Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3

aka: MKA: Mortal Kombat Advance, Mortal Kombat Advance, UMK3, Ultimate Mortal Kombat
Moby ID: 6593
Arcade Specs
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Description official descriptions

Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 combines the best of all the Mortal Kombats into a single cartridge. 23 playable characters are immediately available, such as Reptile, Cyrax, Scorpion, Sub-Zero, Jax, Katana, Sonya, and more. There are two bosses that are unlockable, as well as additional characters.

There is a variety of new levels, some of which are interactive. Characters can uppercut someone, causing them to hit the ground hard and crash through to the bottom floor, or they can knocked someone off a bridge, landing in a pit of spikes.

Players can go against the computer one-on-one, two-on-two, or take part in the 8-fighter tournament.

The DS version has a wireless one-one-one multiplayer mode and includes the Puzzle Kombat mini-game from Mortal Kombat: Deception.

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Credits (Arcade version)

60 People (44 developers, 16 thanks) · View all

Ultimate MK3 Cast of Characters
Software
Graphics
Sounds
Music
Executive Producers
Hardware Design
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 71% (based on 64 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.8 out of 5 (based on 132 ratings with 5 reviews)

A lazy port of a great game, but still fun

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.

Genesis · by Medicine Man (328) · 2009

Unfortanately, it ISNT the ultimate fighting game.....

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 ) .

SNES · by ThE oNe (180) · 2002

Proves yet again that SNES games can't perfectly translate to GBA

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

Game Boy Advance · by ThE oNe (180) · 2002

[ View all 5 player reviews ]

Trivia

German index

On August 31, 2000, Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 was put on the infamous German index by the BPjS. For more information about what this means and to see a list of games sharing the same fate, take a look here: BPjS/BPjM indexed games.

Noob Saibot

In Mortal Kombat 3, due to the lack of traditional male ninjas in the game, the secret character Noob Saibot was a black palette swap of Kano, instead of being a palette swap of the ninjas as he was in Mortal Kombat II. In Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, Noob was again brought back as a ninja palette swap. The Sega Saturn version, however, still contains the Kano Noob Saibot. This is because the Sega Saturn port of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 is actually a hacked version of Mortal Kombat 3 for the Playstation.

Rain

The character Rain (playable in some ports of the game) is a purple ninja palette swap. The co-creator of the game, Ed Boon, is said to be a longtime fan of the artist Prince; Rain's name and appearance is a reference to Prince's song Purple Rain.

SNES version

In order to include as much as possible for the SNES port of the game, the character Sheeva (who was created using stop motion animation) was dropped to make room.

Awards

  • Electronic Gaming Monthly
    • June 1996 (Issue 83) - Game of the Month (Saturn version)
    • March 1997 (Issue 92) - SNES Game of the Year runner-up (Readers' Choice) + Genesis Game of the Year runner-up (Readers' Choice)

Information also contributed by Medicine Man and Xoleras

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by JPaterson.

Nintendo DS added by Walkearth. Arcade added by 666gonzo666. Xbox 360 added by Sciere. SNES added by Roedie. Game Boy Advance added by Crawly. SEGA Saturn added by quizzley7.

Additional contributors: Sciere, Alaka, CaptainCanuck, formercontrib, Crawly, Luchsen, Starbuck the Third.

Game added June 7, 2002. Last modified February 23, 2024.