Together Retro: Mortal Kombat Trilogy

[Exhuminator]

My attempts to revisit the series as an adult have never been that enjoyable.

Have you played 2011's Mortal Kombat or Mortal Kombat X?

[Nemoide]

Nope. I'm not really interested in buying more games in the series.
The most recent one I played was Deadly Alliance which I liked but it just didn't ignite my passion. I just noticed it's unbeaten in Backloggery; maybe I should play it this summer... but it's hard for me to care about fighting games since I don't know anyone offline who is interested in them.

[Ziggy]

I remember renting Mortal Kombat II on my SNES, making it to Kintaro several times through tons of Raiden Superman spam, then getting utterly trashed by Kintaro. I think I'm going to have to join Ack in trying to beat the SNES version, though I'll have to pick a fighter.

My trick to beating Kintaro is a combo with Kitana. Lure him close and trap him in the fan trap thing. While he's floating in the air, do a jump kick fan throw combo. If he get's to close, or you're getting backed into the end of the screen (which will eventually happen) then do a flying punch to get on the other side of him. Repeat until he's dead. Or, until you run out of time but hopefully have more health left than him. This works well enough against Shao Khan as well.

[Exhuminator]

I'm not really interested in buying more games in the series.

The two most recent MK releases are leaps and bounds better than the PS2 or PS1 era ones. The newest ones really are amazing fighting games and shouldn't be missed IMO.

[Ziggy]

What I've played of the PS2 era MK games, I wasn't pleased with. However...



This is a must play for any MK fan, especially any MKII fan (which was always my favorite in the series). The game is a lot of fun, and follows the story line of MKII. I had a blast playing single player as well as co-op mode. Also included is an arcade version of MKII. It's sped up, so it plays way too fast, but it was the best arcade port of MKII we had at the time. This is actually one of my favorite PS2 games.

[MrPopo]

I'm not really interested in buying more games in the series.

The two most recent MK releases are leaps and bounds better than the PS2 or PS1 era ones. The newest ones really are amazing fighting games and shouldn't be missed IMO.

Yeah, the newest MK releases are like Street Fighter IV in that they're 100% 2D fighters with 3D models.

[ExedExes]

In various experiments I tried today all over the MK spectrum, I find that I can't do the one cool thing in this series well enough or even fast enough - the fatalities. Even with move lists in front of me, you only get 3 seconds per game to pull them off, it seems. At least UMK on the DS is a bit more forgiving, and the moves are always displayed on the second screen.

Have you tried in MK1? They feel real simple to do in that one.

I've got no problems with the first game. I got it for SNES and pulled one off with every character. You got a lot more time there.

It's also easier on the SNES version of MK2, from my experience. I'll keep trying and failing miserably.

I'm a Liu Kang fan. Probably because of my love for the old kung fu movies.

[Cronozilla]

More dumb nostalgia:

The movies also deserve a mention IMO! I felt like the first one totally lived up to what an MK movie could be and I loved it lots as a kid. Even as a kid, I didn't like the second one. But I remember renting the second one during a birthday sleepover when I must have been turning 12 and I think that was a time when I was down to only one real friend (the one who owned the Game Gear: he didn't like the second movie either).
There was also a pretty bad direct-to-video animated thing: even as a kid I thought it was kind of weak but, since it was Mortal Kombat, I convinced myself it was worth watching multiple times.

Paul WS Anderson has only ever made two movies that qualify as great achievements, Mortal Kombat 1 is one of them. For me, the MK movie was as much of my childhood as Goonies was for the previous generation. (I'm aware I got the worse of the two).

I was in High School when the second one came out, I was so ready went to see it, what a pile of shit. It's actually worse than I remember, I never noticed all the green screen problems for instance. The first flick actually has quality work ... they tried.

I remember I used to see that commercial for the CG MK video tape, I was always like "WHOAAAAAA", because it looked just like Virtua Fighter to me (and i was impressed with that for some reason), I never got to see it though, which is probably for the better.

I also remember the cartoon on USA. Watching that for a few hours over one Thanksgiving day.
I also remember watching Mortal Kombat Conquest a couple times, but all those types of shows that were on in the middle of the day and had similar production levels (Conquest, Xena, Hercules, etc) always made me feel like I whittling my life away wasting time watching this stuff. I saw it once and was like ... nope.

[Ack]

Played a few rounds of MKII this morning on the SNES. It's been a while since I played an MK game, so I am having to relearn a lot about the series, from the stiff controls to effective blocking, to the range of sweeps and kicks.

Even on Very Easy, the game punished me for playing it the legit way, so I began using cheap tactics and just repeatedly swept opponents. The end result? I cleared most of the game without issue until finally the AI started throwing me(two ways out of a sweep combo: jump or throw. The AI prefers to throw). I then moved the difficulty to Very Hard and used the same trick. The AI learned to throw faster, but I still got a Flawless Victory out of the deal before that happened. This isn't a case of X-Men: Children of the Atom, where the AI plays the same regardless of difficulty on the Saturn port, but the change between the two felt slight at most. I think I will play on Normal from now on and have the game beat its knowledge into me until I get through it.

Oh, quick note: on Very Hard, the AI opponent ALWAYS starts the first round with a special move. Always.

[ExedExes]

The first MK's AI on the SNES has odd behaviors too. One I noticed is that you never do a sweep kick against Sub-Zero; he will always counter with his sliding move.