Mortal Kombat

The Good
The graphics are flawless! Considering the hardware's limitations, the colour schemes and pixelation match the arcade original's very well.

Most of the grunts and groans and voices are included here, with the exception of "Flawless Victory" and "Fatality" (renamed Finishing Moves here). The music, while played at a rather subtle volume, is well adapted from the arcade as well.

The controls and pace. while a little slow compared to the arcade or even the Mega Drive version, are responsive and you get accustomed to the game's pacing before long.

The Bad
While the arcade version is famous for its controversial extreme violence and gore, the SNES version is criticised even in 1993 for toning down one of the most fundamental aspects that made the arcade version so addictive: blood. Instead of blood, we see grey sweat that is animated like the blood from the arcade.

Also, half of the game's fatalities were modified: Sub-Zero's spinal rip is changed into a Deep-Freeze and Ice-Breaker (which would be included in subsequent games), Kano's Heart Rip stays the same, save the heart not being visible, Raiden's almost identical except the character turns to dust. But the lamest of changes is Johnny Cage's fatality, which is merely kick to the stomach.

The Bottom Line
Even though it is less violent than the arcade version, The SNES version actually surpasses the Mega Drive version in terms of graphics, sounds and also music (the one in the Mega Drive version sounds like garbage!). The controls maybe a little slow at first, but not to the point that make the game unplayable.

If you're to pick the SNES or Mega Drive, get this one. If you want blood and gore, get the other one.

The Good
The graphics, while not as great as the SNES version, are quite impressive for Mega Drive standards, even though the colour schemes don't match the arcade.

The controls and gameplay are more akin to the arcade version than the SNES version, but it is mostly because of the wider screen and smaller characters. Some moves, like Kano's rolling ball, are easier to pull off in this one. Also, the fact that the blood is included in this version through a code( press A,C,A,C,A,B,B on the "Codes of Honour" screen) makes this version palatable

The Bad
The sound and music department. Even though they're still good for Mega Drive standards, you'll strain your ears and mess around with the volume. The simple fact is that this version simply is missing most of the arcade voices and grunts. It feels like I'm watching a silent movie most of the time because the grunts are so far in between.

The music is a mixed bag: some Mega Drive renditions of arcade music are well-done and catchy such as the Pit theme (played in the Throne Room), others like the one in Goro's Lair sound like an incoherent mess that makes them unrecognisable to those familiar with the arcade tunes.

The controls, while responsive, are compromised a bit due to choppy animation and a delay in-between-jumps.

The Bottom Line
Compared to the SNES version, this one is not the one to buy, at least when it comes to sights and sounds, but the controls are just as smooth and responsive as the SNES, and the blood will keep you around as well.

I'd stick with the SNES version for its better overall quality despite the absence of blood, but every once in a while I try this one out without regrets.

The Good
Probe's conversion of Mortal Kombat for the PC is nearly identical to the arcade version in one extremely important area: Gameplay. Since the original hardware in an MK machine is a 386, the PC port has nearly identical gameplay, down to the bugs and tricks you can exploit on the original machine. The graphics are also a good conversion, given that they were downsampled to 256 colors and a smaller size from the original 12-bit color (4096 colors) images. You can even fiddle with the machine's DIP switches. If that's not authentic, I don't know what is.

If you're not familiar with Mortal Kombat, you must have been living in a hole during the early 1990s. Choosing one of seven characters, each with their own set of special moves, you try to beat the other person into a bloody pulp before he/she does the same to you. At the end of two winning rounds, you have the ability to add additional shame and humiliation to your opponent's experience by performing a secret Fatality, which kills them outright in suitably gruesome fashion.

The Bad
If you didn't like Mortal Kombat in the arcade, the home PC version won't make you like it any more.

The sound code is a bit buggy, unfortuately, but most users won't notice it. A patch from Acclaim fixes it, but that patch may be hard to find today.

While the gameplay is identical, the method of controlling the characters is not. Playing with the keyboard double-headed (one hand for movement, the other for attacks and blocking) works the best, and gives you all the control you need to execute the special moves. A 4-button gamepad works okay too. (2-button joystick users will not have all moves available, however.)

The Bottom Line
If you liked Mortal Kombat in the arcade, you'll have just as much fun playing it at home.

The Good
There is a full music video from the Mortal Kombat movie that you can watch whenever you start the game. The graphics are enhanced over the regular Genesis version. The finishing moves are bloodier and the sound it a little better.

