At about 12:16 I say "vastly superior" when referring to the sound effects. I meant "vastly inferior". There is nothing superior about MKII's sound on the Saturn.
This was honestly one of the most disappointing game purchases I can ever remember and I bought this game within a month of first finding it in a store. I can well remember just being appalled by how awful the music was in the game and just couldn't believe MK 2 on a newer console had such awful sounding music in it. Thing is, just remember that as bad as this was, the Japanese exclusive PSX release was far, far worse.
@@yojoeski The PS1 version does have a leg up though, you can toggle an option that has Shao Kahn saying the fighters names, an option that wasn't present in the Saturn port.
Damn dude this review just gave me such a weird feeling. I distinctly remember every issue you pointed out. I was only 9 but I knew something wasn't right with this game on my beloved Saturn. To finally hear the technical explanation brought me some seriously unexpected closure from my childhood gaming memories.
Yeah I agree, I still can't believe to this day MKII wasn't an arcade perfect (or at least VERY close to) on the Saturn. To say I was disappointed back in the day was an understatement.
@@joeyjo-joshabadu9636The 32x version was literally just the Genesis version with a few more colors and sounds. Same tiny characters, animations and music. I was disappointed.
@@drunkensailor112 Overrated is the wrong word. Maybe exaggerated, but even then, I'd very much disagree with you. There isn't even a loading screen. It's just a black background with white text that says, "Loading... Prepare To Fight". No graphic, no loading bar, nothing. Just two lines over a completely blank background that makes you want to turn it off, put in the Genesis cartridge and get the exact same experience, just with different sounds. Yes, that was a flaw the PlayStation had, but more often than not, there was at least something on the screen to let you know the game didn't crash. And you also didn't have a fast loading version of said-game that'd give you the same experience more or less... unless you owned a Nintendo 64, and it had a port of the PlayStation game.
When I first fired up this game back in the day, selected my character and DIDN'T hear the name spoken....I was shocked, disappointed and pissed all at the same time.
I got the Super Ninteno Verison of MK2 on launch day and absolutely loved. I never really bothered looking into the Saturn version (never owned one), but I always figured that it would have been the gold standard of MK2 ports. Guess I was wrong.
My brothers and I had MKII and WWF Wrestlemania: The Arcade Game for the SNES, and I became a bit more familiarized with the Mega Drive versions for a few years now and I have to say that while both games are great on the SNES and they are nostalgic, I noticed a few things. Mega Drive's MKII has tighter controls and the gameplay is a bit faster overall, it's darker colors and muted pallet actually favors the the MK universe, this is a personal preference, but I surely appreciate the SNES almost arcade visual quality as well. WWF: Arcade Game for the SNES doesn't have 2x2 or 1x3, as its port only manages to put 3 characters on screen and while we didn't care at the time, when comparing to the Genesis, which has both Yokozuna and Bigelow (both missing in the SNES version), it runs at 60FPS when 1x1 and manages to keep a decent overall speed when there are 3 or 4 fighting simultaneously, while it surely will get slowdowns with that many characters, but nothing as drastic as the SNES and curiously enough, the Mega Drive version has more voices, Doink says "Put it there, pal!", and more. The 32X port of WWF: Arcade is worse than any other, while it looks the best with more colors and bigger sprites, it runs at 30FPS all the way, I think this is another case where developers couldn't use both SH-2, like many Saturn games, which suffers from subpar performance due to lack of development skills. It's noticeable that when the WWF Genesis version has 4 players fighting in the arena, there are less colors for the sprites, it's a small compromise to get all characters in the arena, specially against the SNES version that doesn't feature this and has only 6 characters and overall this is the less appealing port of the game compared to the others visually, but it's more fun to play than either the SNES and 32X. I'm so used to the SNES layout that I configure the controller to play just like that version, this is the best Wrestling game I've played, probably because it doesn't try to simulate the sport, it's a fighting game with better nuances than any MK classic. MKII for the SNES is great, but the Mega Drive, like I said plays tighter and a bit faster, its voices sound a bit harsher, but are quite good, specially when compared to SFII and Thunder Force games, for instance. MK games on CD based systems play worse than the 16-bit counterparts, even if the ports were arcade perfect, loadings bring it down enough that coming back to the cartridge systems make sense. MKII is notable for being one of those games that no matter the difficulty you select, it will default to the very hard in the third match, this is true for the arcade, SNES and a few other ports, I think the Mega Drive behaves a bit differently, but it still scales the difficulty up, MK difficulty settings are almost useless in many versions.
