"Suffers from the worst fatality of all....mediocrity..."

With the set of titles on the 32X, you’d have to think that the boasting of visual and audio improvements would come through with flare and otherwise. However, as most Genesis games saw, the 32X was nothing more than a slight upgrade in the way that the games looked and felt, but in all honesty, did nothing to increase the viewing or listening pleasure! With Mortal Kombat 2, you have the same game that you played on the Genesis, but nothing more added or taken away from the overall experience. Unfortunately, in Mortal Kombat 2, you take control of the old crew from the first, but with some immediate character appearance changes and several new characters who are new to the Mortal Kombat world. If you add into this that there are new stages that allow you fatalities and new ways to finish off your opponents as well as more brutal ways to do so, you’ll find that Mortal Kombat 2 is simply an upgrade of the original! With the changes in the visuals only, some of the game play options that were so popular in the first game are no longer available and that will come as something of a shock to fans of the first game.

Mortal Kombat! That pretty much says it all. Fighting at it's goriest (at the time anyway) with special moves galore, and finishing moves. It offers up new character, in place of taking out Kano and Sonya...adding them to the game's background in one of the stages. The newest additions to the game take place with the different ways that you can take out your opponents, depending on what it is that you want to do. With new moves and new characters replacing some of the older ones, you’ll find that the fresh change of roster can be something of a challenge with having to learn the new attacks and move sets! Some of the stages have also been redone in order to allow you to finish off your opponent with something called a Background Fatality. This just allows for a little more variety between how you can finish off your opponent and is really a fresh change of pace. It does take away the Test your Might, and the Endurance rounds, in favor of adding more characters. This, in my opinion, takes away from variety in the game. Which is a downsizing in interest in some gamer’s eyes! The theory of adding more characters to the fray and taking out some interesting game play aspects that Mortal Kombat has to offer will turn several people off even in light of having a much ‘darker’ and more violent game!

The best control for a MK game yet. The six-button controller was specifically designed for this game in my opinion, and is easy to use, and easy to interface the special moves from. You really can't ask for sharper control than with this game! The addition of the run button wasn’t added in until the third installment, so you’re basically looking at two punches and two kicks as well as a blocking button to stop your opponent’s attacks. Again, as with the first Mortal Kombat, you have to input your directional pad motions and then hit the correct button in order to pull off a special move. The Fatalities are now done in such a way that you’ll be forced to use the block button in a few of them just to get the right effect and finish off your opponent in that good old fashioned gore-filled way!

This game bent more towards speed instead of actual graphics, but it still came off fairly well. The game was hampered again unfortunately, by slow down and break down of animation when coming to fatalities and special moves! The characters are nicely drawn, but they are also pixilated which comes as no surprise and shows that the Sega 32X has ties with the limits of the Genesis's graphical engine. Some of the new characters just need to be seen to be believed with some of the most interesting and unique ideas that allow you to see just what Outworld has to offer! The fatalities are also much darker and in some cases, much more violent to watch than they were with the first Mortal Kombat, but these visuals come at the price of chopped up actions and moves.

The game music remained, as did the loud and sometimes fuzzy effects of someone yelling when being hit. This all adds up to something that you probably won't want to listen to after too long, it will, get on your nerves, and you will probably turn it off after a few rounds! The announcer is back and with a bit of a sinister edge to his voice than before, with all of the sound effects ranging from completely redone to simply ported over from the original Mortal Kombat. Something that is rather interesting is the impact sound effects which are timed almost correctly, even though with certain fights and otherwise, you’ll find that the sound doesn’t quite match the action it belongs to! These small problems all add up into a bigger mess of sound that doesn’t seem to get any better, but merely gets worse!

Mortal Kombat II for the Sega 32X is nothing more than a slight upgrade on the original title. With nothing new to offer and being one of those games that could only be played with the device {or so they said}, you’ll find that there are other titles that you can play and have a little more fun with. With the control being placed in the hands of the six-button controller, there really isn’t much else that you can do with the game but learn how to use the control to the best of your ability and hope for the best! Visually, the game hasn’t changed much at all, and the only thing that I can tell in the audio is that the sound seems a little clearer than it was before. When it comes to the different versions of the game, there is only one home system version of this title that truly puts the game into your hands in the comfort of your own home, and that is the SNES version. With virtually no improvements that I could see, and the same old game play with the extra added features of the original game taken out, there is no reason to collect this game unless you’re a Mortal Kombat fan, or you’ve got a love for the 32X system. For Mortal Kombat fans only, other fighting game fans would do well to find the Virtua Fighter game and play that instead, because Mortal Kombat undertakes the worst fatality of all…mediocrity.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 01/12/02, Updated 01/12/02