F-Zero is a much-loved series, but it doesn’t get much love from Nintendo. With the Gamecube having the last F-Zero game, fans are wondering if the series is completely dead and shelved by the big N. Thankfully, fans who loved the SNES classic can have even more with Maximum Velocity.
Maximum Velocity is pretty much built on the same engine as the SNES using Mode 7 graphics. However, this may not have been the best choice to go as there are other more advanced racing games on the system. There are only four cars to select and I found the controls to be incredibly slippery and the AI to be extremely difficult to beat. The tracks are fun to drive, but the sense of speed is great, but the game is just lacking in overall content and polish.
You could write all that off on the age of the engine, the GBA’s inferior hardware, or lazy design. Maximum Velocity feels more like an expansion pack to the original game more than one that can stand on its own two feet. After you have memorized all the hazards and turns in each track it does get easier, but not by much. This game is for players who want a serious challenge with the retro feel.
While the GBA isn’t exactly ideal for racing games, this one really stands out as one of the best, people going back in time may find it nearly impossible to play due to its ancient gameplay ideas and design. However, you are missing a great opportunity to spend a fun afternoon racing on your GBA.
Super Monkey Ball is one of those odd games that, these days, feel like it should be on a phone. It’s good in quick bursts or to beat your high score, but that’s about it. SMB is all about tilting a world around to get a monkey stuck inside of a ball to a goal. It harkens back to Marble Madness and days when motion control was a new thing. However, simulating physics and tilting on a GBA with a D-pad seems rather impossible but it’s not. SMB Jr. looks pretty darn good and feels natural with the D-pad. It feels like the game was hand-tailored for the GBA.
My only concern is that there’s no goal or challenge mode. You can select from sets of 10, 20, and 30 courses, you get two lives per level, and 5 continues per set. The goal is to try and collect all the bananas while also getting to the goal before the timer runs out. Some levels are easy, some are hard, some feel nearly impossible. Tilting the world around to get the ball inside the goal is a lot of fun at first but then it starts to wear thin fast. After you beat all 30 areas there’s not much else to do.
I won’t say SMB is a bad game, just shallow and lacks depth. It was more like the Gamecube version it may have been better, but understandably you can only fit so much on a GBA cart and the hardware is extremely limited. What is here is impressive for the little handheld.
If you missed this little gem, pick it up cheap on eBay. You will have one fun, and frustrating, afternoon.
Deadly Alliance was a turning point in the series. MK4 got mixed reviews from fans and critics and wasn’t exactly what they wanted. Being only the second 3D Mortal Kombat game it was another reboot that took itself more seriously and became more complicated and deep. It featured three different fighting styles, long combo chains that you had to memorize, and gone were the days of fast button mashing. You now had to think ahead about your next move and strategize. It was the most robust and sophisticated fighting game ever made at the time, but it didn’t come without its flaws.
Deadly Alliance was the first MK game to venture out away from just fighting in a core title. The team added a Konquest mode which is a giant tutorial on how to use every fighter and learn all their moves. This is pretty big for a fighter and can be a lot of fun. You follow Raiden down a long path across various MK worlds and learn about each fighter. They each have three different fighting stances; two regular and one weapon stance. That’s not all though, these can combo into and out of each other for major damage. Characters with blade-type weapons can impale their weapons into the opponent to make them bleed out, but they lose the weapon for that round. This more technical fighting style for MK had mixed reactions, but I like it a lot.
One thing I wasn’t fond of was the lack of special moves and fatalities. There’s only one fatality per character and a lot of them are mediocre at best. They aren’t as gory or as awesome as previous games. Cyrax is missing his net move, a few characters only have 2-3 special moves, so it feels weak. At least the mini-games make a return because they haven’t been seen since MK1. A new Test-Your-Sight mini-game is added which is a cup and ball game. The team also added a Kurrency system and a Krypt to unlock costumes, videos, art, and interviews. I love this a lot and is great fan service. However, once you unlock the entire Krypt there’s not much else to come back to. Unless you are playing with a friend on the couch the game is just seriously lacking in single-player content and that is why I got bored with it after a couple of months.