I owned Umk3 on the saturn back in the 90s and it was a superb release, very close to the arcade version.... well except for one problem, the long load times between each combats and it evens loads when you perform a fatality which is a bit annoying.
Visually the game looks the part and the sound quality is good despite missing a bunch of sound effects and the music being all mixed up. My biggest issue with the game is the stuff you were able to do in pretty much every port you could not do in the Saturn or ps1 version. Kitanas fan lift pushes the character way too back so you can’t really do her air fan throw with her flying punch move properly. Raiden for whatever reason can’t do his jump kick into the torpedo and there’s just numerous gameplay mechanics that were altered and changed for no reason at all. Saturn port is probably my least favorite home console port unless you count the master system
I'm willing to bet the reduced SFX quality is due to the same issue Shang Tsung has - higher quality samples = larger files, larger files = more data access on an already-strained medium. It still manifests as microstutters like SLX notes, but if they had used arcade-quality samples it'd be a Shang Tsung-esque pause anytime a new SFX loaded in from disc.
That sounds likely, but my guess is that Shang Tsung actually contributed to the issue as well as being an example of how bad loading could have been. They couldn't stream CD audio without annoying pauses because mid-match loading was necessary for Shang Tsung's morphs, so they used MIDI arrangements of the music. Using MIDI arrangements meant keeping a MIDI soundset in audio RAM, which in turn limited the amount of audio RAM available for sound effects.
I like to go back to this one every now and again. It’s impressive in some ways, but I like it on the 32X a lot more. I really need to check out the rom hacked version that you made a video on. I just need a Mega SD.
I personally do prefer the original mk2 32x as the newer ones have had a few tweaks that make performing moves easier and hence not like mk2. However they are worth a look to see if you like the changes in the rom hacks. The 1.0 version has just minor changes but the 1.5 version of the hack the changes are more extensive. The 32x version of the game is actually my favourite version of the game even above the Arcade version. As I do prefer the soundtrack.
Probe's first mistake was porting this from the PC version instead of the actual arcade version. It looks good but has many issues. We never truly got an arcade perfect MK2 on console. 😢
@@sloppynyuszi It's emulation on that Midway compilation, but Midway had some piss poor bug checkers as certain songs don't loop properly, and in the end credits, once the music runs through one loop, it stops, leaving the rest of the credits silent. MK3 also had that same issue on that compilation, MK1 on the stand alone bonus disc for MK Deception had the exact same issue. UMK3 on the bonus disc for MK Armageddon had frame rates that would dip low, and at times, your character would disappear off screen, to pop back up moments later when the framerate would catch back up.
I remember being so excited to see this on the shelf, half an hour after getting it home I was absolutely gutted. Seriously made me doubt my Saturn purchase, in England it was a grim time to be a Saturn owner.
I love this about your reviews - they aren’t all fluffy unicorn perfect stories. On the contrary you pick them apart but using both retrospective and contemporary knowledge. Great again - thank you
I literally finished MK2 today on the Sega Saturn and I have a lot to say about it. in my opinion, the midi music in this version is not even bad. the strangest soundtracks are found on the fighter selection screen and on the battle plane. All the rest of the music is not shameful and, in my opinion, is good. The AI in this game is quite easy. in the arcade everything was much more difficult. In general, enemies in MK2 on Sega Saturn are divided into two types: there are enemies who catch your projectiles (they are the easiest) and those who do not catch them (they are more difficult). but know that Shao Kahn and Kintaro can still kick your ass. In general, you will develop tactics yourself so as not to reveal all your cards to me) the Saturn version looks great. By the way, when Shang Tsung turns into someone, the game automatically degrades the texture resolution of the fighters! from 32bit to 16! Well, in general, this is so that performance does not deteriorate. There are much fewer loading screens than in the ps1 version, which makes the Saturn version the winner in the war between Saturn and psx. The plot is told well and there are no questions about it. Well, that's all. this was my opinion about MK2 on Sega Saturn. By the way, I'm Russian, so I apologize in advance for mistakes)😅
I remember feeling so defeated and disappointed when I played this game. I was a huge mk2 fan and had high hopes this would be my dream port, no such luck. How could they omit the fatality voice effect, it was like a staple of the game.