The Bad
Load time from the CD for finishing moves are awful. Level loads are almost as bad.

The Bottom Line
Mortal Kombat was one of the video games at the center of the controversy that caused video game ratings (ESRB) to be added to all games. Mortal Kombat used digitized pictures of live people and actors. This made it stand out over Street Fighter, it's main rival in the arcade. Nintendo caved in and removed all the fatalities and replaced them with "finishing" moves in the SNES version. Sega hinted of a special "code" that changed the graphics of the Genesis version. Once you got this code the blood would flow. The SNES version was better graphically but the lack of gore takes away from the game. The SegaCD version has better fatalities and did not need any codes. Blood flies everywhere. If you like the original Mortal Kombat then this CD is a must for any collector.

The Good
Mortal Kombat for the PC is as near to the original arcade experience as you can get without feeding quarters to your disk-drive. Sure, it feels kinda funky to play with the keyboard, but other than that the graphics are there, the sounds are there and most importantly, the "feel" is there. It would take years for Street Fighter 2 to come out right on the pc, but MK got it right from the start.

Having said that I should now point out that regardless of the overhyping and the needless pimping the game is known for, Mortal Kombat is a damn fine one-on-one fighting game. And perhaps more importantly, it's a damn smart game that deserves all the success it had.

Wazzat? No, you can't have any of what I'm smoking! shoo!

Naw, really. Allow me to explain: Come Street Fighter 2, every arcade game set out to clone Capcom's success story, yet no one added any real innovation or special change. Mortal Kombat, for as trite and cliche as it seems now, was filled with innovative touches that made it stand out firmly over the crop of street fighter wannabes.

For starters you had the setting. Moving away from the japanese concept of "buddy fighting" or such where all fighting games where some sort of lameass tournament where everyone came either to "test" their abilities or save some sister/lover/etc from the clutches of some rich super-strong dictator/champion, etc. Mortal Kombat was not like that. In fact, as you may have noticed, this wasn't "Street Kombat", or "Championship Kombat" or whatever, this was MORTAL Kombat and it was nothing like your kiddie fighting game. Borrowing heavily from the movies "Enter The Dragon" and "Big Trouble in Little China" MK placed players in a dark island where the real prize for the winners was, as the opening screens read: "your continued existance". There was some mumbo-jumbo about an interdimensional war but the real plot here was to get the hell out of the island alive. And the assortment of characters made that an even more serious affair. You had equal quantity of "heroes" as of foes, and the (admitedly) small cast of characters included an assassin ninja, an undead warrior looking for payback, a terrorist, a demigod, a four-armed monster and a deranged shapeshifting wizard. There were no "kawaii" characters to be found and hardly anyone fell in the "best buddies" Ryu & Ken archetypes.

In all, a far more dark and brooding experience than we were used to at the arcades, but to keep it from getting too somber and boring the game made a great use of over the top violence and gore. Sure, we have had our quota of blood in previous games (ie. you could chop opponents in half on Samurai Shodown) but MK took it to the next level by throwing buckets of blood for every hit and adding in "Fatality" animations to finish your opponents in the most gruesomely entertaining ways. It was incredibly cheesy, but also wildly entertaining and a fantastic addition to the game.

Couple that with fast and responsive controls, a unique graphical look courtesy of digitized graphics and a pulse-pounding gameplay that added some new concepts (remember the endurance rounds?) to the same old "best 2 of 3" gameplay and you have one of the most refreshing games ever to hit the arcades, yet MK didn't stop there. As I said earlier, MK was a terribly smart game, and that is evidenced by it's understanding of the arcade underground scene. Many people don't seem to understand how the game gained such a success, and that's because they didn't ever set a foot on an arcade or did so for brief diversions only. As of the early nineties arcades were much more of an underground hotspot with it's very own culture (or counter-culture) similar to the multiplayer online scene nowadays. This scene thrived on word of mouth and challeges (who doesn't remember battling the local SF2 champ?) and Midway understood this and applied it to MK, which was the first game to be heavily laced with secret features. Sure, by now it's seems like a pretty stupid concept but at the time there was no internet you could log on to learn all the tricks for your favorite games, and the special moves for fighting games where gasp! Actually special! And couldn't be found on the manuals for the games or in the cabinet artwork. Thus arcade games had a potential for mistery that remained largely untapped by the developers. This ended with MK, which was the first game to introduce secret characters and those totally cool fatality animations that inspired every gamer to try out every nook and cranny of the game in hopes of finding a secret or even memorizing and exploiting the glitches and bugs to one's advantage. Mortal Kombat trascended the arcade boundaries and became a myth thanks to that, and the knowledge of every move and fatality earned the respect of fellow arcaders and friends, specially with MK's weird and unnatural code-like moves (hold block-up-up-release block-HP...?[Man, I can't believe I remembered that one! :))])

That's what makes MK unique, that's what makes it much more than just a good fighting game.

