Box Shot

Well, what could I say about this version of the game? If you want to see the story and stuff, look at the Genesis review for it, but I can have the room to give you a good majority of all the nooks and crannies of this arcade port. Alright, the graphics is the first thing to cover. The graphics are a very good version of the arcade's, with little missing from backgrounds, also they dominate the Genesis ones by a long shot. It also has wonderful looking sprites with good animation and nice looking characters, bigger than the cheap, grainy Genesis ones. Just about everything looks wonderful, though not perfect.... The pit is as clean as a whistle here too and Goro's lair is missing bones and the blood splats on the walls. 4 of the fatalities have changed to non-bloody, dumb ones, in an attempt to take out he blood and gore by Nintendo's policies. It's not scary at all and completely stupid in logic where you fall down the pit and miss the spikes completely! What the hell is wrong with the logic here, even in this version, the endurance dudes explode in fire! Goro is nicely sized and smoother in animation and Shang Tsung is good looking, but did I mention you get no pictures in your ending?! Your guy stands there doing his victory pose while the words fly up the screen, not worth the effort at all.

The sounds are at least 5 times what the Genesis' are, though it's not perfect. Here, they have the names and familar voices, which is a good thing and they even remember the grunts and groans. A small negative is that there isn't that variety of painful sounding groans that the arcade had, but it comes close. The music mirrors that of the arcade, but a little bit weaker in quality. The only real place where you can feel the combat surge is in the hall of warriors place, the pit and the fight with Goro. Other than that, the music adds little to the game and they were even nice enough to give you the option of turning it off. The emotion of the arcade is also in this version as well, Nintendo would have a real winner if they didn't remove the games only true original idea, the gore!!

The controls, well....they SUCK to hell and beyond! Doing moves and fatalities are a pain in the ass! In the Test Your Might stints, one of two things can happen. Either the paddle breaks or your fingers break from the horrible pounding you must do to win here. Even chopping wood is hard without a turbo paddle. Sometimes the controls are unresponsive, which means the computer whoops your butt while you wonder what you did wrong. Two player is fun, but most likely the loser can and will use the rotten control as an excuse to lose here. If they only spent a little more time working on this department, now there's a good chance you won't be able to see the sucky fatalities, but you don't miss much at all.

The difficulty is higher than the Genesis, where bad control plus cheating computer equals complete piss off game!!! I have felt the urge to break this game after many little battles, it's almost as bad as Ninja Gaiden in this aspect!! Swearing will become commonplace, so put some ear plugs in your little siblings ears or get sound proof walls for your room. Even very easy can suck and it has very little variety between the settings, unlike the Genesis which has a much more easier and varied difficulty choices. The Super NES might have to be taken to a repair shop if an ill-tempered person spends one night with this game. Some will scream and kick and break, smash, rip apart the house. Overall, it's not so bad physically at all, though the dumb boobs at Nintendo obviously missed the boat here, for they didn't get what made this game Mortal Kombat. Wussy Fighter is a better name for this version. If the rotten controls don't turn you off of this game, the horrid computer with cheats of steel will knock you dead more times then you can count. You might just want to avoid this one as a purchase, but a rental ain't too bad. If you really want to buy it, get it for 15 dollars or less. It's only worth that for what it gives you.