I wanted this as a kid. As a kid, I don't think some of these issues would have bothered me. I didn't play the arcade game, so the sound differences I wouldn't have been aware of.
I think at this point, like you said 2 and half years after the arcade release, the market for MKII on the 32bit systems was a very small. The desire had faded by then.
OMG, I don't even remember this game hahahaha 😂 It either didn't get much attention here in my country or I completely erased it from memory. But I remember how CD consoles struggled with Shang Tsung's morphing. The lack of loading was N64's card in the sleeve for MK Trilogy years later. As the brutal AI, it brings me back memories on many games, especially SNK games like Art of Fighting and World Heroes. They played SO BADLY, but we were young and had time to learn the game's patterns and adust accordingly. I've played them quite a lot in the early 90s. Then I remember replaying them on emulators in the late 90s and thinking "How DAFUQ did I manage to play and even BEAT this thing??? It's so horrible!" hahahaha Good times.
The PC version had ALL the Arcade voices. Stuff like "Liu Kang wins", for example. They managed to remove these from the Saturn port. It's absolutely bizarre.
PCs had more RAM and loaded off a hard drive. What they should have done for the Saturn version is had the round announcements stored as CD audio. Seek time might have led to a bit of a pause in announcing them, but it wouldn't have taken up any more audio RAM or required more loading. A few games took this approach.
I played the shit out of the first three Mortal Kombat games, both on Genesis & in the arcades when I was a kid (my old man was friends with a few big arcade owners, being a collector of hundreds of pinball machines and the occasional arcade video game. Business meeting while the arcade's closed and free play unlocked on whatever I want? Yes please.). I don't have this Saturn version but man, I tried playing the Genesis versions last summer. Oh boy was I in for a surprise, that AI whooped my ass unapologetically. I don't think I even got to the second stage on any of them. At least they worked... and for what it's worth I'm more of a Capcom & SNK kinda guy. Anyway I told myself after that experience that I'm probably never playing these old MK games again.
Actually I wasn't too bothered about MK2 when I bought the Saturn because I had already played and replayed MK2 a tonne by this point and I was ready to play something new. However as a retro gamer I did think to go back and play MK2 on the Saturn and generally I was suprised at the lack of quality considering what the Saturn was capable of. It's not even in the same league as the Capcom or SNK fighters on the Saturn
Nope not even close to the quality that Capcom put out or the neo geo ports. People always want to use the ram cart excuse but look how excellent Capcom ports like X-men children of atom, darkstalkers 2, street fighter alpha 1 and 2 came out without the ram expansion. Same can be said for the neo geo ports, World heroes perfect, Fighters history dynamite and galaxy fight. Of course the ram expansion games will come out to be much better games for Capcom and neo geo but the people in charge of those MK ports on Saturn definitely didn’t do the greatest job of porting MK2 and even UMK3 which literally just copied the same UI as MK3 for ps1.