The Bad
Well, for as much praise as I can give it I have to still say that I prefer SF2 in many aspects. For starters the characters have all the same strength and agility thus removing the variety of strategies you had on other games (ie. Zangief vs Chun-li on SF2 was a very different fight than Ryu vs Chun-li. On the other hand, Sub-zero vs Scorpion and Sub-zero vs Raiden on MK required the same strategy save for some adjustments to each character's special moves).

This also translates to the interface, I'll be hard pressed to find a difference between HP and LP save for the blood, and the use of a block button is just annoying and unintuitive. Pulling back works much better.

Also, if you find over the top violence disgusting and are the sort of fellow that finds this or that offensive and bla. bla. bla. then first of all you suck and need to get yourself a life, (who the hell can't understand the delicate beauty of ripping someone's heart out?? ;D) and second stay away from this game because it's gonna be hell for you.

The Bottom Line
In a word?? Fatality!!! Go play MK, it's a one of the all-time arcade classics and it can still kick your ass on the PC.

The Good
Mortal Kombat is at its best a very average game. However to some it is an unflappable conversion of a perfect arcade game, to others it is a disgusting corrupting game with deplorable violence that should have been banned from the start.

To me it is a hollow 2D beat-em-up that relies on its sensationalist nature rather than its gameplaying core. It is memorable, but for all the wrong reasons. Everybody knows this game has gore. That is not a new thing. But unfortunately for the gamers of the world the makers of this game were determined that the gore would be the selling point of the game. Couple that with a media hype that was unparalleled in its day makes this more of a one trick pony than a challenging game.

Its plus points are found in its use of digitised actors for characters, this was a new thing and kudos to the Arena & Probe for that. The music was ok too.

The Bad
But that is where the praise ceases I'm afraid. Without the blood & gore (and if you were a SNES owner this was the only version you got) this game was boring. Very boring.

It lacks any kind of flow, switches between very hard and very easy and is a control nightmare. The finishers were a novelty but unfortunately they decided to base the entire game on that one thing.

Thankfully there was better to come.

The Bottom Line
A game for renting only.

The Good
The game is quick and easy to learn. The fatalities are an interesting diversion. It might not have look pretty, but it sure has the feel of the original Mortal Kombat arcade machine (try saying that about the SNES version which plays like jerky molasses). Sega actually lets MK have the blood and gore.

The Bad
Even though it is great for pick up and play gaming sessions, the depth of the MK games has always been much lower then the Street Fighter games. The playstyles of the characters are all very simular only differing in special moves and personality. The graphics are passable, but are quite a step back from the arcade version.

The Bottom Line
It was definitely the version of Mortal Kombat to own back in the day. The graphics might have been homely, but it played so much better then the Super Nintendo version. I know it's already been mentioned, but Sega letting the violence of the arcade be ported home also adds to the experience. If you should ever find a Genesis and cart of MK (and television to play it on)(and power supply), there are much worse things to do then play it.

The Good
The game itself is great, unlike Street Fighter where you play with cartoonish characters, here you play with digitized awesome characters, which seems like your playing a fight between real people. Every character has a unique story and interesting special moves. Another great thing is the violence - loads of blood, Fatalities - this is the thing which makes this series of fighting games a unique one today.

The Bad
The character roster is not too big (10 characters, 7 of which are only playable) , and the game is quite hard to complete. The versus mode is fun to play for only a little time with your friends, and while the "Test your might" mini-game addition is a better bonus than nothing, its not too impressing. Another thing which i did not like is that about half of the arenas look exactly the same, though there were some unique like the Pit stage where you could do a stage-Fatality, but for the most part the arenas are boring.

