Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

100 or More Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Old-school"

Mortal Kombat has always been, and always will be. This is probably not the best port for the arcade version due to the lack of blood and a few alterations to some of the characters fatalities (Nintendo wanted Midway to tone down the violence). However, it is nice to see a couple of "new" fatalities that are unique to the SNES. As far as graphics are concerned, this beats the Sega Genesis version. The sound is as good as it can be for the SNES (not bad at all for an early 90's game) – which is again better than the Sega Genesis version.

The game play was tweaked from the Arcade version to fix a few "unfair" problems in the fighting mechanic (i.e. fighters automatically block incoming attacks if they have not been given a fair chance to stand up after being knocked down). This sucks for some, but it was probably necessary to give fighters who are on the receiving end of an onslaught a chance to recover and retaliate. Aside from that, the game feels just as it does in the Arcade.

Just about everything in this game is just how it was when you were in the arcade. Of course, the difficulty is tuned down significantly for your home entertainment - there is no point in making you lose if you aren't forced to feed more quarters into the machine in order to play again. A new character (not playable) named Reptile appears in this game as a secret battle. He is quite cool, and has the powers of Sub-Zero and Scorpion.