Mini Review - Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection

Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection

Beat 'em up. (duh)

What we have here are arcade ports of the first three Mortal Kombat games all in one handy package. Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat II and the Ultimate variety of MK3.

Graphics: Not really fair to mark a game on it's graphics, when it's over 15 years old. They all look exactly like they did in the '90s which is pretty much a given, but you also get various borders and filters including one which kind of warps the screen to make it look like an old arcade monitor. Nice touch, but you'll be switching that one off after a couple of matches.

Sound: Some issues here......most noticeable is the fact that it cuts some samples off half way through, including Scorpion's legendary 'get over here!' and most of Shao Khan's insults in UMK3. All of the music and screaming is still intact though.

Gameplay: Standard stuff, but it's worth remembering that these are arcade ports, so even on easy it can be nails hard. Especially MK2. I honestly don't remember the AI being this cheap! In MK2 it will respond to your button presses in a nanosecond. The first game also doesn't really hold up very well. It's still fun to play for a couple of matches, but the slower pace and limited moveset wears thin really quickly. There is also very little time to pull off fatalities. Online is currently extremely laggy at times on all three games, but it is easy to find a match right now. Thankfully MK3 is still as fun as ever.....the addition of combos and the wider selection of characters always made this one the best of the series and that still holds true.

Achievements: A fairly easy 200 but at the time of writing, some of the achievements are glitchy. There are achievements for completing each of the three games, but it took two plays on both MK2 and UMK3 to get their respective achievements. Thankfully you can use as many continues as you need. There are also achievements for doing one of each kind of '-ality' and one for getting 200 wins (luckily both offline and online). There are only two online achievements one for just winning online once, but there's also one for getting a flawless victory in ranked which can be frustrating but isn't too difficult. MK1 is probably the best game to work on the online stuff.

Verdict: There are a lot of issues with these ports, but luckily there is already a patch in the works which will hopefully take care of most of the problems. That being said, only Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 really stands the test of time and your mileage will vary depending on how nostalgic you are for this series. I've always been a massive Mortal Kombat fan, so 800 points for this was a no brainer.

7/10

Very nice mini!!

I played the demo just to hear Scorpion on MK1. I love that line but i'm not a big MK fan in general. I hate it when you get foot sweep spammed in MK1. Makes me wanna fatality someone in real life!! Aaaarrrgghhhh!!

A very Komendable review mate! (See what I did there)!!

One of my fave mini review yet!

you nailed all the info and even managed a cool hand luke quote!!!

Nice review Graham, I was interested in checking this out but might leave it till it's been patched.

I wont be getting on the strength that I always was shite at these games
Rep for the review though, nice one

Good review mate,not a fan of this ilk but tells you exactly what you are getting for your coin.

Well done .repped.