"Doesn't work very well at all."

Even thought the first Mortal Kombat game was released on the Master System, it wasn't received very well. It seems surprising that Mortal Kombat 2 was also made for the Master System, but it did.

Mortal Kombat 2 was a huge hit in the arcades but this version is on the Master System, and a lot of cuts have had to have been made. So much so, that it's debatable whether or not it was worth making this version.

This is a fighting game with lots of blood. Like most 2D fighting games it's a simple case of beating the opponent in a "best 2 of 3" rounds system. Each character has punches, kicks, throws and special moves. The Mortal Kombat series is known for how much blood is in it and this version is no exception, with plenty of the red stuff available.

In total there are 8 playable characters. All the 3 male ninjas (Sub Zero, Reptile and Scorpion) are in the game along with the 2 female ninjas (Kitana and Mileena), plus Liu Kang, Jax and Shang Tsung. The other 4 characters from the arcade version (Cage, Baraka and annoyingly Kung Lao and Raiden, who were 2 of the best character deigns) have been left out. The 2 unplayable bosses are in the game though, and you'll fight them once you've beaten all the other characters in the game. You fight CPU opponents, and have to keep beating them until you beat the final boss of Mortal Kombat 2; Shao Kahn.

Like in the last Master System Mortal Kombat game, things are incredibly jerky. In still pictures, the sprites look good for a Master System game, but when things start moving the game becomes near enough unplayable.

Also like the last game, this version only has 2 stages in it. These are the Kombat tomb and the pit 2. The pit 2 doesn't let you knock the opponent off the bridge, but the Kombat tomb stage does let you do a stage fatality on the opponent and knock them upward into the spike bed.

All of the characters have their special moves, but most of the finishing moves have been removed. There are no things like friendships or babalities, but all characters have 1 fatality each.

Once again the Master System pad fails to be any good for fighting games. Quarter circles are a nightmare to do that well, although some of the more simple move commands, like double taps of a direction, are slightly more responsive.

This version of Mortal Kombat 2 is a bit much and really shouldn't have been made. The Master Syste cannot really cope with this kind of stuff.

3/10

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 10/19/05