Mortal Kombat Trilogy

aka: MKT
Moby ID: 2036
PlayStation Specs
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Description official descriptions

All the characters from the first three Mortal Kombat games return for the ultimate battle. You can play as Kano, Reptile, Mileena, Kung Lao, Shang Tsung, Sindel, Sketor, Stryker, Nightwolf, Sheeva, Kitana, Scorpion, Sonya, Smoke (Cyber Ninja), Rain, Jade, Baraka, Johnny Cage, Ermac, Noob Saibot, Sub-Zero (Unmasked), Sub-Zero (Classic), Jax, Rayden, Cyrax, Liu Kang, Smoke (Human), Kabal, Goro, Kintaro, Motaro, or Shao Kahn.

This game is one-on-one martial arts fighting. The player can choose from over thirty different characters, all with their own fighting style and their own special moves. Trilogy differs from the other games in that you can play combinations of people that otherwise isn't possible, such as old Liu Kang vs. new Liu Kang, etc.

Mortal Kombat Trilogy also allows you to challenge a friend to a fight through a Windows IPX network connection.

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Credits (PlayStation version)

33 People (26 developers, 7 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 72% (based on 28 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.7 out of 5 (based on 128 ratings with 6 reviews)

Not much better than the n64 version

The Good
Okay, I just tried the dos version of this game, and I found out it was no better. There were no positive sides to the game at all!

The Bad
The dos port was a the worst thing I have ever seen. The animations are buggy and incomplete, even worse than the n64 version. The characters look stupid, and quess what? It slows down a whole damn lot with a fatality.

The graphics look as bad as the n64 version, carrying that similar MK3 look that is terribly outdated(back then).

The characters all suck. There all just characters from the first 3 games(stages too). Nothing new, except for jhonny cage, who in a sense is the only "new" character( meaning they didn't just use sprites from earlier games), and he looks stupid, a sign that Midway didn't spend much time making him.

Now, heres a question. If you're going to put all the old characters and stages in the same game, doesnt it make sense to remake them so that they actually LOOK THE SAME!? No, says midway. What ends up happening is the old, choppier graphics of MK2, 1, mix with MK3, and look stupid!

One more thing, this game does not contain 34, 35, whatever, characters. Midway has a problem. Taking one ninja, then swapping the pallette 5 or 6 times DOESNT MAKE A NEW CHARACTER! This goes for the ninja's, cyborgs, and the Kitana Mileena Jade Khameleon group. In this sense, the game only has about 14 characters.

You'd think they would have at lest done this when porting to the DOS, but no.

The Bottom Line
If you are going to make a game containing everything from the first 3, take the stages, remake them. Put proper digitizing and colouring so they look like MK3's characters and stages. Do this to the old characters too, and you have Mortal Kombat Trilogy. What MK released was not MK trilogy. It was a worthless piece of junk on the DOS.

This game deserves my only 0 / 5 given so far. (not worth rating)

DOS · by ThE oNe (180) · 2002

Sorry Compilation of a Great Fighting Genre

The Good
Nothing.

The Bad
I liked the original MK, MK2 was awesome, and MK3 was horrible, these three games combined make up the disappointing MK Trilogy. It would have been an awesome game if they gave you the option to play the three games separately in there entirety, instead they bunched them up and left out several aspects from each MK game. There are only a couple of character outfits from the original MK and MK2 games, and some of the backgrounds from the previous two versions were left out as well. The new aggressor mode and brutalities are uncreative and not amusing at all. The brutality finisher is nothing more than one combo repeated over and over, faster and faster until the player explodes after an uppercut. This is stupid.

The Bottom Line
This could have been one of the best games of all-time, but the makers carelessly threw together three good games to make this mess. Almost everything from the three MK versions are in Trilogy, but almost just isn't good enough, like this crummy excuse of a compilation.

PlayStation · by Tyrone Eugene (6) · 2003

Great Game...

The Good
What I find incredible is that so many people bash this game...They site poor graphics and inferior sound, now while the latter may be applicable the former certainly is not...providing that you have an S-video cable attached to your N64. The characters are full sized and control well. There are a ton a moves to memorize and if you can master juggling it unlocks more depth as well. It is fun to pummel your friends into submission w/ a brutality or the occasional arcade machine to the head has never hurt anyone.

The Bad
My only gripe is that the audio is unbalanced and you have to do a reasonable amount of tweaking for it to sound decent. I am almost positive it is mastered in mono so sometimes a few of the sounds will bleed together. You can change this by lowering your bass a bit and in the options menu increasing the sound effects and lowing the music a tad. Once you correct these minor problems the game plays and sounds like the arcade games it was based on.

The Bottom Line
If you can find this game for 10 bucks somewhere...buy it. It is an excellent game w/ loads of characters. If you memorize the master code you're all set...everything is unlocked! Set the game to 'Bloody Kombat' and start bashing in skulls. This is one of the best 2D fighters of yester-year because it is shamelessly gratuitous and it does not try hide this one bit!

Nintendo 64 · by Stefan Grammer (5) · 2007

[ View all 6 player reviews ]

Trivia

German Index

On February 28, 1997, Mortal Kombat Trilogy 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.

Graphics

Johnny Cage is the only character that has new sprites. There was a reason. Midway fired Daniel Pesina (who did Johnny Cage & the Ninjas in MK & MK II) because he dressed up as Johnny Cage to advertise an arcade game called BloodStorm, which turned out to be a emphatic flop among fighting game fans. So Chris Alexander did the sprites instead.

Version differences

There were several differences in the amount of secret/selectable characters in the Playstation and Nintendo 64 version.

The Playstation version allowed players to choose the bosses from the series: Goro, Kintaro, Motaro and Shao Kahn. The Playstation version also gave players a male version of Chameleon, as well as older versions of existing characters (MKII Kung Lao, MKII Jax, MKI Kano, MKI Rayden).

The Nintendo 64 version only had Motaro and Shao Kahn available, but also a female version of Chameleon, named Khameleon.

Awards

  • Electronic Gaming Monthly
  • March 1997 (Issue 92) - Fighting Game of the Year runner-up (PlayStation / N64 versions) + N64 Game of the Year runner-up (Readers' Choice) + Fighting Game of the Year runner up (Multiplatform) (Readers' Choice)

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  • MobyGames ID: 2036
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by ReviewGames.Com.

Nintendo 64, SEGA Saturn, PlayStation added by Kartanym. Game.Com added by Kabushi.

Additional contributors: Guy Chapman, Alaka, Luchsen.

Game added July 24, 2000. Last modified March 19, 2024.