The graphics were decent for the time, but the gore looks like balls of Jell-O and the characters look like plastic dolls. The women’s breast physics looks like swaying punching bags at 100 MPH even when you tap forward slightly. The sound effects are a bit weak and a few are recycled from MK4. The arenas are also kind of boring and many of them are new. The overall game is pretty solid but needed more polish. I also wasn’t too fond of the new characters. A few were likable such as Frost, Nitara, and Drahmin, but all the rest just felt forced or rushed. I also didn’t really like a lot of the redesigned characters such as Sonya and Johnny Cage. The character design is just really lacking here, but that could be just me being a picky fan.
Overall, Deadly Alliance is a nice change for the series and the more complex and strategic fight style may not be for everyone. The lack of content really hurts his game though, and it suffers from an overall lack of polish. It’s still worth getting in your bargain bin for some couch time-fighting.
Medal of Honor pretty much kickstarted the World War II first-person shooter way back in 1999. It is the longest-running World War II series, but also one of the worst. It did really well early on and just lost focus and sight on what made the series great. The series did make revolutionary leaps and bounds for the shooter genre in general, especially with Frontline, it changed the way we play shooters today. Like Call of Duty, Medal of Honor gave PC owners special treatment early on because it was the only platform that could handle the visuals the game wanted to achieve. Medal of Honor supported PC more than Call of Duty did early on, but later switched to consoles only because that’s where the money was at. As you will see, Medal of Honor was once a great series, and even to this day, is one of the most hated shooter series in existence.
Medal of Honor
Release Date: 10/31/1999 — PS1
GameRankings: PS1: 87%
Sales: 2,670,000
Medal of Honor was revolutionary because it really pushed the PS1 at the end of its life cycle and was one of the last great games for the system. Being so authentic and delivering a great WWII experience was nothing that older games like Wolfenstein could do. The guns felt great to shoot, and the atmosphere was spectacular. Of course, it wasn’t anything like later games with massive assaults and explosions everywhere, but it got the job done and is still an enjoyable shooter today. Little did everyone know that the series would go on for 15 years and continue to fail release after release. Medal of Honor was a huge seller and was one of the most sold PS1 games of all time. This alone is the reason why it went on for so long. It is also one of the most sold WWII games of all time.
Medal of Honor: Underground
Release Date: 10/23/2000 — PS1
GameRankings: PS1: 85%
Sales: 970,000
After the first game received such high acclaim EA went at it again with a direct sequel. It was just as fantastic and improved the visuals even more on the dated console with the PS2 on the horizon and the powerful Dreamcast already out on the market. Fans still bought the game because it rose the sales charts along with the next-generation games. People were starting to wonder if the series could change much on next-generation consoles and what else it could offer. There’s only so much you can do in a WWII shooter. It wasn’t the million-copy seller like the first game, but it still had a huge following.
Medal of Honor: Allied Assault
Release Date: 1/20/2002 — PC
GameRankings: PC: 91%
Sales: Unknown
While being the most highly acclaimed Medal of Honor game to date, it was for a reason. The game was so cinematic and was beyond what anyone expected since seeing Underground on PS1. The game had huge explosions, amazing visuals that were a graphics card seller and a benchmark game at the time. With 2001 being a quiet year with no MoH insight, this date was highly anticipated for PC owners, but console owners were angry wondering when their shiny new PS2 would get a Medal of Honor treatment, it was right around the corner.
Medal of Honor: Frontline
Release Date: 5/28/2002 — PS2
GameRankings: PS2: 86%
Sales: 6,830,000
Frontline was deemed the last great Medal of Honor game. I remember borrowing this from a friend and being blown away by the D-Day level when the game opens up. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Explosions everywhere, gunfire, artillery hitting the water, it was cinematic and surreal. PS2 owners got the game first and didn’t come out on Xbox and GC until later in the year. What was here was probably one of the finest World War II shooters ever made, but with Call of Duty on the horizon would people be able to handle two different shooters at the same time? Would EA continue to pump out quality WWII shooters? Only time would tell. Frontline is probably the most sold WWII game of all time. The series in total sold nearly 9 million copies, which was a lot back then. Frontline helped propel Medal of Honor to make future games.
