is incredibly similar to those of MK3 (original) it is still a good break. Another great thing about this game is the wide array of characters. There are over 20 characters to choose from, and each have their own special moves and tricks. Also there are 2 hidden characters, which can be unlocked.

The Bad
Although there are a lot of characters, a bad thing was that that most of them were just the same base model altered with separate special moves. By base model I mean that sub zero(classic) , rain, ermac, human smoke, scorpion and noob saibot are the same model, except with different special attacks. I dont really consider that to be 6 different characters, because they move and look the exact same. Also like this are Kitana and Mileena, and Cyrax, Sektor and Smoke(robot). They could have made it better by making different models for each character.

The Bottom Line
Still, UMK3 was a fun game to play, and although lacking a good startup screen, it was decent and earning of a good rating. I give it a ( 3 / 5 ) .