Mortal Kombat - Sega Master System (Gameplay & Opinion)

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Village Monk's Gaming Memories

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Published on September 3, 2017 1:28:09 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KV33-YFSS1Y

Game:

Mortal Kombat II (1993)

Category:

Let's Play

Duration: 24:49

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If you were a fan of one-on-one fighters during the early 90’s there were two franchises which helped to make the genre popular – Street Fighter (from number 2 onwards) and Mortal Kombat. MK’s hook was to add ultra-violence into the mix which got it into trouble with parents everywhere which led to videogames having age ratings on their boxes. In order to reduce the controversy Nintendo famously censored their version which meant that the Sega versions vastly outsold them.

The first Mortal Kombat debuted in arcades in 1992, which the majority of home ports coming across in 1993, which includes this Sega Master System version, although the Game Gear version is virtually the same. It was also released for virtually every other format at the time such as the Mega Drive, Mega CD, SNES, Game Boy, PC and Amiga.

The game is a one-on-one fighter where you simply have to beat your opponent over a best of three rounds over three different difficulty settings with the eventual goal of beating the six-armed champion Goro and his master Shang Tsung. There are six fighters that you can play as each with a selection of their own special moves and one fatality each to brutally finish off your opponent at the end of the last round. It’s not arcade perfect as it is missing certain content with the seventh fighter Kano missing, the secret character Reptile and all but two of the backdrops.

Graphically the game is recognisable from the original, with the scrolling being a little bit jerky, but overall aesthetically it is about what you expect from a Master System port to be like.

My biggest problem with the controls, which work mostly comes with the blocking. To block instead of pressing back, you have to press button 1 and back. The problem is with this is that certain moves such as Scorpion’s hook require you to press back and 1 and more often than not when you attempt to do that move you will end up blocking. To do the move instead of quickly pressing back, back and 1 which is your instant reaction in a fast paced fighting game, you have to slowly press that combination, but not too slowly or else the game won’t recognise the move. This is a problem which only comes with the Master System version, the virtually identical Game Gear port uses the start button as the block and is therefore a lot more playable. Mortal Kombat 2 saw this as a problem and made blocking happen when you press both buttons 1+2. Apart from this the game plays very well and is a lot of fun to play.

My other biggest problem with the original Mortal Kombat are the endurance rounds which appear after fighting the six playable fighters and before the bosses. These see you having to beat two opponents in one round on one life bar. This is surprisingly difficult and I always find it a lot harder than the two bosses which come afterwards. As a result I regularly am not able to beat the single player mode because I get stuck in these three battles.

Although I think that MK is a decent port of the original, but if want a better one-on-one fighter on the Master System get Mortal Kombat 2 which has a bigger cast, no endurance rounds and fixes the terrible blocking issue.

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Atari ST: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLx4xxIIv8AfzF1WNCk2yjFs9SNEZUf6o3
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Windows PC: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLx4xxIIv8AfxkkqPP6dWcSarH94BPrbvr

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