Medal of Honor: Frontline
Release Date: 11/10/2002 — Xbox, NGC
GameRankings: Xbox, NGC: 78%
Sales:
Xbox: 1,490,000
NGC: 590,000
Being released just 6 months after the PS2 game, it wasn’t received very well. Frontline became a PS2 console seller and Frontline promised multiplayer updated graphics and 5.1 Dolby Digital sound. It was one impressive package and was as close as you got to HD gaming back then, but everyone was already getting tired of the WWII genre. Allied Assault was blowing PC gamers away and this new Call of Duty was just around the corner with more Medal of Honor games for the holiday season.
Medal of Honor: Allied Assault Spearhead
Release Date: 11/11/2002 — PC
GameRankings: PC: 75%
Sales: Unknown
With Frontline out and Allied Assault released just 10 months prior, PC gamers were ready for an expansion. Spearhead was solid but was criticized for being too short and not offering much news for the series. The expansion was solid but just didn’t do enough news to wow players into thinking it was the best shooter out still. Would the next expansion do what Spearhead didn’t? No one knew. With Battlefield 1942 being released most PC gamers moved on to that series and were quickly crowning it as the best multiplayer shooter at the time, how could MoH compete?
Medal of Honor: Underground
Release Date: 12/2/2002 — GBA
GameRankings: GBA: 49%
Sales: 80,000
With handhelds still not being very powerful, the GBA was about as powerful as they came and really the only handheld around. Underground couldn’t translate its 3D graphics over so what did it do? Try to force it making it one of the ugliest GBA games ever made. Being the first portable outing for Medal of Honor was tough and Nintendo fans were quickly let down. It wasn’t just bad, it was just downright ugly. The graphics were colorful pixelated rainbows of washed-out nonsense. You couldn’t tell what anything was and it just played badly. Nintendo fans quickly learned that FPS games just didn’t work on the GBA. I feel sorry for all 80,000 souls who bought the game.
Medal of Honor: Allied Assault Breakthrough
Release Date: 9/22/2003 — PC
GameRankings: PC: 68%
Sales: Unknown
With no MoH games being released during 2003 fans were wondering what was going on. Allied Assault fans were getting bored with Spearhead and countless delays pushed Breakthrough back. Upon release, fans were highly disappointed that it didn’t deliver not only on the greatness of Spearhead, but didn’t add anything new or interesting. In fact, Breakthrough was better off not being released at all. It was just more of the same and fans were really bored of the series by now. Medal of Honor hit a rut in 2003 and never seemed to get out of it. With Battlefield 1942’s expansion out as well fans quickly forgot about Allied Assault and moved on.
Medal of Honor: Rising Sun
Release Date: 11/11/2003 — PS2, Xbox, NGC
GameRankings: PS2: 69%
NGC: 68%
Xbox: 62%
Sales:
PS2: 5,130,000
Xbox: 1,170,000
NGC: 420,000
Nearly 18 months later the highly anticipated Rising Sun was released following Frontline. Being based on the Pearl Harbor assault from Japan it promised to finally do something new for the series, but really just felt like an expansion to Frontline. It was also highly unpolished and just didn’t feel as spectacular as Frontline. This was one of the first signs of EA pumping out new MoH games to get sales. It was becoming quantity over quality and it showed in Rising Sun. I actually remember renting this and not really noticing much of a difference from Frontline and really enjoyed it, but if I were to go back now I would notice. 2003 was a sad year for MoH, nearly a year of waiting for bad games. Despite the game getting poor reviews, it went on to sell nearly as much as Frontline. Rising Sun is one of the best-selling WWII games of all time.
Medal of Honor: Infiltrator
Release Date: 11/17/2003 — GBA
GameRankings: GBA: 81%
Sales: 150,000
Wow, hold the phone! A good MoH game came out in 2003 but it was on the GBA? No way! Learning from their mistake with Underground EA made this from the ground up and was a top-down shooter. It had excellent graphics and provided the MoH experience everyone loved. This would also go on to be the best MoH handheld game and one of the last great games in the series. It was praised for mixing what everyone loved about MoH with cartoony shooters that were popular on GBA at the time. There were even a few FPS sections that were done right. It sold fairly well for a GBA game, but EA decided it didn’t sell well enough.
Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault
Release Date: 11/4/2004 — PC
GameRankings: PC: 79%
Sales: Unknown
2004 was a slow year for MoH. After all, the harsh reception of the games for 2003 EA played it slowly from here on out, yet kept delivering games no one wanted. 2004/2005 was a year when WWII was at its peak and kept slamming our systems with endless WWII shooters. Pacific Assault returned to PCs and was exclusive to make PC fans happy. The game was well-received for actually doing something new and bringing us to the Pacific theatre of the war and being very cinematic. It also pushed PCs to their max requiring GPU upgrades yet again. Pacific Assault would be the last PC exclusive Medal of Honor.
Medal of Honor: European Assault
Release Date: 6/7/2005 — PS2, Xbox, NGC
GameRankings: PS2, Xbox: 73%
NGC: 72%
Sales:
PS2: 1,880,000
Xbox: 530,000
NGC: 250,000
2005 was the peak of WWII shooters and European Assault was the only release for Medal of Honor. It was praised for trying something new by giving you multiple paths and feeling very solid, the game knew what it was doing. The only issue was that it was the same game we’ve played dozens of times already. How many times can we replay Operation Market Garden or some other part of the war? By now they all felt the same, just shoot every German that passes on screen. The MoH releases start trickling down at this point while Call of Duty is in full force. The Xbox 360 is due out in just 5 months and the highly anticipated Call of Duty 2 comes out just three months from now, how can Medal of Honor keep up? Despite the mediocre reviews, the game sold surprisingly well with over 2 million copies sold.
Medal of Honor Heroes
Release Date: 10/20/2006 — PSP
GameRankings: PSP: 69%
Sales: 2,570,000
EA beat Activision to the punch for releasing a WWII shooter on the PSP. 2006 was another slow year for Medal of Honor. Call of Duty was unleashed on next-generation consoles while everyone was wondering if Medal of Honor had finally died. Heroes were praised for controlling well on PSP and looking very good, but it was really short and offered nothing new from previous games in the series. It was a hit with PSP fans and went on to have a sequel less than a year later. It seems that PSP owners were desperate for a good shooter because it was one of the best selling PSP games, and best selling MoH games in a long time. The high sales garnered a sequel.
Medal of Honor: Vanguard
Release Date: 3/26/2007 — PS2, Wii
GameRankings: PS2: 64%
Wii: 57%
Sales:
Wii: 60,000
PS2: 30,000
2007 was a confusing year for Medal of Honor. While every next-generation console was out, they were still making games for the dated PS2. Why Vanguard was released is beyond anyone’s guess. It didn’t need to exist, yet did so anyway. The game was literally just the same WWII shooter that everyone was sick of and sold poorly, in fact, most people forgot this game even existed. It was lost in the next-generation hits that were being released. This was the first Medal of Honor game on Wii and suffered from terrible controls. The genre was slowly petering out, yet Medal of Honor kept trying to cling on like a desperate lover. It showed that gamers just didn’t want Medal of Honor anymore, the game sold less than 100,000 copies and was the worst-selling MoH game of all time.
EA finally released their one and only next-generation WWII shooter and was considered one of the worst. The game was literally the same again just prettier. It got everyone’s attention because it looked fantastic, but no one cared. It tried an “open environment” approach by allowing you to drop down anywhere on the map and pursue objectives as you please. The issue was that the game was extremely difficult and sent dozens upon dozens of enemies after you when you couldn’t stand a chance, it didn’t help that the weapons were highly inaccurate. By now EA finally got the hint, but they needed one last hoopla for 2007. The graphics were a main selling point for the game and it sold surprisingly well, however not nearly as much as older games in the series.
