Mortal Kombat

If I was to ask anyone whos reading this review what they thought of the original Mortal Kombat most of you if not all of you would say that its just an amazing game with good fighting mechanics, good digitized graphics, sound, and would say that the gore is...well just great in a not psychotic way.

Game Play: 1.5
When you pop this game into the Game Boy you may be shocked to see how it plays, just so bad that its actually hard to classify this Mortal Kombat game as a fighting game. Sure this is technically a fighting game, you get your punch, kick, and block but actually pulling off moves is almost impossible. There's about a full one second delay when doing anything and that includes moving left or right. Anything you do is just so darn so its almost maddening if you somehow jump up to the opposing combatant, land in front of them, and expect to push the punch button and hit the person would be sorely mistaken. Even thought everything in the game moves extremely slow the computer reads what your doing the second you hit any buttons, and what they do is move out of your way and waste a whole one second of your life expecting to hit someone in the face but don't. What you'll end up doing (which is what I do) is hit a button either "a" or "b" in advance and hope that the other walks into it because other then that its REALLY hard to hit any one. Lastly about the game play the Game Boy version has all of the characters besides Johnny Cage (and I'm almost 200% positive Reptile)due to space issues they had to take out a character so its acceptable. But in all honesty Mortal Kombat for the Game Boy plays better then some other portable Mortal Kombat games and its still playable so because of these reasons I give the game play a 1.5, its sure not perfect but you can still play it.

Graphics: 3
I'm not going to lie I really like looking at this game. By that I mean while I'm playing it the best part are the visuals and their kind of amazing for Game Boy standards. Of course since this is a Game Boy port of an arcade game your not going to get the full arcade experience and that includes visuals. Although for Game Boy standards these are VERY good graphics. The characters only have about two or three of their animations so its not that smooth but it gets the job done. Lastly involving the graphics would be the levels, you only get three levels (maybe more I can't remember) the Pit, Goro's Lair, and the Kung-Fu part. Their missing a lot of the little details like for one color, just kidding. But seriously the levels are missing some of their back drops and just other things in the background. So overall the graphics in Game Boy version are not bad at all, in fact their pretty impressive. But was the only positive thing about the game everything else is just bad.

SOUND: 2.5
Due to the Game Boy not that strong its not able to have the song from the arcade version or Super Nintendo version, or Sega Genesis version. Even though the Game Boy is not as powerful that doesn't mean that the programmers couldn't have put some seriously down sampled music in this version or just re-created the arcade soundtrack for Game Boy standards instead of putting all new music music. And as for sound effects its that usual beeping sound of most Game Boy games so its acceptable because it Game Boy but I have other games for the Game Boy that sound a hell of a lot better. But since the sound effects don't differ at all from other sound effects. Meaning that If I punch someone and then kick someone the sound effects for the hit are the exact same so the sound effects get real stale real fast! After all of that I give the sound a 4 its definitely not great but all of the sound effects and music are on par with most other Game Boy games (excluding the really good games) but because its Mortal Kombat I was expecting a lot better but was let down a lot more.

Control:1.5
For the most part the controls are intact sort of, since Mortal Kombat is an arcade game you have like four or five buttons. Since the Game Boy only has two buttons you may be wondering how the control translates over. Well its a good idea on paper they give you high punch and high kick just by pushing "a" or "b" and if you push back and "a" or "b" you'll be a low punch or kick. So they made it possible to trip people by sweeping and stuff but the controls are still crap. Due to the fact that the game runs at a monstrous 5 frames per seconds its incredibly hard to pull off any moves, why you may ask? Well because the game now has a totally different timing system so instead of pulling off moves at a fast paced speed like in the arcade you have to delay every move you do. For example lets say I'm playing as Scorpion and I want to do his spear move, in the arcade I would just do back, back punch in a fast manner and the move would pull off. In the Game Boy one its a little something like this, back (wait a full one second) back (wait another full one second) and then punch, and their you have it, it just too you 3X the amount of time just pulled off one of the most simplest moves in the game. And it gets even worse then the incredibly bad timing system. For some reason when they were making this game they decided 'hey lets change up the ways the moves are done' yes that's right about half of the moves in the game have been changed around. So if your playing as Sub-Zero and you want to pull of his freeze attack normally you would just do down, forward, punch and there you go. Due to the fact that they changed the timing system AND the button combination's to pull off moves now doing Sub-Zero's freeze attacking is done like this back (wait a full second), forward (wait another full second), kick. Not only did it once again take you 3X the amount of time to pull off moves but since they changed the button combination's it makes it nearly impossible to pull of moves since you would have to memorize the messed up timing and new move list. All in all the control in this game is bad I give it a 1.5 its certainly not good but its still better then Mortal Kombat Advance.

And that's it over all Mortal Kombat for the Game Boy is a pretty weak package with horrible game play, bad controls and bad over all sound sure its got good graphics but that's not enough to make up for everything else. Still even though it has all of those flaws it still plays better then Mortal Kombat Advance, sure that's saying a lot but if your a fan of the Mortal Kombat series I would check this one out just for the hell of it, but just don't expect a lot out of it.