Released in 1995
Available in
Genre: Fighting

Mortal Kombat II

An immensly popular arcade game, Mortal Kombat II saw a 32X port in 1995. Published by Acclaim and developed by Probe Entertainment (who also did the Genesis version), this port is one of the major examples of the lack of improvement between the Genesis and 32X versions of the same game. Whilst there have been some updates that weren't in the Genesis version -such as some new sounds, some new sprites, new animation frames and the intro sequence being partially restored -it isn't that much better than the 16-bit game. The 32X version will disapoint fans.

And personally I never found the game to be that good to begin with. Whilst I do like some aspects of it (some of the characters and backgrounds are good, and I like some of the music...at least from the arcade version), the CPU is far too difficult and none of my friends would ever play it for more than a couple of games at best, wanting Street Fighter II instead, a series I also prefer over Mortal Kombat. Whilst I don't care for the game, those who do like the series would only really want to pick this up if they haven't got the standard Genesis version already -it really doesn't improve on it that much. For non-fans who want a 32X fighting game, get Virtua Fighter instead.

Contents

1) Info
2) Cheats
3) Trivia



Info

The game lets you choose from twelve different characters, each of which has punches, kicks, special moves and finishing techniques. There are two buttons for punches, two for kicks along with a button for blocking. Using a three button controller for this game is near useless, to get the most out of it you'll need a six button pad.

The single player mode has you fight against everyone else in the game. The CPU opponents in Mortal Kombat II are notoriously difficult, and whilst the first few will fall easily, it won't take long for their aggresiveness to spike up, to the point of madness. You'll quickly tire of having your uppercut perfectly countered with another uppercut, and the CPU will read your move inputs like crazy. The different difficulty settings don't seem to make any difference, and should you manage to make it through to the end you've still got to deal with two unplayable bosses: Kintaro and Shao Kahn.


The only other mode is the 2 player option, which lets two human players fight each other. This is probably a much better alternative than the single player mode. Aside from that, you might get a laugh out of the various finishing moves each character has -all characters have at least two fatalities, which will kill the opponent. By meeting certain conditions, you can also use "friendships", where your character will do something silly. Babalities let you turn your opponent into a baby, whilst you can also perform stage fatalities on certain backgrounds, which let you do things such as knock your opponent into some acid or send them flying off a bridge.


Cheats

Test mode
Go into the options menu, highlight "DONE!" and then press left, down, right, right, down, left, left, left, left, right, right, right. A "test modes" option will appear which adds several options to the game, including free play and one hit kill modes.

Fight Smoke
During any match in the portal stage, if you ever see Dan Forden appear and say "toasty!", press down and start. You will then get to fight Smoke.

Fight Jade
At the match before the ? box in the single player mode, defeat your opponent in the winning round using only the low kick button. Your next opponent will be Jade, who looks like Kitana and Mileena, but in green.

Fight Noob Saibot

Win 25 two-player matches in a row. You will then fight Noob Saibot, who is an all black ninja.

Random select

At the character select screen, highlight Liu Kang and then press up whilst holding start. A random character will be selected for you.



Trivia

Like with the majority of console ports of Mortal Kombat games released in the early '90s, there is annoyingly no way to pause the game, even with a six button controller.

The Japanese version features English text for the character profiles and endings.