Best mortal kombat?

[bplus]

I get about 5 minutes a day to play games. For some reason I started playing ultimate mortal kombat on the megadrive using retro arch tonight. It seems like a great game.

 

Got me thinking, what is the best mortal kombat game? Last one I really played was 4 on the N64 and I loved it. Yes it got bad reviews but the N64 didn't have many fighting games.

 

I hear good things about mk9?

[phillv85]

MK9 was great from what I remember. Mortal Kombat 2 is still my favourite. The fatalities on that at the time were unbelievable to 10 year old me. I’m also hugely nostalgic for the first game, when we found out the blood code it was a great time.

[ilpostino]

9 and X are good. Other good 3D ones are Deception and Armageddon.

 

As for the 2D ones? I'd go UMK3 also. Brilliant.

[Skull Commander]

My specialist subject! Obviously (as with everything) it's personal opinion but for what it's worth here are my recommendations. 

 

Ultimate is good for the 2D ones but I always have a soft spot for Mortal Kombat 2. It's combo system isn't as refined as 3/ultimate, but it's got the best characters, stages and just feels good. 

 

A lot of the 3D ones of the PS2/Xbox era were great at the time but would imagine they will be clunky nowadays. 9 is still good but if we are going right up to present day then the last two are both great (X and 11) and can be picked up for cheap. 

[Oh Danny Boy]

11 is banging. Much prefer it over the recent street fighters. Of the older games a close one between 2 and Ultimate. Never played Trilogy as mags at the time panned it but it was at a time where anything that wasn’t 3D was ripped apart by me the press. One I’d definitely like to try.

[ianinthefuture]

2 hours ago, Oh Danny Boy said:

11 is banging. Much prefer it over the recent street fighters. Of the older games a close one between 2 and Ultimate. Never played Trilogy as mags at the time panned it but it was at a time where anything that wasn’t 3D was ripped apart by me the press. One I’d definitely like to try.

Trilogy is a wonderful curio, but it's not the best of the 2D games by a fair old margin. Naturally I absolutely adored it as a kid.

[bplus]

Can anyone explain why arcade version of ultimate seems to have fewer characters than the snes and megadrive versions?

 

Yeah I always wondered in trilogy got panned due to be in 2d. N64 gave it about 30 percent or something like that.

[bplus]

Also just read on mk 11 Wikipedia page that there were complaints about grinding? How does that work!? God no!!

[schmojo]

As far as I recall, Trilogy got panned because it was a rush job featuring mismatching sprites of different qualities and poor balancing.

 

Somewhere between an actual release and a MUGEN fan game. as if someone had the keys to the assets, but not the craft.

[gone fishin]

6 minutes ago, bplus said:

Can anyone explain why arcade version of ultimate seems to have fewer characters than the snes and megadrive versions?

 

Yeah I always wondered in trilogy got panned due to be in 2d. N64 gave it about 30 percent or something like that.

Are you thinking of Mortal Kombat 3? That had quite a few characters missing that were reinstated in Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. The console version had a couple extra characters as a bonus.

[Anne Summers]

1 hour ago, schmojo said:

As far as I recall, Trilogy got panned because it was a rush job featuring mismatching sprites of different qualities and poor balancing.

 

Somewhere between an actual release and a MUGEN fan game. as if someone had the keys to the assets, but not the craft.

Didn't notice that at the time but it makes sense as it was basically a cut n paste of all the previous games up till that point. 

 

For my money, MK2 on the Mega Drive is the best, though, based on the sheer amount of fun I had playing it with mates back in the day. 

[ilpostino]

14 hours ago, bplus said:

Also just read on mk 11 Wikipedia page that there were complaints about grinding? How does that work!? God no!!

 

I'm not sure if they fixed it but in order to unlock all the alt costumes and items you had to grind on the online towers for ages.

 

I never bothered with them.

[ScouserInExile]

15 hours ago, bplus said:

Also just read on mk 11 Wikipedia page that there were complaints about grinding? How does that work!? God no!!