The Bottom Line
For the most part a descent fighting game with fun gameplay and mysterious secrets to observe, but the small variety (no too many arenas, half of which look too same, and only 7 playable characters) make it boring quite fast. Still, its the first game of a legendary fighting franchise, and deserves respect from players.

The Good
In 1993, Mortal Kombat gained a new wave of fighting games to a whole another level: Blood, Gore, and... Sweat? The folks at Nintendo wanted to do a kiddie-friendly version of the arcade classic and what did they get, an unnecessary toned-down bloodless version of Mortal Kombat that left many loyal fans wondering: What are they thinking? Why is Nintendo the only ones who's calling all the shots about censorship?

I really love Mortal Kombat. Even though it has a total of 8 or 9 characters of the roster, but the fatalities were incredible and thanks to Midway's innovative idea to bash the living daylights out of its other rival (Capcom's Street Fighter II), who would've thought that Mortal Kombat's intense physicality is so brutal that parents should be warned to their children not to play this game.

The Bad
I don't wanna be so offended to Nintendo, but the SNES version of Mortal Kombat could be go down as one of the worst games this system has to offer. Thanks to their so-called policy that has garnered for so many years targeting to children, one year later the ESRB stepped it up and make this bloodthirsty game not suitable for all audiences (including children under 17) and thus makes Mortal Kombat the first fighting game franchise to be rated M for Mature. Nintendo knew it was coming and since MKII, they finally ended the policy and decided to make a warning label of their own.

They should've erased the sweat, they should've add more violence, and sure as hell, they should've learned a lesson from the Genesis version.

The Bottom Line
I would rather stick my gums out and play either Killer Instinct or Street Fighter II Turbo instead. I can put this Mortal Kombat SNES version altogether in three different words: tedious, incoherent, and downright terrible. It just goes to show you what Sega Genesis does what Nintendon't.

The Good
The Sega CD version of this game took care of some problems the cart had. The infamous "blood code" has been removed and the game has it's full gore. There is more animation from the arcade version that was missing from the cart. The graphics are a little more detailed and the sound is much better. Also, those who use the "DULLARD" code from the cart will be happy to know it made it's way here as well, and is a bit more user-friendly.

The Bad
Now the bad. The worst thing about this game is the load times. Rather than using the available memory to load the fatalities when the CD loads the character, it loads the fatality animations WHEN YOU PERFORM THE FATALITY!!! So rather than the quick button-pressing to be rewarded with a finishing move, you are rewarded with a 15-20 second "hang" while the CD loads the finishing move. The same happens at the beginning of EVERY level (including the Test Your Might levels), and also on the final level when Shang Tsung morphs--this is horrible. Apparently, Acclaim vastly underestimated the capabilities of the Sega CD hardware.

The Bottom Line
The Sega CD version is somewhat better than the cartridge , but only get it if you don't have the cart. If you have the cart, it isn't worth it.

The Good
The Game at its heart is mortal kombat. Nothing can change the familiar gameplay of it. So lets start off with the good of this port.

Graphics are very faithful to the arcade. The colors are stunning and look great. The game also has great backgrounds just like the arcade.

The voices are also here in most of their glory. A good amount of the voices were captured. If I remember correctrly it's missing a few from the arcade but for the most part it gots them down pat.

The Music is highly reminiscent of the arcade. This is a GOOD Thing. The arcade had quite a few memorable tunes. The Goro fight music is one of the most memorable mortal kombat fight themes ever.

The gameplay is intact. You know. The moves and the combos. If you can do some kombat in the arcade you can kombat on home.

This game pissed off Joe Liebermen

The Bad
NOW for the bad

BUTCHERED GAME PLAY. When I say butchered let me put it where it counts. The blood is replaced with "sweat" and the fatalities are cut out. Sub Zero's spine rip is now a freeze and a highpunch that breaks the ice. Johnny Cage's Uppercut fatality is now a wussy shadow kick that paralyzes them I guess. Raiden just shocks you and you faint. Kano still does his heart removal move but the move shows a grey thing. What is that? His sweat gland?

They censored Fatality to Finishing Move

Gameplay is not as smooth as the genesis or the arcade. Though the graphics are better the smoothness is a bit off compared to genesis or arcade.

The overall butchering makes it so this game is only mortal kombat in name but not in heart and soul

The Bottom Line
Overall this game is butchered horribly. The gameplay still stands quite a bit but the censorship is so bad that you don't get the full effect. A full 6/10.l I'm being pretty generous too.

