Game:

Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 (1995)

Category:

Let's Play

Duration: 19:04

1,563 views

38

Playthrough with Scorpion. The Mega Drive version of UMK3 was released in 1996. It was done on a 32 meg cart, which immediately poses a problem: if the previous port of MK3 was also done on a 32 meg cart, then how were they supposed to get all the extra stuff for the Ultimate version on the same cart size? The answer is that they didn't, and had to cut a lot of stuff. For the first time in Mortal Kombat's Mega Drive history, a character was cut entirely: Sheeva. Animalities were also removed, and some backgrounds aren't present. This is where I would have liked to have seen lock-on technology come into play -imagine if you could plug your MK3 cart into UMK3 and unlock Sheeva and some of the MK3-exclusive backgrounds.

There were some things to try and make up for it. Ermac, Mileena and Classic Sub-Zero, who were hidden characters in the arcade version, are playable by default in this port. Rain, who only appeared in the arcade version's intro, and Noob Saibot, who was only playable in the Wavenet version of the arcade game, are also playable by default in this. They may be more ninja palette swaps and lack their own fatalities, but at least it's something. Brutalities, a finishing move involving a lot of button presses, made their debut in the 16 bit ports of the game.

It's also a very difficult game to beat, mainly because of the cheating, cheap CPU. The strategy I'm using here doesn't work in the arcade version, and doesn't work against every character in the Mega Drive version. The strat is to jump back and do a kick, which from the third opponent and onward will make the CPU use their projectile move. What you need to do is use Scorpion's teleport punch, and when that hits, immediately use his spear to drag the opponent in and combo them, then repeat. In the arcade version, I can never hit the opponent with the spear after the teleport punch. In the Mega Drive version, certain characters (Kitana, Stryker) will always sweep Scorpion when you try to spear them. The opponents I got for this playthrough all fall for it.

The strat for beating Motaro is a little different than it is in the arcade, as you need to go on the offensive -jump in and keep doing combos, he will often get hit over and over so you can just repeat this. Be careful of his grab -he is able to grab you even if you are jumping, something I don't think he could do in the arcade version. Shao Khan is as horrendous as ever, if you can just land one spear you should be good, but even getting that can be a pain.

This port has a lot of glitches, there are a couple in this video. There is an A.I. issue with the male masked ninja characters, if you can get the timing and spacing right, you can defeat any of them just by mashing the low punch button -they will keep trying to sweep you, but will always get hit. In the endurance matches, the color palette of the second character can sometimes glitch, as seen with Nightwolf in this playthrough. But the best discovery is the glitch with Kabal's animality command, which was accidentally left in the game and causes all sorts of issues:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lWdtxW5SZ4

And again, this port is region locked. I have the PAL version, which is why it's slow and has big borders.