Mortal Kombat II

Mortal Kombat II

Year Of Release: 1993

Studio: Midway

Description

Mortal Kombat was a monster of a hit for Midway and Midway wasted no time in following up on the success of what would be one of the most influential arcade games of all time. Mortal Kombat II was designed to look much different from its predecessor, more dark, gothic and other worldly. Developer of the game Ed Boon has said that some of what was put into Mortal Kombat II was intended for the first Mortal Kombat game, but as Midway wanted the game to only have a year development time it was cut.

Mortal Kombat II is seen by many Mortal Kombat fans as the best in the original trilogy. It took all that was great about the first game and just expanded it. The character roster was now expanded from 7 to 12 characters. Favourites from the first game such as Lui Kang, Sub Zero, Scorpion, Johnny Cage and a playable Shang Tsung would return. As well as this new characters such as Kitana, Baraka and Jax have gone onto be become some of the most popular in the Mortal Kombat franchise. As well as this there was 2 hidden people to fight in Jade and Noob Saibot and there was also two boss characters. The story of Mortal Kombat II is very deep and centres around the leader of Outworld Shao Khan being enraged at Shang Tsung’s failure to take over Earthrelm in the first game. A new tournament is held in Outworld where Shao Khan will take matters into his own hands.

Mortal Kombat II would keep the same high attack, low attack control scheme from the first game. But the controls were tighten up and one new feature that was added was the ability to when you jump over your opponent hit a reverse kick before you land. Mortal Kombat II would considerably up the gore from the first game with each character now having two gruesome fatalities moves and there was also three stage fatalities as well. Mortal Kombat II would have a sense of hour also as two new finishing moves were added. The Babality let you turn your opponent into a baby and the Friendship would let you do something nice instead of brutally killing your opponent.

The games graphics were upgraded and the characters looks better than they did in the first game, but the main difference is the design of the levels. Some of the levels make great use of parallax scrolling and in general the levels had much more depth to them. While Mortal Kombat II uses considerable more colours than the first game its more dark and moody.

Current High Score: NA

Related Titles

Nintendo hated the fact that the Sega Mega Drive version of the first Mortal Kombat game drastically outsold the Super Nintendo version. As a result all of the gore from the arcade was allowed in the Super Nintendo release. The end result was that the Super Nintendo version was seen as the superior port of the game. It had shaper graphics, better sound, a perfect controller layout and the game even on the Pitt II stage made use of the consoles Mode 7 capabilities. This is not to say that the Sega Mega Drive version got a watered down port, Sega fans were more than happy with the version of Mortal Kombat II they would get.

Incredibly Mortal Kombat II would be released on the Sega Mastery System in certain parts of the world. The game is clearly not arcade perfect, but the Sega Master System does a good job of making an 8-bit version of Mortal Kombat.

Mortal Kombat II is the most ported of all the Mortal Kombat games. As well as the 16- bit versions. The game would be released for the Game Boy and the Sega Game Gear, the Game Gear version was pretty much identical to the version on the Sega Master System. As well as this there was a PC port and a surprising release for the Amiga as well.

Even a few years after the games release its popularity meant that systems such as the Sega 32X, The Sony Playstation and the Sega Saturn would get a release of the game. A funny fact is that in Japan, Mortal Kombat 3 was actually released for the Sony Playstation before Mortal Kombat II was.

In modern times, Mortal Kombat II was released for the Playstation 3 in near arcade perfect form. As well as this most recently it was released for Xbox Live and the Playstation Network as part of the Mortal Kombat Arcade Collection.