The Good
Mortal Kombat is one of the all time classics, so nostalgia is heavily in this games favor. You can't help but enjoy the game simply cause it takes you back to the past.

The sprite animations are very impressive even today. The character movement is great and better then some other fighting titles. The backgrounds not only look cool but some of them have special environmental fatalities (fatalities are post fight beatings that you inflict on your opponent that usually involve dismemberment).

The soundtrack is another one of the better parts of the game. Even though its not quite as good as it once was, you tell why so many people have remixed it. The voice over guy sounds very cool and to hear your name after beating your opponent makes you feel like you accomplished something.

And unlike later Mortal Kombat games, this edition features a 2 player mode instead of a constant tournament. Now you and a friend can challenge each other without having to do the tournament, leading to some nice pick up and play action.

The Bad
Mortal Kombat on the SNES is heavily edited, most likely due to Nintendo's family demographic and how controversial the game was in its debut. Blood has been completely removed from the game, replaced instead by "sweat" (which looks more like dust-- and given how old the game is that would be a pretty accurate statement). The individual fatalities have also been removed from the game, although the bridge/pit level fatality is intact (minus blood and severed heads). While this complaint is merely a cosmetic change, Mortal Kombat has other problems.

Mortal Kombat's gameplay isn't quiet what it once was. Special moves aren't very easy to pull off without looking up how to perform them. There's no jump back button so its easy for people to start whaling on you with the punch button. And like other games of the day, Mortal Kombat treads a fine line between good fighting game and button masher. This version of Mortal Kombat also feels like a straight from the arcade port by not including a pause button, a feature that makes the game very inconvenient since you either have to die when you need to go to the bathroom or you have to hold it in (this can become a real problem when you are in the middle of a tough tournament).

The Bottom Line
While the SNES version of Mortal Kombat is missing blood and fatalities, its still a very solid fighter and well worth having. The game will keep you busy for hours on hours when played with friends and even if you don't have any friends its still pretty cool. After all, very few gaming experiences can compare to beating an opponent without losing a drop of health.

The Good
Firstly, pump up the volume on the stereo! You can also stick this disc into a music player and get the soundtrack and The Immortal's MK theme song remixes. Nice FMV character profiles, tight controls, all the moves and cheats are here. Also, lots of narration from the narrator, which was absent from the Genesis version.

The Bad
While I know the Sega CD isn't the ideal platform for FMV goodness, the commercial still didn't need to look as bad at it did. I mean, Sonic CD and Silpheed have excellent FMV, and NBA Jam's is decent, but that commercial is just mostly hues of brown. Nay, nay, nay. Then there's the horrible slowness to it all. Hey, Probe! Ever hear of disc streaming? Digital Pictures used that technique in all of the crappy FMV games so that no access time was present. Hell, Probe could've even stuck some of the data into the Genesis' RAM. What really gets me is the access time when a fatality is execute, or when Shang Tsung transforms. That's nuts! It's awful, and it takes away from the game. Of course, Probe did the development of this title in 64 colors instead of the high-res mode of 256 colors, and didn't use anything the Sega CD offered in the area of special effects. It's true I didn't expect the sound effects to be in dynamic QSound or anything, but at least Sculptured on the SNES kept the arcade's sounds in. Then there's the ending, which is not the actual ending. You see, the Sega CD is similar to a PC more so than we would've ever known. Probe did an excellent job of MK on the PC. It was arcade perfect except for the low-res VGA graphics, which is the high-res of the Sega CD! They also kept everything in from arcade machine. Acclaim and Probe were is such a hurry to cash in on MK at the time, though. As far as the friend factor goes, we laughed at this version, and I'm sorry I wasted around $60 bucks for it. Lastly, the characters are their Genesis size, when I know that large, colorful characters can be done on the Sega CD (Samurai Shodown, Eternal Champions, Fatal Fury Special).

The Bottom Line
If you a big budget, over a year late shovelware title for the Sega CD, by all means obtain this disc. Seriously, in this day and age, go get the version on the Midway collections, or get that little TV joystick version at a Target or something. This version is slow, slow, slow. And laughable.

The Good
Ummmmm......I'll have to get back to you on that.

The Bad
I could just say the simple fact that it exists and be done with it, but I can't. So I'll explain what I didn't like about this pile.

