Mortal Kombat

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
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
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
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.