The final Medal of Honor WWII shooter went out on the Wii with great success. It was fun on rails arcade shooter, but in the end, was exactly the same as the rest. The PSP version wasn’t well-liked because the Wii version was superior thanks to the motion controls. Heroes 2 was just another WWII shooter that no one asked for though, the series should have died three years prior. The series kept proving to everyone that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks and kept forcing its way onto shelves like a bully. PSP fans just ate the game up, but only sold half of what the first Heroes game sold.
The Medal of Honor WWII series sold over 30 million copies making it the second best-selling WWII franchise of all time, just a few million shy of Call of Duty. It was a juggernaut that gave EA billions of dollars. In the end Medal of Honor started out great and trickled down into mediocrity. It had a hard time jumping to next-generation consoles and released way too many games no one asked for. It shows that sequelitis can set in and ruin even mammoth franchises like Medal of Honor. I grew up with these games as a kid and played them over the years and lost interest after Call of Duty became the superior game. It had fewer releases, but the games were more fun and were just better in many ways.
I know what you’re probably thinking. Deadly Alliance on the GBA? Puh-lease. Don’t criticize the game just yet. Deadly Alliance for GBA is a solid fighter with a trick 3D fighting system that is simplified from the console versions. The game features a full Krypt, mini-games, and a new Survival mode. The graphics are surprisingly good and the sound quality is excellent.
Unlike past Mortal Kombat handheld ports, this game is actually good. The fighting system is a mix of 2D and 3D with each character’s 2 main martial arts stances (the weapon stance was taken out). The fighting system may seem dumbed down or too simple because the GBA only has two face buttons. Using a combo of the D-pad and face buttons you can pull off some great combos with ease. The whole transition feels natural and hand-tailored to the console. My main disappointment is the lack of characters. Only about 10 made it into the GBA version, but a new character, Sareena, made it into the game from Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero. I am also disappointed that each character only has one Fatality (like in the console version), but they are different and quite detailed for a GBA game.
The sound quality is excellent with the announcer’s voice intact. The graphics are pretty decent with full 3D backgrounds, but they are very muddy and lack any detail. The graphics are a love/hate type of thing. The Test-You-Might and Sight are fully intact here which is nice, but the Konquest mode is obviously missing, but instead, there is a Survival mode that was stuck in here. There is a full Krypt with alternative costumes and other things. So this is a huge MK experience on the GBA and probably the best one.
If you loved Deadly Alliance or just want a solid fighter on your GBA then pick this up. There is a lot of content in here and the fighting system is solid and fluid. The graphics look pretty and the sound quality is excellent so you have no reason not to play this!
Original Releases: Arcade, Sega Genesis, Sega CD, Sega Master System, Game Gear, SNES, GameBoy, PC, Amiga
Later Releases: PS2, Xbox
This is where it all began. This was the first video game I ever played and got me hooked at 2 years old. When I saw my cousin do Scorpion’s Fatality for the first time I sat there awe-stricken wondering how he just did that. He handed me the controller and I took to the game naturally even at such a young age where my motor skills weren’t fully developed yet. Of course, that’s what lead me to where I am now, but this kick-started the violent video game trend. The ESRB exists singlehandedly from Mortal Kombat, and that’s quite an accomplishment. It was also the only fighting game to use digitized graphics which were stop motion animations of real people. It made the game seem “realistic” and this stayed through the first three games.
The Arcade version was released to critical acclaim and made billions before it even hit home consoles. While only four guys and 10 months created one of the best games ever made, it paid off in full. Despite having such a small character roster compared to other fighters they were unique, and each had gruesome special moves (mainly Scorpion’s spear and that “Get over here!”). The Fatalities are what caused such controversy and the main one was Sub-Zero’s with his just popping off someone’s head with their spine hanging out, and holding it up for everyone to see.
Later that year Midway created “Mortal Monday” which was to hype up the console release with ads screaming “MOOORTAAAAL KOOOMMBBAATTT!!!!” It sold millions within its first year and was ported to every console available at the time by the end of 1994. Most people nitpicked at which console had the closest arcade port, and while the Super Nintendo did it lacked the Fatalities, blood, and some combo moves for the arcade so the Sega Genesis version remained the best. Voices were added to the game such as the announcer saying “Fight!”, “Finish Him/Her!” and “Fatality!”, and saying the character’s name during the select screen. The voice was pretty basic and not as sinister as the recent announcers, but it started this all off. While the gore was disabled in the Genesis version a code could be entered to enable it. The SNES version had gray sweat instead of blood and Fatalities were disabled. While you could do The Pit stage Fatality you were awarded no points. This was due to Nintendo’s policy of having no violence on their console. There were plenty of secrets thrown in such as the hidden Reptile fight at the bottom of the pit, and a few glitches.