 

24 minutes ago, ilpostino said:

 

I'm not sure if they fixed it but in order to unlock all the alt costumes and items you had to grind on the online towers for ages.

 

I never bothered with them.

Yes and no.

 

A lot of what's unlocked by playing the timed towers is kosmetics so, unless you want everything for every character then it's not worth the grind. Iirc, there's only three different skins for each character, then a bunch of slightly different colours for those skins. 

 

However, there are a few items that you can attach to your character that will affect the single player game with buffs and there are "konsumables* that are buffs you equip for either single fights or a whole tower. You tend to get loads of these 

 

And fatalities and brutalies are found in chests in the Krypt and need Koins or Hearts to open them. But I've never run out of either and have never ground.

 

There was a story when it first came out that you needed to spend something like $5000 to unlock everything. But that was, essentially, bollocks. The guy saw there were skins for sale, multiplied the cost of said skins by how many there are in total and came up with the five grand figure. You can buy skins with actual money if you want, but everything is obtainable without paying and you can't buy everything, only certain items.

[ilpostino]

But it does take fucking ages to get those skins though, if you want them - which I think was the cause for consternation among the fandom.

[DennyDifferent]

Another vote for MKII here, particularly on Mega Drive. Though I do have a soft spot for Trilogy on PS1 too.

[mechamonkey]

I've enjoyed them all over time but MK11 is miles ahead.

[bplus]

Just been playing the MK1 arcade mode hack. It's very good. Reckon the mega drive music is better than the arcade.

[Anne Summers]

  I've just started playing 11 since it was recommended in this thread (not been interested in the series for decades and assumed it had just gone stale like a lot of other 90s fighting game series that are still churning out high numbered sequels.) It really is something else, though. 

[Riven]

3D wise 9 and 10 really are two of the best if not the best games in the franchise.

 

As for the 2D ones well MK2 (Arcade) gets my vote as does UMK3 (Arcade) and MK Trilogy (later greatest hits version is better, has more bug fixes in it.)

 

Shout out for the spin off game Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks, that really was a great scrolling beat'em up when me and my brother played it through.

[bplus]

4 hours ago, Riven said:

3D wise 9 and 10 really are two of the best if not the best games in the franchise.

 

As for the 2D ones well MK2 (Arcade) gets my vote as does UMK3 (Arcade) and MK Trilogy (later greatest hits version is better, has more bug fixes in it.)

 

Shout out for the spin off game Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks, that really was a great scrolling beat'em up when me and my brother played it through.

What did you play mk trilogy on?

[megamixer]

I'm probably an odd-one-out in that I never played the original MK games!

 

I've always been a big fan of fighting games though, so I tried to get into the series with Armageddon on the PS2 but it just didn't work for me. It felt too clunky and "stiff" after playing the likes of Tekken on the same platform and I got fed up with it pretty rapidly. I do understand that Armageddon has one of the best MK rosters though and was supposed to be culmination of everything that had gone before (kind of like how the Tekken Tag games brought all previous fighters together).

 

I also played MK9 and MKX though and those I really enjoyed! The x-ray moves were absolutely brutal but so, so satisfying and I felt that the fighting itself was a bit looser and more engaging. The different movie characters across those games were also awesome to play as, though it's a shame that Freddy Krueger was in MK9 but they couldn't bring him back for X to be in the same game as Jason Voorhees. I mean, the same studio owns the rights for both characters so I didn't get it.

[Riven]

On 28/01/2023 at 18:36, bplus said:

What did you play mk trilogy on?

 

Saturn and PlayStation, but the later PS1 versions have the most fixes. Never played the N64 version, but I know what all the changes were between them, having read up on it. You get the different ninja, but that version is said to be the weakest with the most bugs.

[bplus]

7 hours ago, Riven said:

 

Saturn and PlayStation, but the later PS1 versions have the most fixes. Never played the N64 version, but I know what all the changes were between them, having read up on it. You get the different ninja, but that version is said to be the weakest with the most bugs.

Thanks