First off, I can NOT stand the engine nor the gameplay implimented within the engine. Ever since this game was released in arcades, the hype surrounding it was stuff like buckets of blood when you so much as tickled your opponent, super-cheezed (spell wrong intentionally) combos, and of course, the Fatalities. But the problem was, it was sometimes WAY too easy to smack down your computer opponent, and other times, the computer would fight using such cheezy tactics that you just want to knock the machine over. And bringing a second player doesn't make things better; instead, it just becomes a contest of "who's cheezier?". UGH.

And...the story continues on the PC with this home port.

Sure, the port is near-perfect, but it's also very buggy at some spots (like refusing to run on certain configurations), and it's also a bitch to control. I'd like to know who was smoking what on the development team when they decided to make a SEPERATE Block button in the MK series. If you ask me, a new Commandment for game developers should be written: "Thou shalt pull back to block!" A seperate Block button doesn't help you at all, unless you're looking to get your head kicked off by some hotshot Hollywood punk in bad sunglasses.

Speaking of which, this game just reeks of generic design. Your characters include: two ninja-looking guys (Sub-Zero and Scorpion), an Army woman (Sonya), the typical good guy (Liu Kang), the evil guy with the red eye (Kano), a god who looks like an old rice field worker (Rayden), and the Hollywood hotshot (Johnny Cage). All of them are digitized actors doing goofy looking moves, and they all animate horribly and look like crap. Oh yes, and they also all look TYPICAL! Oh, and the boss characters: the four-armed and pissed off Goro, and the shrivelled up old prune, Sheng Tsung. These two guys just aren't any better. The stages are a little better (the Shaolin courtyard looks pretty cool with all the monks in the back), but sadly, they didn't save this waste.

What about sounds and music? Well, I hated both. The music was just a bunch of fast beats, and didn't get your blood pumping or make you want to listen to it outside of the game. The sounds were just a lot of loud thwacks, yells (most of them so idiotic sounding that I was laughing out loud at their general crappiness), and squishes. Your typical MK sounds. Bleh.

The Bottom Line
Well, let's say it this way: MK is nothing more than just a "Kash Kow" for Midway. None of the games have ever had any true innovation to the genre, and it has been very stale ever since this release. And yes, I know: what series CAN stay fresh for a long run? But in short, I'd recommend you look elsewhere for your fighting game kicks on the PC.

To find the answer to the above question: it Kan prObably be Found...but not here.

The Good
The good thing about this game, is its graphics(compared to other games in its time). Characters look better than those from Street Fighter. Special mocves are great, and the ending specials are truly amazing.

The Bad
Ok, first, THERE ARENT ENOUGH CHARACTERS. Okay, why couldnt they have put Reptile or something in this game(without needing code)? Surely they could have added someone. Street Fighter wins on this.

The Bottom Line
Overall, MK is a descent game, one earning a 3.5/5

The Good
I loved the large on-screen characters, the fatalities, and the hidden secrets you could uncover along the way. Tons of blood and gore is always a welcome addition in a game.

The Bad
The controls need reworking, the moves lack originality, and the animation is rather poor.

The Bottom Line
Just another fighting game with excessive gore as it's main attraction...

The Good
Mortal Kombat for the Super Nintendo takes advantage of the system's superior (compared to the Sega Genesis) graphics and sound capabilities. It looks and sounds closer to the original arcade game then any of the other adaptions for the home console systems.

The Bad
Nintendo was very much a proponent of censorship, both in terms of games it developed and in the content of games from third party developers. Simply put, if it might possibly offend consumers, especially parents and politicians, it could not be depicted, discussed or alluded to. Very little got past the Big N's censorship rules. When it came to Mortal Kombat, all the blood, gore and graphic violence seen in the coin-op arcade had to be removed. Censorship aside, the game's control mechanics are not as good as they could be. They are not horrible, but they are just not as smooth as in other fighting games for the Super Nintendo, such as "Street Fighter II".

The Bottom Line
Mortal Kombat for the Super Nintendo features great graphics, music and sound effects that, while not as good as the original arcade, are quite impressive for the Super Nintendo. Nintendo's requirement that the game be censored before its release and the less then user-friendly game controls, keep the game from getting a perfect score.

The Good
Great atmosphere, very dark. It makes you want to keep playing just so you can see what neat effect comes next, not because the gameplay is good. Sound effects are very nice, especially the voice. If pulling out a defeated opponent's spine is your idea of fun, this game is loads of fun.