While the handheld versions were piss poor due to their inferior technology the game never did better until it was released in compilations and other games in the series (Mortal Kombat: Deception had it in the Kollector’s Editions). While this version has held dear to every fan it evolved incredibly and will never be forgotten.
Mortal Kombat II
–1993–
Original Releases: Arcade, Sega Genesis, SNES, Sega 32x, Amiga, GameBoy, Game Gear, Sega Saturn, PC
Later Releases: PS2, PSP, PS3, Xbox, NGC
This version was considered the best Mortal Kombat ever made. It’s revered by fans and non-fans alike and has never really been recreated. It contained a new art style, more detailed visuals, more characters, and new “-alities”. Surprisingly Kano and Sonya were the only characters missing from the first game, and this really made some fans angry. New characters introduced were Kitana, Mileena, Baraka, Jax, and Kung Lao which later became the series staple “classic” characters. Also, Shang Tsung was playable for the first time, as well as Shao Kahn and Kintaro being new bosses. Reptile was finally a playable character since his hidden version in the last game was so popular. He instantly became a fan favorite.
While the game looked better and had a different art style, the controls were tighter, more combos were added, and it was a lot faster. Each character had TWO fatalities this time and Babalities and Friendships were added to the game. If you entered a code like a Fatality it would turn your opponent into a baby, so this was more of a humiliation thing. Friendships were comic relief and the characters did something goofy. The Fatalities this time were gorier, more gruesome, and brutal. There were new stage Fatalities added such as The Living Forest, Acid Pool, Kombat Tomb, and The Pit II.
Console ports game a lot faster and the SNES became the superior version this time around not only in terms of graphics and sound but Nintendo allowed them to keep the gore in due to low sales of the last game. The most superior version was for the Sega 32x, but due to the low drive of the device, it didn’t sell many copies. Other versions had things missing such as voices, animations, and the Genesis version only had scrolling text for endings. Once again they couldn’t get a quality Arcade port out for this version until it was released for consoles later on (Midway Arcade Treasures, and Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks).
My favorite part about the game was the deeper combo system, aerial combat, new “-alities”, and the new character roster. I mostly played Scorpion, Sub-Zero, Baraka, and Liu Kang. I was younger so I mainly used special moves, but Liu Kang was easy to use as just a regular fighter. However, I didn’t really like the outfits for Scorpion and Sub-Zero because they featured a “snow jacket” type pattern and seemed flat. I also felt the proportions of the females were off a little. Despite all this, it was an amazing game, but I just wanted the art style to go in a different direction.
Mortal Kombat 3
–1995–
Original Releases: Arcade, Sega Genesis, SNES, Sega Saturn, GameBoy, Game Gear, PlayStation, PC
Later Releases: PS2, PSP, PS2, NGC, Xbox, PC
This was the turning point for the series for the 16-bit era and was the last 16-bit game released in the numbered series. It was also considered the worst out of the 3 mainly because of the hard-to-pull off, and new, “chain combos”. While the graphics were even sharper and more realistic looking than ever. Newer consoles and more memory allowed more details, more animations, and more characters. This was probably the darkest of the three games and took a very serious turn, and even the new voice announcer sounded serious. I liked this version a lot due to the chain combos and even faster gameplay, plus it featured some of the best characters to date. All the “-alities” are intact here but a new Animality was added, but also never seen again in future releases. This had fighters turn into animals and devour or tear apart their opponents and got mixed reactions. At this point, everyone thought the “-alities” were getting ridiculous and wondered if they would be overkill in later releases. The Fatalities were even more gruesome than before and took a more raw approach due to the more realistic look and theme.
