Hack Review: Ultimate Mortal Kombat Trilogy

Ah, these things are getting tougher to write about. Sometimes inspiration strikes and I have no way to write anything down, sometimes I'm ready to write but I have no idea what to write about. Well today, I had a thought. Why not videobatize an article? Well, easy reason. Then I'd be selling out somehow. After all, I hate ranting on YouTube, where everyone is free to speak their own opinions and tell me that mine is utterly and horrendously wrong, no matter how well put together every idea is. Now, I've tried to update my blog with whatever I could. A review of another video game, a review of a wrestling show in the past from the perspective of a kid who once religiously watched professional wrestling on TV like it was the coolest thing ever, or just me continuing to complain about the state of music/television/games themselves. But I've been sitting on doing this for a while, so, to quote an italian plumber sent to rescue mini-toys of himself from an ape friend of his, "Let's-a get-a going."

Now, everyone knows what Mortal Kombat is. Why? Because Mortal Kombat was a lifestyle changing game, that's why. Looking back, all of the home versions (and the arcade version to an extent) were pretty mediocre. But only one thing drove people into fits was the fact that it was possible to reach into your opponent's back and rip out their spine like it was nothin. Sure, you could also rip out their heart, set them on fire, or... ahem, perform an uppercut that somehow kills them, but everyone spent all their time focusing on these things. Needless to say, given that you were never able to kill anyone in video games before. At least, not with STATE-OF-THE-ART CINEMATICS LIKE THIS, which looking back, were pretty revolutionary themselves, considering that they got actual people to provide the sprites for the characters, which would later be duplicated in many games to follow, most of them sucking horribly. Looking at you, Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game.


Either way, parents freaked, and Joseph Lieberman cried foul and decided "WTF NO, KIDS MIGHT WANT TO BUY THIS GAME SO WE NEED TO PUT A LABEL ON IT OR SOMETHING". Thus, the ESRB was created. Granted I always played the Genesis version so I had the VRC or whatever Sega used. Mortal Kombat was rated MA-13, meaning you had to be a teenager to play the game, and even then there was a cheat code that you needed to do in order to unlock the blood. Come on, say it with me now. A-B-A-C-A-B-B. To me, that was my Contra Code growing up, because I loved my copy of Mortal Kombat, and I didn't own a copy of Contra. Anyway, while the ESRB was effective while as it was pretty straightforward. K-A was Kids to Adults, which meant pretty much everyone could play it. T was Teen, meaning the content was more suited to teenagers. And a rarely seen one those days (other than on Mortal Kombat games, ironically) was M for Mature, which means the content was for 17-year-olds and up. Now there are two other levels, eC which is Early Childhood, and AO which is Adults Only. The problem being that eC games are normally skipped over and AO games are legally not allowed to be sold on consoles. You may remember hearing about that when you bought your copy of Manhunt 2 and thought that playing it on the Wii was going to be the most fucked up thing ever, and suddenly you got the piece of crap that WAS the toned-down M-rated Manhunt 2. Anyway, the system worked until Grand Theft Auto III was released, and when parents bought GTAIII for their children and watched in horror at what their kids were playing, they decided to blame the developer for making such a game, not themselves for allowing their kids to play it. I could write more about this, but that is totally irrelevant to this review.



Anyway, Mortal Kombat. The reason that there IS a rating system in place. Every single MK game to date has been rated M for Mature, with the exception of the "highly anticipated" Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe. I say "highly anticipated" because Mortal Kombat fans wanted to tear out the spines of whoever came up with such an idea. Me on the other hand, I find this game to be rather interesting. After all, I slightly wondered if this game was possible a while back, due to Marvel vs. Capcom being awesome and constantly in my life. After all, Street Fighter's main competition was always MK, therefore it only made sense that since Marvel's main competition was DC Comics, they should get together and make their OWN game. Now with things like MUGEN, this was easily able to do. I mean with MUGEN, you could do anything. Mortal Kombat vs. Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat vs. Marvel, even... Mortal Kombat vs. Mortal Kombat. I mean this as in, you could take a character from UMK3 and face him off against a character from MK2. Oh wait no, you could already do that WITHOUT MUGEN.



And so now, four paragraphs later, I'm finally starting my review of this. Ultimate Mortal Kombat Trilogy. By the title, it sounds like a horrible abomination against man. You know, it sounds like the title of one of those Pirated NES games. But nope, it's actually a Sega Genesis game. Rather, it's a hack (and boy, what A hack) of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Now at first glance at the title screen, it looks horrible. I mean, there's been a pirated Genesis Mortal Kombat game in MK5, which was a Genesis port of MK Mythologies: Sub-Zero. And then you look at the player select screen.


No. You're kidding me here. This HAS to be like one of those Pirate games, right? I mean, look at this! There are multiple portraits of the same character here! Nope. Each one of those Kombatants (except maybe the Shao Kahns) are different. The difference between most of them? They're from different games. Yes, you heard me correctly. Each of them are somehow taken from their respective Genesis game, and a few are even ported from games LATER in the series, such as MKT Johnny Cage, and Rain. Now, we got Kombatants from MK1, MK2, and UMK3. I mean, we even have Sheeva! So this has to be too good to be true. This game HAS to suck.


Well, double-edged sword here. In my opinion, none of the console ports of UMK3 are any good. The only good version is the XBLA version, which is the closest thing to Arcade Perfect UMK3 that we're getting. However, getting past the music and the graphics (because come on, this is the Genesis) the gameplay holds up well with EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER. Now, obviously there did have to be some changes made. This is where this is set out from actual MUGEN, where everything has to stay the same, or if it's changed, it has to be completely badass and flashy and stupid. However, unlike MUGEN, everything is... well, somewhat balanced. First of all, every single character can recieve the same fate. This is due to the fact that the boss characters are playable and are seen as regular characters, other than the fact that they can smash each other character away like they usually can. You can finally Toasty Motaro if you feel like, as well as hammer Liu Kang into the ground. But the main point is, running and dial-a-kombo. These two things were added in MK3, and so how do you add these things into characters that weren't IN that game? Well, simple.


You simply give each character everything that the characters from UMK3 had. Each character has a kombo system (although most of the characters outside of MK3's kombos are all easy to use) and have Babalities, Brutalities (which weren't even in UMK3, so that's new in itself), and more than one or two fatalities. Yes, this also means that some characters even have NEW fatalities. Some are pretty stupid, but some of which actually fit the character. But the fact that they'd you know, actually implement these are awesome in itself.


Now obviously a game like this HAS to have some glaring flaws. Well, it's true. UMKT has NUMEROUS glitches and bugs that I'd expose, but really I'd just advise you to search for "UMKT: Glitchecalypse" on YouTube. Also, I like the fact that we have all these characters from all these games. That's good, I like it. But I'm wondering if there's actually any way to put in any stages from the classic games into this. Granted the game is huge anyway, what with all these new characters and the inclusion of the announcer from UMK3, but it would've been great. Also yes, some of the kombos ARE a bit too easy to pull off, and in the case of characters like Goro, Kintaro, Motaro, and the Shao Kahns, this could be a bit of a problem. Understandably, it's a bit tough to play this game with a second player considering it's a hack and such, but playing as a character just because you can by yourself and it's easy doesn't mean... okay, I don't exactly know where I'm going with this anyway.


Anyway, for what it's worth, it's an amazing hack, and I easily recommend patching it to your UMK3 ROM. That is of course, if you own Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 for the Genesis and are legally allowed to play things like that.