Mortal Kombat 3 was largely seen as disappointing to fans of the franchise. The developers tried to add too much into the formula with this installment. The problem was that nothing was really broken in the first place. All of these excessive changes just convoluted gameplay, and not in a good way. To make matters worse the game had arguably the worst roster in the series up to this point. It just wasn’t that great, but I did enjoy it in it’s time. Apparently I wasn’t the only one sad about the changes. That’s why Midway decided to give the 16-bit consoles one last hurrah. They weren’t dedicated enough to make an all new installment and instead came up with Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. This was intended to fix the roster problems, and add in some new features from the first next generation installment. Let’s take a look!
The storyline is pretty much identical to that of Mortal Kombat 3. That’s to be expected as this is best considered an ‘ultimate’ version like the name suggests. Shao Khan lost the outerworld tournament that was the basis for the second game. He now has come up with a plan involving his deceased queen and reviving her in the Earthrealm. This would cause the two to combine allowing Shao Kahn to move between the two effortlessly. Now he has all but conquered the Earthrealm except for the pesky survivors that stand in his way. He hosts yet another tournament once again to deal with them but both good and bad guys alike are participating. It’s the same old tale, but the new characters add to the scenario a bit.
Speaking of the roster the developers improved things a great deal. The base version of MK3 featured only fourteen characters by default. Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 has all of those (minus Sheena, but honestly who cares) and several new and returning faces. Most notable among the pack are the ninjas. Classic Sub-Zero (complete with his mask and old costume), Scorpion, and Reptile are welcome faces. You also have Mileena, Kitana, and even Jade. All were sorely missed in the base version of Mortal Kombat 3 so I couldn’t be happier with their inclusion here. I still miss Johnny Cage, Raiden and Baraka but canonically their lack of presence makes sense.
There are even some new characters from Mortal Kombat Trilogy included here. This includes new palette swapped ninjas in the form of Ermac, Rain, Noob Saibot and human Smoke. To be completely honest these feel like last minute additions. Their movesets are very similar to the other ninjas, and they share some of their finishing moves with each other. It’s kind of disappointing Midway didn’t go all out with these new guys. The developers should have fleshed them out a bit more in my opinion. Even the old characters lack a lot of new special moves. There are a few sprinkled in here and there, and some of their functions have been altered. It’s nothing major but it’s something the diehard fans will notice. Personally I think most of these changes were for the better.
Gameplay at it’s core is basically unchanged from 3. It’s a 2D fighting game using digitized character models. Each character has two punches, two kicks, a block button and can also run which depletes a meter. Your goal is to deplete your foes life bar. Win two rounds and you can perform a finishing move. Fatalities (of which each characters have multiple) return, as do babalities, friendships and the more difficult animalities. The only new one is the brutality. These occur when you string together a series of basic attacks when the enemy is near death. They’re kind of boring to be honest. It’s just a bunch of punches and kicks which ends with the character exploding. It’s nice that they included something new in this regard but brutalities are pretty uninspired.
With that said I have pretty much the same complaints I did with the last title. Having a dedicated block button just doesn’t make much sense in a traditional fighting game. It is as unnatural here as it always was. In addition the run button was and still is an awful concept. Primarily this is used to close the gap with an enemy which can catch human opponents off guard. Against the AI it does little good however. What’s worse is the fact that some of the finishing moves require it in the string of button presses. This makes some of them more difficult to perform because you have to be specific distances from the opponent in order to trigger the finishing move. If Midway really wanted this to be the ‘ultimate’ version of Mortal Kombat 3 they would have gotten rid of the run function.
The combo system has been upgraded a bit. It seems Midway took some notes from Killer Instinct in this regard. Specific attacks now have shorter animations when you string together just the right follow up move. The game even highlights how many strikes you’ve made at the end of each combo. It’s a neat little feature that helps to show improvement, but it’s more novel than anything. Killer Instinct still did it better because there’s no over-the-top announcer here. This new mechanic, along with brutalities show the direction Midway was taking the franchise. For better or worse, that is.
Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 also has some of the cheapest AI I’ve ever seen. Even on the lower difficulty levels they almost always anticipate most of your physical attacks. They can also initiate combos too easily, and tend to whittle away at your life with the same two or three attacks repeatedly. You basically have to find the right distance to stay away from your opponent, and barrage them with projectiles. That, or wait until they perform an attack and cannot act until the animation is complete. Single player in Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 just isn’t very fun to play because of this. Normally I’ll vouch for multiplayer in any fighting game, but to be completely honest the multiplayer is the only way I really enjoyed this title.
The game hasn’t really seen much of an upgrade. It’s clear that the engine was ported over from the previous iteration. That’s not a problem because this is easily one of the best looking Sega Genesis games around. The digitized characters look better than any other of their kind on the platform. I’m happy to report that the returning characters have been updated from their past iterations. The major problem is that so many of the ninjas are mere palette swaps visually. They feature the same battle stances and animations as their other counterparts. Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 is also worse looking than the SNES version, but that’s par for the course with the Sega Genesis. The soundtrack however is significantly worse. It’s just not a very good game in the audio department. Worse yet is the announcer is now almost entirely gone. This was a pretty big disappointment.
