WELCO METOT HENEX TLEVEL - Mortal Kombat

Publisher: Arena Entertainment Developer: Midway (original), Probe Software (port) Release: 1994

Mortal Kombat is arguably one of the most important games of the '90s, perhaps even the history of the industry. It took arcades by storm at a time when Capcom's Street Fighter II seemed unassailable. And when it finally came home it illustrated better than any other game before it the true difference between Nintendo and Sega, almost single-handedly ushered in the need for a ratings system for home video games, and ultimately proved that even Nintendo was willing to abandon its high moral ground when massive profits were at stake.

The home version of Mortal Kombat was released across the SNES, Genesis, Game Boy and Game Gear platforms on “Mortal Monday,” September 13, 1993. By now most of the world knows that Sega chose to keep the game's gory visuals and Fatality finishing moves intact on the Genesis (via a code input at a specific opening screen), while Nintendo had the game toned down for the SNES release. The result was that, despite looking much closer to the actual arcade game, the SNES version was badly outsold by the Genesis version. The Genny game sold something like six times as many copies.

Moral chest thumping, a couple rounds of federal hearings on video game violence and a universal ratings system later, Nintendo smartly chose to release a more authentic port of Mortal Kombat II on the SNES and reaped the rewards.

The Genesis version was pretty rough, however. This Sega CD version promised to bring the game much more in line with the original arcade game, although the results were decidedly mediocre.

First, the good: Mortal Kombat CD features a few more frames of animation than the Genesis cartridge, as well as bringing back a lot of the fighter and announcer voice-overs that were also missing from the original release.

It also doesn't require a code to unlock the blood and fatalities. Oddly enough, the game actually features a code that must be entered in order to turn off those features. Weird and awesome.

And as you would expect from a CD-based game, all of the music has been replaced by redbook audio. This includes some great remixes that can be found if you play the disc on a regular CD player.

Unfortunately, the new music tracks used in the game itself sound downright awful. It's as though the developers recorded the audio straight from an arcade machine and then compressed it right to the brink of oblivion. The sounds are muffled and have a noticeable hiss over them. And oddly enough all of the tracks don't play on the proper levels.

Mortal Kombat CD also suffered from the greatest drawback of the CD medium. The load times aren't unbearable, but they are frequent and long enough to be annoying after a very short while. Every new fight sees you waiting while the new fighter data and level is loaded into memory. And when you get to Shang Tsung? Yikes!

For those of you who don't know or remember, Shang Tsung, the final boss of the original Mortal Kombat, has the ability to morph into any other character in the game. He normally does this multiple times during each fight, and it's excruciating to see on the Sega CD. The game literally freezes during his transformation. It chugs along at about 1 frame per second until the transformation is complete, at which point the battle continues.

All in all, a huge disappointment.

By the way, you may be looking at the Publisher name up there and be wondering why it doesn't say Acclaim. Technically, yes, Acclaim did publish this and all other home console versions of Mortal Kombat. But on the Genesis and Sega CD, it published under its Arena label, which was originally a Mirrorsoft label. Acclaim took it over when it acquired Mirrorsoft in 1992.