Perfect in many aspects, but flawed in a crucial few.
Let's look at the good stuff first. All characters from Mortal Kombat 1, 2 and 3 are included and playable in this game. This includes both hidden characters and bosses like Goro and Shao Kahn. The controls are responsive and the graphics are impeccably reproduced. Blood is omnipresent and the animation is smooth and fast paced. All levels from MK1, 2 and 3 are playable along with their soundtrack. So where does it go wrong?
1) The AI is irrational. Adjusting the difficulty level seems to be have little effect on the difficulty of your computer opponent. His speed and strategy seems to be completely random, independently of your settings.
2) The loading times are unacceptable. Even with Fast Loading enabled on the PlayStation2, the loading times are painfully slow.
3) There is no dedicated versus-mode. When you select Mortal Kombat and activate player 2, he will only enter in one match. After that, the game will return to single playermode to climb the mountain of opponents, unless the second player bids in on the continue/credit-screen. In that case, you'll be send all the way back to the main menu, only to select Mortal Kombat mode and then play another match.
4) A messy, slow, cluttered and irrational menusystem. Whenever you are defeated in single player mode, a continue/credit screen will pop up. If you decide to continue, your match won't be reloaded. You won't be send to the character selection screen. No... you'll be send all the way back to the main menu where you have to select "Mortal Kombat" as gamemode, then character, then watch the mountain of opponents and then battle. The pain of this unneccessary long process is increased by the everlasting loading times inbetween. A fast paced fighting game, must also have a fast paced loading and menu interface.
5) If you hold L1, L2, R1, R2 and Up on the option menu, you can trigger a hidden subsection where you can enable a "One Button Fatality" feature. The implementation of this is however bugged. You can't rely on it to work as it only works sometimes. If you take out your opponent with a combo, you can be 99% sure that the one button fatality feature won't work when finishing the opponent. Since Williams decided to include this option in the hidden submenu, why didn't they code the game to bring up a finishing move selection 0list at the end of a match, so you could choose whether to use a fatality, brutality, animality or friendship, rather than relying on these "one button fatalities" which have a 40% chance of working.
So to sum it up, this game COULD have been the perfect Mortal Kombat classic release, if only:
1) The loading speed was better.
2) The process between matches were smoother without all the stupid menu events.
3) The game included a real versus mode with match counter and win/lose counter.
4) The one button fatality feature actually worked.
5) The AI was actually intelligent and not just manic.
This game just won't cut it as a two-player game, as no friendship can bear 2 minutes of loading and navigation for every one minute of fighting.