Mortal Kombat II

"The best MK on the Super Nintendo!"

The game: The sequel to the originator of gore, Mortal Kombat. This game adds extra characters, and a brand new storyline. Will it be better then the original? Well, let's get onto the review and find out.

Graphics: 8: The character models were tremendously improved over the older Mortal Kombat. All the fighters look even realer then before, and are detailed extremely well to where you can distinguish the tiniest parts of the fighters like the blades of Baraka, and Liu Kang's bandana! The new backgrounds look awesome and way better than the original, my favorite is the one where Kano and Sonya are chained up in the background. And yes, Nintendo finally decided that gore equals sales, and finally decided to give Midway the go ahead and include blood in the game. And my oh my, does it add realism to the game, the fatalities look great, like the pit fatalities, and especially Baraka's fatality where he cuts off the fighter's head with his spikes and blood gushes out like mad!

See back then in September 1994 Nintendo still had the say on what and whatnot can be in games released on there systems. Of course that changed when the video games rating system came out a month after this game in October 1994, where ratings described the games, and Nintendo could no longer tell the companies what to exclude if Nintendo doesn't like it. But of course, Nintendo did force Midway to put a Under 17 years old warning label on the game.

Sound: 10: You got great background music that sets the tone for the game, and the tune for when the fatality is about to appear, really gets you excited. I love the sound effects in the game too! Each fighter has there own set of reactions to moves, and shouts they do whenever they do a move there own. I always get a kick whenever Liu Kang does his bicycle kick. And the ''Toasty'' voice debuted in this game as well.

Gameplay: 9: The story for this game is that Goro was condemed, and Shang Tsung was about to be killed, but revealed his plan to his ruler, Shao Kahn to take over the world, and Kahn liked the idea so he restored Tsung's youth. Any ways the game debuted a slightly new fighting system, for finishing moves, each fighter now has 2 fatalities, plus new friendships and Babalities where you turn your opponent into a baby. There's also 2 different pit fatalities, one for the Pit stage, where you uppercut your rival into the spikes below, and in the Kombat Tomb, where you uppercut your opponent into the spikes above the ceiling. This game has 12 fighters, plus 3 hidden one's. Each fighter has there own sets of moves which you pull off by pressing various button combinations. Also to do a finishing move involves longer sequences of combinations, plus it's no harder to do the finishing moves because the finishing time is now way shorter than the amount of time you had to do it in the original game. To me, I think this fighting system was the best of all the Mortal Kombat games.

Replay Value: 7: The game is loaded with codes and secrets(when this MK was released there wasn't any Kombat Kodes in the MK series yet, so the developers let you input all the codes at the character select screen instead), like 3 hidden characters, plus a hidden 4-on-4 endurance mode. Of course the real fun here comes playing against your friend having hours of fun duking it out for hours on end.

Overall: 8: This is the best Mortal Kombat game for the Super Nintendo. If you're to get one Mortal Kombat game for the Super Nintendo, then pick up this title! MK 3 and Ultimate MK 3 aren't any better than this at all, so please don't buy those 2, and just get this game instead!

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 04/13/00, Updated 04/13/00