The Bad
The music is even worse than contemporaries Street Fighter and One Must Fall. The graphics may have been sweet when it came out, but after a while it just gets cheesy. Midway tried to do an anime-style gore-fest but failed. Characters are almost identical, in some cases only color is changed. This means balance is horrible (if your one move is better than theirs you win). A separate "block" button and plenty of useless commands make the interface more frustrating than playable. Way too much gore... only Primal Rage comes close to matching the fountains of blood everywhere and brutal finishing moves.

The Bottom Line
It may be popular, but then again, so are the Teletubbies. If you're really hankering for an old-school 2D fighter, try Marvel v. Capcom or One Must Fall.

The Good
In the early 1990's, Midway gave us a new, uber violent fighting game called (drum roll, please), Mortal Kombat! It may seem a bit silly today, but teenage boys and girls across the land were quickly awestruck by the digitized characters, blood, gore and graphic violence. Parents and politicians were noticeable less amused and content ratings were subsequently adopted. Given the success of the coin-op arcade game, it was only a matter of time before the game was released for the home console systems. The Sega Genesis version had two things going for it. While its graphics and sound were not as close to the arcade (in comparison to the Super Nintendo version), it was left, with a secret code, uncensored and had tighter, more responsive controls. Thus, when it was announced that Mortal Kombat was going to be released on the Sega CD, gamers had their hopes up for something that was better than the cartridge games.

The Bad
Mortal Kombat for the Sega CD features the Sega Genesis graphics with some additional character animation, better sound effects and music. The television commercial used to sell the original cartridge Mortal Kombat games is featured as a muddy, pixilated full motion video clip. The other major addition to the game is the frustratingly frequent loading time.

The Bottom Line
Mortal Kombat for the Sega CD highlights the severe hardware limitations of the system. Even for a first generation, CD-ROM game system, the Sega CD featured inferior graphic capabilities, slow data access and little internal memory. As a result, many titles were released for the Sega CD with, in comparison to their cartridge counterparts, only cosmetic additions. Sadly, Mortal Kombat is one of these titles to fall victim to the hardware limitations of the Sega CD, coupled with a desire to rush the game onto the shelves, with minimum effort.

The Good
Mortal Kombat is definitely a hallmark in computer gaming; instead of a game that was something of a breakthrough (digitized actors and unprecedented violence), it turned into a veritable institution, spawning three sequels, two movies, a TV series and more stuff I probably don't even know about.

Basically MK is a solid game: great music, good graphics (plus the digitized actors...), solid gameplay and more easter eggs than you can shake a stick at. I never got addicted to it, but it was certainly great fun for a few hours; plus, the Genesis version is technically excellent and a thoroughly good conversion.

The Bad
It's not that I didn't like the game as such - it was uninspired and the violence was superfluous at times, but it was still a pretty good game. What I can't figure out is why in the hell this thing became so amazingly popular; why it spawned this many sequels and spinoffs; why anyone would actually make a television show out of it?... I just can't figure it out.

The Bottom Line
A solid game that's quite fun for a while. There are better games to spend your money on though.

The Good
Mortal Kombat is the only true landmark in fighting games which came after Street Fighter 2 because it used captured video sequences and featured relatively advanced graphics for the time. It's fun to play at first, but I got tired of it very fast.

The Bad
Being a real hit didn't stop this game from being an overhyped piece of boring pixels. The music is decent but the sound effects are horrible, the graphics are all too colourless and pixelated, and everything about this game is just... well, no good. Also, even the Sega Genesis version of this game is better than the PC conversion (despite the obvious lack of decent colour palette) with better controls, better stability (the PC version crahsed on me every time I played it) and better sound, and the entire ordeal leaves a sour taste in my mouth every time I played it.

The Bottom Line
A rather lame game which somehow got more attention than any game of its caliber should.

The Good
For this version: Nothing! The SNES version is really weak. Even with nice graphics really next to the arcade, The Mortal Kombat for this platform has no blood and violence. The genesis version you had to make a code to do it.. The best 16-bit version for that game is SEGA CD. the Pc version is ok too.

The Bad
No Blood, No Violence. It lost totally the sense of this game.. SNES version is really bad for this.

The Bottom Line
Play The Genesis version with blood secret code, Sega Cd or DOS. but don't play the snes one