Imagine the excitement when I bought this game only to be frustrated with the hiccups it came with. If only they had a ram cart, or piggybacked off of one, this would have been perfect port. This video brought back memories. Excellent review. Exactly how I was feeling.😎😎✌️✌️✌️
I have UMK3 on my Saturn I bought it b4 my mom got me the console. I begged her to rent a Saturn out from a VideoCentral and it had the strange D pad American controllers with it. I got mine on X Mas with the 3 pack in games Virtua Fighter2 Virtua Cop and Dayyyyyytoooonnnnaaaaa... Surprised I never wanted MKII for it because I really had more love for it. I think getting the Genesis MK II really left a scar on me or something. It had really disappointed me.. Even though I appreciate that the Graphics were higher resolution on Genesis than the blocky SNES fighters.. It was just that outside of that it didn't have the arcade feel whatsoever. Sound FX really irked me on it. The SNES at least captured the Arcade s whole feel and presentation.. Even if it was kinda crammed in there.. MK 3 on Genesis was really impressive as the trilogy on 16 bit consoles were to me. Yeah Probe really dropped all kinds of balls when porting this damn game. SCULPTURED were the best at it..
As a kid (well just out of school) that was a huge MKII fan, i wasnt very good at the game. I still wanted an arcade-perfect game and felt like i got it for the most part with this release. But when i really wanted to play MK @home and with a reliable port, i would pop the SNES cart in... I still have both copies, but today i just play my Arcade1Up. Great video as always, SLX. I always have the urge to play Sega Saturn when i watch your videos.
I remember getting this for a whole $20 in 1996 at a department store. This was leaps and bounds ahead of the Genesis version at the time, and I really enjoyed it as a kid! I noticed the loading times and off-sounding SFX and music cues immediately, lol. Still packed with memories from this one!
Oh ya? MK2 created for a 32 bit system from 1994 turned out to be vastly greater than MK2 created on a 16 bit system from 1988? Shocked. Im shocked i tell you.
MK's AI used input reading to cheap shot the players attack... every-time you pushed a button, the game would let the CPU character respond first, then it would let the players inputs register which result in the CPU character beating the player every time.
Hel yeah! It overrides your input, you could be in the middle of an uppercut and boom!~your shit is cancelled by the cpu throwing you or something. Mk3 is really bad with this too.
@PCarDriver87 It's pretty fascinating, they did some breakdown videos on this in other videos. If you complained back in the day people thought you were a sore loser but it really was cheating you
Nice vid! Curious, do you have any plans to make one for the Saturn port of UMK3? I was familiar with the 16-bit versions back in the day, but always wondered how the Saturn port fared since it was the exclusive 32-bit version 😎
I had completely forgotten that I pre-ordered this from EBGames only to return in a couple days later, one of the few games I've ever returned in 30+ years.
both Saturn and PS1 could have done arcade perfect ports of MK1 and MK2, it was very disappointing that there was no MK1 version and that MK2 had unexplicable flaws. I couldn't believe the SNES had some of the voices the PS1 version was missing. The music at least on PS1 is MIDI or FM generated, by the console's chip, it's not CD audio tracks like in MK3, so it's not CD quality. The loading times make it unplayable. The best home ports avaiable in the 90s were SNES and PC. The PC port has a couple of flaws, like Scorpion's walking position is wrong, it's the asme as Sub Zero instead of walking with his arm up like he should (it's a small detail but it drives me nuts!), but MK2 PC has all the sounds and voices, it looks decent, the gameplay is ok, and it's in general a more polished and consistent port. The SNES port is awesome considering the limitations of the hardware, but it's obviously a scaled down representation, not arcade perfect.
Funnily enough, I just watched your reviews of Sega Rally (Saturn) and Sega Rally 2 (Dreamcast), two arcade ports that fall short of the visuals of the original machine, but still manage to be fun games in their own right, and can be respected for their technical achievement on their respective systems. In contrast, this port is the opposite; not pushing the hardware, full of bugs, but visually close. Of course, MKII, as you say, was already kind of old by then, so there's really no excuse, added to that, the Sega Rally series has a much more influential legacy, IMO, in both arcade and home systems.
This might be the first Saturn game I purchased. Brand new, years before I bought a Saturn. I'm a big MK fan. 50+ physical copies. MK Gold was also my first dreamcast game, years before I purchased a dreamcast.
