Mortal Kombat Trilogy

 Applaud Midway for coming up with the idea of Mortal Kombat Trilogy. A combination of three of the best one-on-one fighting games of the 16 bit era, coming together is just perfect or atleast pretty damn close to it. And that's exactly what Mortal Kombat Trilogy did, on Playstation and PC that is.

The tale is slightly different on Nintendo 64. While indeed, we're playing Mortal Kombat Trilogy featuring favourite fighters such as Scorpion, Lui Kang and Sub Zero, as well as the long awaited return of Raiden and Johnny Cage, we're missing the playable sub-boss characters. Also, unmasked Sub-Zero is missing in favour of the classic masked Sub Zero of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3.

But Mortal Kombat Trilogy on Nintendo 64 really isn't that bad. The graphics of the game are close to that of Midway's Wolf Unit's featuring far more detailed characters and stages than on any previous Nintendo version of Mortal Kombat. Plus, more importantly, the animation is a lot closer to the real thing too which was the biggest problem with Mortal Kombat 3 on Super Nintendo.

The reason that's a good thing is because the gameplay plays a lot more naturally with the greater animation and that is exactly the case with Mortal Kombat Trilogy on Nintendo 64. With 26 fighters and a few hidden extra ones as well, there are many characters to choose from, all of which have their own unique set of combos, and more importantly, fatalities. Mortal Kombat Trilogy does definitely not chicken out when it comes to fatalities, with two for nearly every single character featuring full gore and violence - the way we like it.

Mortal Kombat Trilogy also features the other finishing moves MK3 fans have grown to be aware of such as babtalities (in which you transform your foe to a baby), animalities (where you transform into a animal before inflicting the killer blow) and friendship finishers (A silly joke finisher to play on friends). Midway have added something else too called brutalities where your foes are literally smashed to bits by the sheer insanity of your combo finisher. The stage fatalities are also back and work on the old stages like the pit on Mortal Kombat 2 which is good to know and undoubtedly will be something fans will enjoy.

The game itself features four game modes. There is the original arcade mode of 1-on-1 Mortal Kombat. There is 2-on-2 and 3-on-3 Kombat against a friend. And finally, there is 8 player Kombat which is essentially the tournament mode of the game and can be played with all your mates. Of course, there is also a Options area where you can toy around with the game's difficulty and other neat bonuses like the ability to turn on auto-combos or no combos at all.

Of course, there are some major weak points to Mortal Kombat Trilogy, mainly in the sound department which features some of the worst digital sound effects and music. The sounds are muffled and hard to make out which is lame. As for the music, it is often not on the right beat and simply uncomfortable to listen to at times. The game also recycles many of the same tracks of Mortal Kombat 3 on the stages and features absolutely none of the songs from Mortal Kombat 1 or 2 unlike on Playstation or PC.

Mortal Kombat Trilogy's graphics are also a little blurred and washed out due to the hardware of the N64 which rids the details on the characters giving a weaker look to the game. Additionally, the Nintendo 64 controller makes pulling off combos a little harder and possibly more uncomfortable for some. Other issues with Mortal Kombat Trilogy associate with the fact that the game lacks material found in the Playstation and PC versions of the game, namely the extra sub-boss characters mentioned earlier like Goro and Kintaro which is a darn shame.

The Nintendo 64 version lacks the extra versions of characters from previous Mortal Kombat games such as Jax from Mortal Kombat 2 or Raiden and Kano from Mortal Kombat 1. Moreover, the endings are drab because they're just a wall of text explaining what became of the fighter which is boring and disappointing. However, despite these problems Mortal Kombat Trilogy is a fantastic deal even in its crippled state on the Nintendo 64. Seeing that the console lacks many fighting games or interesting 3rd party titles for that matter, Mortal Kombat Trilogy should have a welcome place in your collection whether you're a huge fan of the series or not.