Excellent 2D fighter, read more for a detailed comparison of the different cartridge versions.
User Rating: 8.4 | Mortal Kombat II GEN
For a comparison of graphics and sound go to: http://www.gamepilgrimage.com/MKII.htm The Genesis game is missing a lot of voice samples from the 32X and Snes versions, which totally doesn't make sense. The Genesis and Snes games are 24 Megabits, while the 32X game is 32 Megabits. Seeing as though there were 32 Meg Genesis games, and SSF2 was 40Mb through on cart trickery, I see no reason for this limitation. What is there is really clear when compared to the horrible Genesis Street Fighter 2 samples though. However, there's no smashing uppercut yell in the Genesis version, or the funny sweep *whelp*, along with quite a few other noticable samples from the arcade or 32X version. The Genesis version does have virtually all of the character specific voice samples. The Super Nintendo game has more voice samples than the Genesis version, but noticably less than the 32X game. The Snes game has the uppercut yell, but it gets cut off by the "excellent" or some other announcer comment, prematurely. Also, the Snes and Genesis voice samples are noticably lower sample rate than the 32X version, which seems to ring out, in stereo, much more clearly. The graphic differences between the three versions are noticable, while no version really looks bad on its own. I'd even say that they're better than average for the Genesis game. I actually almost prefer some of the Genesis backgrounds, like the Pit II for example, over the upgraded 32X level, just out of asthetic value. The title screen obviously has fewer colors in the clouds than the 32X version, and the continue screen looks plain bad in comparision due to the nasty pixel diffusion they used. The level with the acid pool also looks very plain in the Genesis version, when compared to the higher color 32X version that actually has more chains on the screen. Similarly, the arena level, with Shao Kahn in the background, has fewer colors and the crowd doesn't animate as it does in the 32X level. Other than these two levels though, no other level really looks worse than the 32X version, even though there are significant additions to each level in the 32X version. They didn't add smooth scaling to the ground in the Pit II fatality for the 32X version, as is in the Snes Pit II fatality, and they didn't redesign each level from the ground up for the 32X hardware, it's still the Genesis levels, with different grounds, more colors in the backgrounds, occasionally more levels of parallax, and more animated characters in the backgrounds. Both the Genesis and the 32X levels have more parallax scrolling than the Snes game's levels do. The Snes version seems to have a different color scheme in each level than either the 32X or Genesis versions. A lot of pastel purple was used in several of the levels, and the Snes version appears to have smoother color transitions in the levels, which could possibly mean a higher color count than the 32X or Genesis versions. However, due to the lower resolution display, and some type of anti-aliasing applied to the graphics, it's difficult to tell if there are more colors, or if the pixels are just blurred over by the anti-aliasing. Speaking of the characters, the Genesis game's character's look good, they're missing a few fighting animations here and there, but overall they look well detailed, even when compared to the other versions. That said, some of the characters have black lines around them in the Genesis version, and occasionally you can spot SegaCD quality grainyness in the character's animation, Raiden's character being the most noticable. Also, the Genesis characters have a black oval for a shadow, while the 32X version has the actual character's shadows, as the arcade version did. The Snes game also has the shadows, they are translucent, rather than solid black as they are in the 32X version. Other than the voice samples, the characters are what the 32X contributed most to in that version. In fact, the backgrounds are done entirely by the Genesis hardware in the 32X game, and only the characters are running off of the 32X hardware. It's possible to prove this by running the video straight out of the Genesis output when playing the 32X game, the backgrounds will display, but not the characters or the shadows. What Probe chose to do is take the colors that were being used for the characters in the Genesis version, and add them to the backgrounds of the 32X version while the 32X handled the characters, shadows, and animated background characters with higher color counts and resolution than the Genesis version did. It was a trade off, most likely chosen to save time in an already aging game's development cycle. It would have been interesting to see what the 32X hardware might have done if the entire game was running off of it. It's very easy to see that such a usage of the 32X could have produced an arcade perfect port, if it couldn't run the actual arcade version in emulation as Space Harrier and Afterburner do. The Snes characters are actually the lowest resolution of all three versions. They do have a slightly higher color count on the characters than the Genesis version, but lower than the 32X version, and a less standing animation than the Genesis and 32X versions. The Snes game does seem to have more animation in the fighting and finishing animations than either Genesis or 32X versions do. MKII 32X also has taller characters, with more colors on the character itself, more, if not all of the frames of animation, and no such black line or grainyness. Music is another serious difference between the versions. The Snes game actually has lower sampled Mono music, that's much quieter, as if it's supposed to be ambient sound, rather than background music. This was likely done deliberatly, and it seems many Snes games have mono music that play at a low sample rate, while they have more digital instruments in the music. By comparison, many Genesis games are in Stereo, but feature analog instruments generated by the sound chip. The Genesis and 32X Mortal Kombat II music are the same, but higher sample rate than the Snes version, and in Stereo. The Genesis and 32X music is much closer to the Arcade music than the Snes game's. Another change in the Snes music is that it sounds like the Snes version's title music is playing off key from what it should be.