The game also featured 3D rendered backgrounds for the first time, and music took a more techno-modern theme instead of the heavy Asian themes of the past. Multi-tiered stages were introduced where you could uppercut an enemy into the ceiling and they would go up into a new stage. Two new stage Fatalities were introduced as the Bell Tower, The Pit III, and The Subway. New characters included were Cyrax, Sektor, Sheeva, Nightworlf, Stryker, Sindel, Smoke, and Kabal. These two were considered classic characters, but Stryker took the most criticism for his ridiculous “cop” style of fighting. Smoke was a hidden character behind the dragon symbol in the middle of the select screen and was unlocked via a cheat code. Each new character was wonderfully created with each having distinct special moves that still hold grounds today. MK3 was also the hardest game with Shao Kahn being extremely difficult and the new mini-boss Motaro being relentless and also being the biggest character created so far. Kombat Kodes was introduced which had three numbers for each player during loading screens, and these codes modified the game such as no blocking, no blood, fatalities disabled, special moves disabled, etc. These never saw the light of day until the recent Mortal Kombat (2011).
I loved the game a lot because I mainly didn’t know any better, and I loved Cyrax more than anyone. Sure the other guys returned (Kano and Sonya came back due to the criticism from the past game). Johnny Cage and Raiden took a hit this time and weren’t seen until years later, by this point everyone thought he’d show up again in Mortal Kombat 4. Noob Saibot was a playable character through the Kombat Kodes and was liked by many. The game was ported to every console again, but due to the aging 16-bit hardware, the superior version was for those lucky enough to win a Sony PlayStation. The SNES was good enough for people who couldn’t afford one, but the handhelds were horrible (once again), and the Sega Saturn version was also a good port.
Mortal Kombat 3 stands as the official turning point for the series, hated by many, loved by some, but there’s no doubt Mortal Kombat would stop here. While this marked the end of the 16-bit era for the series forever, MK3 was fantastic.
Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3
–1995–
Original Releases: Arcade, Sega Genesis, Sega Saturn, SNES
Later Releases: iPhone, DS, PS2, X360, GBA
While this was loved as a cult classic by fans it wasn’t very successful sales-wise. This was considered the “real MK3” with bug fixes, chain combo fixes, a few new characters, stages, and weapons were introduced. These weapons came out during long combos, and another “-ality” was introduced as Brutality. These were extremely hard to pull off since the button combos were sometimes 20+ and you needed to be super fast. The characters would beat the opponent up faster and faster until they exploded into a bony and bloody mess. A new stage Fatality was added as Scorpion’s Lair. UMK3 also had the hardest time with porting since this was the transition from 2D to 3D. Surprisingly, UMK3 was never released on the PlayStation so it suffered from terrible ports on 16-bit consoles. If you had to get one the SNES version was the best while the Genesis version had problems such as Animalities removed, and the announcer no longer said the character’s names. Mercies were introduced which let you put a code in at the end of the match during “Finish Him/Her!” which gave back a bit of health for your opponent. This was never seen again, but also most people didn’t know about it. The Sega Saturn was the worst port with just UMK3 code dumped into MK3 so it was unbalanced and buggy as ever.
The Arcade version only featured three new playable characters and these were Ermac, Human Smoke (palette swap of Scorpion), and Classic Sub-Zero via a code. Both versions saw a return of Mileena and Kitana as palette swaps of Jade, and the console versions got the sweeter deal with more characters. Noob Saibot was a fully playable character, and not just an unlockable while Rain was brand new for console owners. UMK3 was a great addition to MK3 and is widely loved by fans and preferred over MK3. UMK3 never saw handheld releases until over a decade later, but the troubled porting and sales sparked some debate as to if the series was over.
Overall the 16-bit era of Mortal Kombat games was the best, and will always be remembered as some of the best games ever made. While the series took a bit of a dive towards the end Mortal Kombat II was the best of that period but by now people were wondering what they had in mind for 3D. The PlayStation and Nintendo 64 were already hot and Midway had to figure out how they were going to implement the classic 2D fighting style into a fully 3D environment! It was only three short years that the 16-bit era lasted for the series, but it seemed like a lift time for me.
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