Attacks are slow to come out, the physics are incredibly floaty, and pulling off special moves is entirely too difficult. Even worse, it feels like the entire game engine has been recoded, and what’s left plays horrendously. What’s less understandable is that for some reason, the AI has become a merciless terminator that even beats out the sheer cheapness of the arcade version. For one thing, a couple of attack buttons had to be dropped, which is understandable due to the GBA’s button layout. With the GBA’s powerful hardware, you’d expect something at least on the level of the SNES port, but we ended up getting something that’d fit more on the Game Boy Color. This port got farmed out to some developer called Virtucraft, and it’s obvious they were trying to rush this thing out as quickly as possible. The Game Boy Advance version, renamed Mortal Kombat Advance, is nothing short of a complete abomination. Just like MK2‘s Saturn port, however, you do have to deal with the periodic bit of loading during matches and before Fatalities. It doesn’t play that badly, though, and it looks pretty accurate to the arcade version. None of the console exclusives from the other versions appear here, which means no Rain or Noob Saibot. The Saturn version at its core is still MK3, just with some of the extras from UMK3 added into it, since the Saturn never got a port of the original version. This port also uses the same cheat menus, which means that yes, you still have to use cheats to be able to pause the game. It’s a pretty cool finisher, at least compared to how stupid most of the Animalities were. If you do this right, they’ll continue to beat on the opponent long after you quit hitting buttons, until they explode into a pile of blood and legs. These are basically the equivalent of Killer Instinct‘s Ultra Combos, performed by doing your character’s special chain combo when it comes time to finish your opponent. All the secret characters are also unlocked from the start, with Smoke’s human counterpart being unlockable with a code.Īnimalities are gone, and they’re replaced with the slightly less goofy Brutalities. Noob Saibot and Rain make their first playable appearances here, with their own special moves. Sheeva’s been removed from the game entirely due to memory constraints, and in her place are… try to constrain your excitement here… more ninjas.

The Super Nintendo and Genesis ports are pretty much just the same ports of MK3 with UMK3‘s new content added in, which means that while it doesn’t look much like the arcade, it at least plays like it. The problem is that certain options are only available on higher difficulties, so if you want the good stuff, be prepared to spend a lot of credits. The other treasures do things like starting a fight with either Noob Saibot, Ermac, or both at the same time, the Galaga minigame, and a demonstration of some of the game’s Fatalities, among others. Not that it’s really worth it, since the unique ending artwork for each character has been replaced with their VS portrait placed next to a bunch of scrolling text. Yes, this time around, you actually have to choose if you want to see your character’s ending. From here you select one of twelve different symbols, each one giving you a different prize, one of which is getting to see your character’s ending. If you manage to beat Shao Kahn this time around, which you probably won’t be able to do without some serious cheating or AI exploitation, you’re sent to a screen called ‘Shao Kahn’s Lost Treasures’.

This game does not want you to beat it, ever. Even worse, the endurance matches from the original Mortal Kombat have returned, and on higher difficulties you even have to face three opponents on one round. Anything you try to do, it’ll find some way to punish you for it. If you try to jump backwards, nine times out of ten, it throws a projectile that will more than likely hit you. For example, if you try to jump towards it, it jumps at you and does a kick, every single time. Now the AI will counter nearly everything you do from the first few matches, and it’ll do it so well that there’s absolutely no way it isn’t cheating. Unfortunately, the AI’s been made much more brutally unfair compared to the original MK3. The single player mode has been changed a little, so now you have four difficulties to choose from when you begin a game.

Ultamite mortal kombat 3