Mortal Kombat

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.