Mortal Blowchunks
Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection is another throw-back to gaming of the 90s. Love it or hate it, this game caused more eyebrows to raise than the Lewinsky sex scandal. It was ultra violent, kids were playing it (and turned out just fine), and blood was spilled everywhere. But after nearly 15 years, are the games even any good anymore?
Included in this bundle is Mortal Kombat,Mortal Kombat II, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Truly, these aren’t fighting games that hold quality like Super Street Fighter II managed, but they’re something the nostalgia inside can kick it’s feet with glee. The gameplay is really dated, and I advise anyone that didn’t grow up with the titles to stay away. They’re not worth your time if you’re used to much more polished fighters. The original Mortal Kombat aged so poorly that I actually was losing interest within the 3rd fight. But it did bring back a lot of memories of playing on my Sega Genesis back in the day, and playing in arcades at pizza places and the mall. But this game has truly aged horribly. It’s slow, hardly has any characters, and only so much can be stomached by throwing the nostalgia card at it. The other games are a lot better, but still suffer from only being fun to people that grew up with them.
The price isn’t too bad, especially since they’re the arcade copies of the games. There’s online play, which is a good selling point for the series. But as of 1.01, I must warn anyone looking to play, this game has horrible netcode right now. Nine out of 10 gamers agree, the lag is ruining the game and will probably kill the community within the first week or two. If you don’t care about online play (since it has local play), then you are still going to be in for a world of disappointment.
The gameplay has added problems when you pause the game. After unpausing the game, you’ll find yourself unable to move for about a second or two. I paused during a “Fishing Him!” to look up the fatalities in the move list, but didn’t have enough time to perform it after unpausing due to this. There also seems to be a small input lag while playing that caused me to feel like I was 300 feet away from the game. It’s really sloppy that they released the game like this, and I’m actually disappointed.
Another big bug I noticed with the game is the sound is really messed up. While playing multiple times, I ran into several issues with the sound just cutting from my center speaker and only playing out of the sides, meaning that it was nearly mute. Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 has a horrible bug with the music and it almost sounds non-existent. This really messes with the vibe of the game because the soundtracks for the originals are killer. No pun intended.
The collection isn’t all bad. For a budget price, you get three games, trophies/achievements, and a lot of classic fun. Mortal Kombat II still has features that Mortal Kombat 9, and is probably still one of the best Mortal Kombat titles to date. The graphics aren’t all bad, and the different filters just give you a cool vibe of the arcades. But again, there’s too much bad code going on to fully embrace these games.
Really, as much as I love the Mortal Kombat series, all of it, I have to say save your money until they patch this game up. It’s got a few horrible bugs that feel like a rush job than a collection to honor the series. If you are really dying to play them, you’ll have more fun trying MAME emulation (don’t ask me) or just buying a SNES/Genesis again to play these titles.
