SNES

Mortal Kombat

A splendid beat 'em up that is almost, but not quite, Ribena.

Bone-crunching action - and blood for the Segans! - makes this one of the top fighting games. Love those finishing moves!

Acclaims spil bør du ikke gå glip af, for det er virkelig suverænt. Desuden er de fleste nok ved at være en smule trætte af Ryu og vennerne efterhånden, og så er Mortal Kombat præcis, hvad man trænger til.

Först och främst är grafiken helt makalös. Figurerna och bakgrunderna ser ut som om de vore digitaliserade från en film och sedan animerade. Det här spelet är alltså det närmaste du kan komma ett riktigt slagsmål (F ö det närmaste du BÖR komma ett riktigt slagsmål) och är något av det brutalaste jag sett sedan Pitfighter.

Tycker man att grafik är huvudsaken så kan man inte klara sig utan Mortal Kombat, men vill man ha ett bra fightingspel så finns det mycket bättre spel. Inte ens en blodig, omodifierad version av spelet hade gjort det speciellt underhållande.

Some people will have you believe that Mortal Kombat is the new "king of beat 'em ups", but that distinction is definitely held by Street Fighter II Turbo, whose variety and sheer playability far outstrips Mortal Kombat's limited appeal.

A one-on-one 2D fighter, Mortal Kombat was the first true competitor to Street Fighter II. Sporting digitized fighters, dark medieval backdrops, and excessive gore, this game really took fighting games to a whole new level. Unfortunately, there was such an uproar from parents about the blood and fatalities that Nintendo made the poor decision to leave the gore out of this cartridge. Apparently Nintendo thought it was more important to preserve their squeaky clean image than sell games, so they used white "sweat" instead of blood. Predictably, the bloody Genesis version sold a hell of a lot more copies. Even so, it's hard to argue that the graphics and sound in this version are far superior to the Genesis version. The gameplay is about equal, although some claim the Genesis has better control. Personally, I find it hard to play a Mortal Kombat game without the blood.

In the end, I ended up buying the PC version. I just wasn't satisfied enough with the disappointing SNES version, and that's not even taking into account the gore factor. If you were a SNES-only owner, it was a good game to keep around... but once you had access to the other home versions, you'd probably never touch it again.