Ultra Vortek

"Mortal Kombat's lousy carbon copy..."

With the success of Mortal Kombat, game companies struggled to make the next gore filled brawling hit. There was Way of the Warrior, Time Killers and the likes. Atari themselves seemed to be especially enamored with MK's shades of red as they tried to mimic (and I stress the word mimic) the formula with not one, but two games on the fighting starved Jaguar. The two I speak of are Kasumi Ninja and Ultra Vortek; both horrendous fighting games, but Ultra Vortek has a style that is a little slicker and graphics that a semi-interesting. This makes it the clear winner as the best of the Jaguar fighting crop, which isn't saying much for Atari's fighting games.

Graphics: UV has a style that is completely evil. Play fields are scattered with dark iconic images such as wrecked sub way cars, absolutely sinister relief statues and some bizarre aliens hopping around. Characters are slightly below par next to Kasumi Ninja's because of smaller sprites and considerably lesser animations. The final boss (who I think represents the devil the best more than any other game in history) looks cool but the choppy and awkward animations are totally lame and obviously show a disinterest on the developers part when looking at the detail that went into backgrounds; the fact could hold true for all of the (7) fighters graphics as well.

Music/Sound: Generic heavy metal riffs saturated the game to the point I had to turn down the volume. The sound effects are nothing spectacular with the exception of the announcer's voice who is undoubtedly for me the best part of this game. I almost soiled myself after hearing him say ''ANNIHILATION TIME!'' for the first time!

Gameplay: When trying to copy MK, Atari focused to much on the visual aspects of blood and violence and completely ignored what made MK so great...gameplay. The game moves at a snail's pace (thankfully there's a code to help speed things up a bit) and special moves are ridiculously hard to pull off because of the Jaguar's lousy d-pad. The game's one player mode is a breeze to punch your way through and all the characters play pretty much the same (with the exception of special moves). Each fighter gets one really lame fatality a piece, which like the special moves, are a pain in the arse to pull off. UV is also completely devoid of a combo system as well, meaning all you can really do is button smash your way to victory. I would say the two player mode is much better, but with only seven unimaginative characters there isn't much fun in battling friends. The game has a dumb story so even beating the game to watch the dull endings doesn't give it nearly enough replay.

Overall: No one in their right mind would play this game over any of the MKs. While the dark game style is impressive it is also silly after a while and without any substance or replay value, UV is a BIG waste of time. For the serious Atari-phile only.

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 03/03/03, Updated 03/03/03