7:59 sounds like he is Genuinly on FIRE! and 8:13 sounds like a Mild inconvenience like he just hit his Toe on a sofa LOL the Fire doesn't even hit him 🤣🤣
Nice.👍 When I was small, it was the biggest dream for gamers, to get an arcade perfect port of MK2 for consoles back then. If only it had materialised perfectly.😧
While Saturn had the hardware to run arcade perfect version of MK2, it had not enough RAM to have all the data for immediate use. PC port was the best home version of MK2 and it was designed for machines with 4 MB of RAM (while it could use more to reduce loading times) so it was a good starting point for Saturn port. However CD-ROM games on PC installed crucial data on HDD for fast access. This is why stutter is barely noticeable with 4 MB of RAM and there're no issues at all with 8 MB. While 4MB of RAM was usually enough for PS1 and its early 3D. Saturn should have at least 6 MB to show its 2D capabilities. When Saturn and PS1 started their life in Europe and USA, PC games already required 8 MB of RAM and soon 16 and 32 become a minimum.
I remembering my folks purchasing a Saturn for me as a kid. It was expensive as hell, so I had a choice between two games; MKII and Solar Eclipse. I'm glad I got Solar Eclipse.
The most frustrating thing about the Playstation and Sega Saturn Ports of Mortal Kombat 2 and 3 was how they butchered the sound design almost entirely. Even Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 on Sega Saturn was missing the stinger transitions where the music would change up dramatically during a fatality and the outro when the round was over was replaced by the audio track just cutting to akward silence. This persisted in Mortal Kombat Trilogy for Saturn, PC, and PS1. Not only did we never get any arcade perfect ports of any of the original 3 games/UMK3/Trilogy on any of the better consoles, they all had weird issues that got in the way of enjoying the game. The N64 version of trilogy was the most polished from a gameplay perspective, had proper audio stingers and atage outros but had horrible midi music and muffled audio, Shao Kahn only had 1 laugh, and even though the visuals looked crisp and stages were seemingly higher resolution, the fighters were missing frames of animation. I only had a PS1 and N64 growing up, but I qas very envious of anyone who had a Saturn because I was well aware of its 2D capabilities, so when I walked into KB Toy Store and saw Mortal Kombat II and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Saturn versions sitting on the shelf, I thought to myself "Oh man I bet tbe Saturn Version is amazing". Welp... at least I didnt get the short end of the stick for once, unlike most of the PS1 ports of Capcom Fighters I had to suffer through (Street Fighter Alpha 1, 2 Gold, 3, and JoJo's bizarre adventure were the only decent PS1 Ports).
The 32 bit consoles had too little RAM. The N64 cart they used had too little ROM. The Saturn port needed to use the RAM cart. The N64 needed a larger ROM. The Arcade ROM was 27 MB so a 32MB cart like the one used for Zelda would fit it without any cuts. Instead they only used 12MB of ROM so a lot of data got compressed or cut. I guess 32MB would be too expensive in 1997, for an early N64 title. And 1998 to late to release a 2D MK game. Point is though, all of the 5th gen consoles had the capabilities for a perfect port. But all of them also had bottlenecks with data size access.
Pc should've been much better than the saturn and ps1 port of mk3, umk and mkt. Had n64 used Decompression technique to store every single missing content, cd media, optical magnetic disk or used zipdrive, superdisk and ect floppy like disk. The n64 would've been the best home of mkt and most likely pc port would be like the n64 port.
I never could get into MK aside from the 1st one… because of the genesis blood code (down, up, left, left, A, right, down) 😂 Street fighter 2 had me for years.
This is so tragic. Saturn had the potential to be the bet port ever. But Ultimate MK3 was pretty awesome on Saturn. I remember playing the shit out of that one.
I still play the Saturn version of MK2 from time to time, even though I mostly gravitate to the 32X and SNES versions, in terms of original home ports of the game. It’s just a damn shame that it was the best LOOKING console port of the game, but was plagued with so many bugs. At least the Saturn port of UMK3 was WAY better and much closer to it’s arcade counterpart.
I still have this turd in my collection, just because. I remember when it released, I was so excited to think I was getting something better than the SNES version. I was so pissed. Here the PSX was getting a great version of MK3, but the Saturn couldn't get a great version of MKII? What a joke. That's when I really stopped by anything that Acclaim published until I either played it first or read multiple reviews. Good and honest review.
