Difficulty:

Easy

Time Spent:

20 to 40 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Almost, but not quite"

Don't get me wrong, MK is one of the greatest fighting games of all time, I love it, always have, always will, but the score I give is aimed particularly at this release. The Sega CD version was supposed to be "best home ported version" available, I say it's merely the lesser of evils. The entire year before it came out, magazines such as GamePro and Electronic Gaming Monthly unknowingly lit the fuse to the biggest dud ever.

The graphics seemed more or less the same as the Genesis, just with the brightness and sharpness up about 2 notches. Same music as the arcade, no codes required for blood/fatalities, and included the corpses in the pit. I was having the time of my life with it more than willing to overlook the fact that each match had to "Load", but was heart broken when Shang Tsung's morphs lagged the whole system. This caused him to telegraph most of his intentions, making the battle pretty effortless. You know the old saying "no matter how subtle the wizard, a knife in the shoulder blade will seriously cramp his style?" Yeah, it was kinda like that.

Well, some things were just meant for cartridge. Luckily, merely owning this version constituted extensive bragging rights, but aside from that, forget it.