Mortal Kombat: Tournament Edition

"A very excellent fighter!"

It's been awhile since I've played a Mortal Kombat game, but after seeing this on the shelf at Gamestop, I thought I'd give it a try.

Gameplay: 8/10
Like any other Mortal Kombat, you choose one of fifteen characters and fight with various special moves and combination attacks. There's ''Arcade'' mode, where you fight twelve of the games characters, two of which are very tough bosses, ''Tag Team'' mode, which is a cool innovation to this series where you choose two characters and fight against 6 other teams of two. ''Survival'', where you must defeat as many opponents as you can without dying, and ''Tournament'', which is a large scale tournament between you and the computer, or you and up to four friends.
This is a wonderful game to just pick up, play, and have fun with. And, it lasts a long time due to a new addition called ''The Krypt'', where you spend currency you get winning battles and use it to buy new costumes, moves, stages, and characters.
There's only two downsides to this game: Raiden, Cyrax, and Quan Chi have very easy to use and powerful combo attacks that can beat most of the game modes for you, plus, the difficulty is giant here. This game can go from ridiculously easy to Gameboy-throwingly difficult in a matter of rounds. The opponents are cheap and ridiculous in later levels, and button mashing sometimes is in order on the bosses.
Aside from that, however, this game is a lot of fun to play.

Graphics: 9/10
Wow. Midway uses the Mode 7 graphic engine effectively here, you can walk around 3-D enviroments, side-step, and the characters are nicely drawn and animated. Definitely no complaints here. The stages are all unique and very well designed, and the menus and text look nice as well.

Sound: 8/10
There's various grunts, groans and what-not to suit each of the characters. The music is nice, even thought there's really only six songs that you'll hear during battle. The announcer's voice that Mortal Kombat is known for (''Flawless Victory!'', ''Fatality'') is intact here and sounds so crisp and clear that it amazes me that I'm hearing this out of a Gameboy Advance. The sound is nice, but I wish the soundtrack were a little more diverse.

Replayability: 6/10
After you unlock everything on this game and have had your share of arcade battles, you won't have much incentive to come back and play. However, there's a large host of multiplayer options, so if you can find friends with this game, or the previous installment (Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance), there's various battles and games you can play. There is no single-pak feature, though.
Multiplayer is especially beneficial to play because certain characters and other unlockables require ''Gold Koins'' you must win through multiplayer matches.

Buy or Rent: Rent
See if you like it, and if you do, then buy it. This game is not for everyone, especially those who are turned off by difficult games.

Overall: 8/10
This game is fun and has good length, so I think it really deserves an 8 out of 10. It's no doubt the best fighter on the Gameboy Advance.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 10/09/03