Mortal Kombat Trilogy

"Mortal Kombat 64 this is not, Trilogy this is not, so what is it?"

When you hear the name Mortal Kombat, you expect blood and gore violence, gruesome fatality, realistic graphics, digitize special effects, tons of palette swap characters, boatload of secrets, and much more. Then when you hear the word "trilogy" added to that name, you would expect wow!, now it sounds even better, babalities, friendships, animality, brutality, mercy, spine rip, pit fatality, test your might shattering, endurance matches, Goro, Kintaro, Motaro, Shao Kahn, Rayden, Johnny Cage, Baraka, ultimate kombat kodes, all levels from MK1-Ultimate MK3. How could this not sound any better, play this game and you'll see why.

Graphics:

Since the N64 isn't really popular for 2D games, one had to not expect why Midway decided to port this to the 3D powerhouse of the 64-Bit Nintendo console. Due to the released of this game for a powerful console that it couldn't take full advantage of, the graphics are still as close to arcade quality as possible. For the graphics part, you get a ton of backgrounds from MK1, MKII, MK3, and Ultimate MK3 but strangely not all of them. Also some of the animations for the character look downright outdated and almost all of the palette swap characters still look like a duplicate of each other. There are also the problem with a few of the backgrounds as well, for some reason there seems to be a lot of bridge stages (Star Bridge, Street Bridge, Pit I, Pit II, Pit 3, Hidden Portal Bridge, Lost Bridge, etc.), a few too many portals (MKII Portal, MK3 Hidden Portal, Ultimate MK3 Blue Portal, heck even the Destiny screen has its own portal), and dungeon levels (Goro's Lair, Noob's Dorfen, Motaro's Balcony, Scorpion's Lair) as well not that they aren't cool but having too many similar stages gets old very quick. Why can't they make more stages like the Palace Gate, the Warrior Shrine, and Kahn's Arena or something, heck those stages aren't even in this game and they look much more polished and original than the others that did. Also it feels rush when the MK1 stages that did make to this game didn't get the same visual treatments as the rest of the other stages.

Music/Sound:

Unlike MK Trilogy for the CD-based consoles, the N64 port only had the Ultimate MK3 soundtrack and musical scores so there's no MKII instruments to be heard anywhere in the game. Also all the screams, yell, and encouragements from both Kahn and Forden are all from Ultimate MK3 which is disappointing.

Control:

Since the control is similar to the Sega Saturn control with the six face buttons and the shoulder buttons the arcade perfect gameplay could easily be experience here, but since the N64's controller design felt more like a gun (due to its gun style design and the trigger zapping Z button) than a normal game pad it really isn't that comfortable for play unless you invest in an alternative third party control stick which works much better.

Gameplay:

Unlike the other port of MK Trilogy, this game is very well-balance since the game's roster is very well made up of the entire cast of characters from every 2D arcade MK games and yes you could also take control of the bosses (though only two and not four like the others) to teach the A.I. a lesson but this time they are not openly available at the fighter selection screen which prevent beginning players from cheaply crushing everybody with them. Also the gameplay is taken straight from Ultimate MK3 but with a new Aggressor meter added to up the gameplay a bit.

There's also some brand new moves and fatalities added for some characters though they aren't very interesting for example Rayden had a reverse electric bolt attack though it's really just the regular bolt shoot backward and Liu Kang had a shadowy but lame bicycle kick that isn't really any different from his regular one, Baraka; however, got his original spinning blade move (which was drop in MKII) for this game, though cool it's just not that powerful like it was in the MKII prototype. Also Johnny Cage despite having his red shadow kick as a regular special move, also lack his trademark split punch from the previous MK games. Also what's interesting is that Johnny here is the only old character returning that is actually brand new (in terms of digitize sprite and actor). One other interesting features is that due to MK3's unmasked Sub-Zero not in this game (particularly due of the limited cartridge space and because the ninja version looks much cooler), the ninja Sub-Zero here now had the combine special moves of both Sub-Zero, that means he could perform the ice puddle in addition to the ice clone and ice shower as well. Also one brief of fresh air is that you no longer had to deal with load times in between matches like the other versions which is a good thing for Shang Tsung players.

Replayabilty:

Like the other versions, there is a high replay value here since there are a ton of fighters to master and secrets to find. There are also two hidden palette swap characters to find and a more challenging hidden single player tournament tower to conquer but besides that very much of the whole game is just Ultimate MK3 with old characters so it's not something different and there's no 64-Bit features to be found anywhere in the game.

Is it worth buying?

If you want it for competition or tournament play or had never play any old-school MK games before, then yes; however, if you want an MK game worthy of 64-Bit or think that this is a trilogy of the series then, no. Though Mortal Kombat Trilogy is a much balanced game than the disc based versions, on the console side of things, not taking advantage of everything the N64 is known for is quite disappointing especially for a game that would best be release for the Super NES and Sega Genesis instead.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 12/14/08

Game Release: Mortal Kombat Trilogy (US, 10/31/96)