I’ll start off this review by saying that I’m just plain not a fan of the original Mortal Kombat. To make matters worse all of the home ports at the time suffered from some pretty big issues. The Sega Genesis version was ugly as sin and had a bad soundtrack. Meanwhile the Super Nintendo release fared better graphically but was heavily censored and suffered from absolutely terrible hit detection. I’m not even going to get into the Game Boy or Game Gear versions because these were beyond awful. What you don’t hear a lot about is the Sega CD port. Sure, the add-on wasn’t particularly popular anywhere in the world but given the added power boost it afforded the hardware it seems safe to assume that the developers would put it to use and create the best version of the original Mortal Kombat of its time. Unfortunately they took the lazy route by porting most of the assets over from the other home console releases. It’s not all bad though.
The story in Mortal Kombat revolves around a tournament. This is hosted by a powerful sorcerer named Shang Tsung who reigns from an alternate dimension called Outworld. The alterior motive here is that should the forces of Earth lose the fight it will open a portal allowing monsters to invade the real world. Guarding Shang Tsung is a four armed giant named Goro, and taking them both down will be no easy task. In this game you take control of one of seven playable characters. Each has their own backstory, but for those most part these are pretty standard issue scenarios. There’s nothing particularly special about them. The ninjas sub zero and scorpion are basically palette swaps, but this later became an iconic element of the game so I can’t fault it too much for this. What’s cool is the fact that this version of Mortal Kombat features an opening FMV sequence. This consists of the original commercial to signify the release of the game, and while it’s entirely live action video and feed from the arcade version it’s pretty cool to be honest.
Mortal Kombat is a traditional one-on-one two dimensional fighting game, and this version is no different from the others in this regard. You begin by selecting your character. Each has their own special moves consisting of projectiles and short range strikes that vary in power, trajectory, and basic function. These each require different combination of inputs on both the directional pad and the face buttons. You face each opponent in a linear fashion moving on to the next upon defeating the previous foe. Each encounter is won by winning two of three fights. This is achieved by draining your opponent’s life bar with a series of punches, kicks, and of course special moves. What set Mortal Kombat apart from other similar fighting games of its time is the reliance on blood and gore. Each strike landed on an opponent results in a splatter of blood falling to the floor, and at the very end of the second fight you can perform a finishing move referred to as a ‘fatality.’ These generally consist of more complicated button combinations and result in a gory death for your opponent. What’s cool is that both the effect and inputs are different for each character. It’s interesting to note that this Sega CD version of the game is the only one which isn’t censored in any way. You don’t even need a cheat code to enable the gore unlike in the Genesis release.
Unfortunately there are a few issues with the basic gameplay. To start things off the character roster is downright tiny. Even the first version of Street Fighter II which launched earlier had one more fighter to choose from. What’s more is that they just don’t have a lot of special moves, and what’s available consists entirely too much of projectiles. Almost every one of the main characters can shoot a fireball or something similar, and that’s just not particularly interesting. Furthermore the fatalities while novel for the time just don’t offer the same shock value that they once did. Compared to modern titles like Grand Theft Auto Mortal Kombat is unnecessarily over the top and more than a little silly now to be honest. It’s strange to look back on a time when the violence here was considered to be anything more than a joke. What’s annoying is the fact that this game is still limited by Sega’s three button controller. The A, B, and C buttons are used for various degrees of punches and kicks, but for some unfathomable reason they designated the Start button as block. This arrangement still suffers some major issues and is downright counter intuitive.
The most disappointing aspect of this port is its graphics. You would expect that the developers would have been able to re-create something closer to the visuals in the Super Nintendo version, but instead this compares directly to the Genesis release. Unfortunately this means that the colors are unnatural and downright bad in many of the backgrounds. Why oh why is the sky still turquoise in the temple stage? On another note there have been a few improvements in other areas. The biggest of these is in the character models themselves. Not only do all of them feature more frames of animation than before (they no longer look like they’re having seizures) but the resolution is improved and they appear less pixelated. What’s also nice is the fact that, because the engine is based on the Genesis release, the hit detection is much better than in the SNES edition. This Sega CD version has the best soundtrack of all the home releases. Thanks to the redbook audio the developers were able to port over the arcade music in all of its entirety, and it sounds really good. For some unexplained reason the announcer is still muffled though.
No version of the original Mortal Kombat is particularly good. The basic game suffers a lot of issues even when compared to other fighters released in this time. If you are going to play the original title then you would do best with it on Sega CD. The graphics don’t match those of the SNES version, but they stand somewhere in between that and the Genesis release. There aren’t many extra features, but the arcade perfect soundtrack is a pretty nice incentive in my opinion. It’s still not a very good game overall though.
