Publisher: Midway

Developer: Other Ocean Interactive

Release Date: 11/12/2007

Available Exclusively On

When Midway announced Mortal Kombat: Unchained for PSP, Nintendo fans screamed that they wanted one as well. They got their wish with a port of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 and Puzzle Kombat from MK: Deception thrown in. Here you have a perfect port for both responsive controls and a useful bottom screen that shows finishing moves and special moves. All the characters from UMK3 are here, plus some unlockables. There’s not much to say other than the controls work well, and I could pull off fast combos online while dishing out fatalities and animals left and right.

A couple of small gripes are that the -ality position isn’t listed on the bottom screen, so you kind of need to experiment, and the time to pull off the fatality is like 4 seconds, so you get one try. I also found the graphics slightly blurry due to the low resolution and small screen, but it’s only noticeable to people who play the classics a lot. I also found the Puzzle Kombat graphics were toned down a bit, even more so than on the PSP. Overall, this isn’t a huge package, but enough to satisfy fans, and online play is the best way to go.

Being able to make the fight screen on the top or bottom is a nice feature, but the problems from UMK3 still exist, like ridiculous AI, combos that are hard to pull off, and forgetting to try to beat Shao Kahn unless you cheat. I just wish there were some more modes that could have been thrown in or maybe a few more arcade ports, but what’s here works well and feels great to play and come back to.