2 MB RAM was simply not enough for games like this, especially with CD systems that needed to load everything in it (unlike ROMs where you can instantly load any data you need in real time). Maybe if the devs made use of the RAM expansion carts this would be a perfect port.
Right, Francois! Just like how Street Fighter II Turbo on the Super Nintendo isn't arcade perfect by any stretch. However, the music from the SNES port had its own nostalgic charm.
@@FlandersB Yeah MK on SNES was terrible. Graphically better than the Genesis version but woof, the lack of blood and fatalities made the Sega version a flawless victory in comparison.
Would've been nice to see ANY of the other characters used instead of just Scorpion the whole review. Was curious to see how the Saturn handled all the other characters
But I'm fighting all the other characters. They are all here. Some multiple times. I even lost purposely a number of times so you could see a few other fatalities(which got the video flagged as 18+ only). I used Scorpion as he is my primary and I play best with him.
I was never a Mortal Kombat fan, though I did go see the first movie in the theatre. Mostly because one of my favourite bands, KMFDM, was in the soundtrack. The game always felt like it was a homebrew game or something, with the cheesy characters and weird animations. I guess that was the charm of it for a lot of people. I totally get the appeal, but it just wasn't my cup of tea. Like Sega Lord X, I looked at Mortal Kombat as an outlier when compared to the Capcom fighters. As for Akklaim, man. They were so often the publisher that released games not meeting their full potential. Yet, I had a few Akklaim titles in my NES collection.
I have MK II on PS1, Sega Saturn, Sega CD, PS2 ( from the midway arcade treasures collection). also had it on Windows DOS The SNES/Genesis version of MK II ( I owned these as well in the past), but gave these two copies away. Oh and I also own the Arcade1up MK II arcade machine ( got it for $40 brand new) back in 2019 before the pandemic hit!
@@chiefthunderhorse4430 thanks for clarifying. Let's just say I pretty much had all the MK II games on every single system, it was hard for me to keep up!
That’s the only positive it has that it looks great, there’s too many sound effects missing, the in game loading is annoying and there’s gameplay mechanics that’s were altered and changed for no reason that you were able to do in even the genesis and snes ports
When I picked MK2 up on Saturn, I was so pissed that I went back to the 32X version. Ultimate MK3 on Saturn got me away from MK3 on PS1 for a few months, but then MK Trilogy arrived on PS1 and N64, and I shifted to those versions.
@@brendanroberts1310 That's kind of what I'm saying, the 3DO didn't have the games to make it viable I'm not saying it would have saved the console but it would have moved a few more units. Mortal Kombats popularity was so big at the time and for what was supposed to be the adults game console it would have been beautiful. But we'll never know now.
I always wondered why the PS1 Japanese-only version felt so off. Had no idea it was basically a carbon copy of the Saturn version(or maybe the other way around), though the PS1 has more annoying loading. You do have the choice to turn on player names in the options menu of the PS1 version, which leads to even MORE loading.
When I first put it on it looked so good I was like so excited when it when I played it and then there was like the first round there was no Shang tsung wins and I was like damn this sucks
Actually I was dissapointed to hear that music and sound effects were f**ked up) Common!!! This is the console which is possible to play the music CDs! Why they couldn't put the arcade quality sound in the game? (( But anyway I will try to play this version, it is interesting to find a key for this hardly resisting AI) Thanks a lot for the review)
When I bought my second hand Saturn this game was still in the drive (don't know if the guy who sold me the console knew), and I thought it was a nice surprise, since I played the SNES version a lot, and could even reach to Kintaro in the arcade version. But what started as a nice surprise became a big disappointment. It looks better than the SNES version, but that's about it. Funny thing is, it's still sitting in my Saturn, since it's my only game with the box missing.
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At about 12:16 I say "vastly superior" when referring to the sound effects. I meant "vastly inferior". There is nothing superior about MKII's sound on the Saturn.
Got that right.
You’re good
This was honestly one of the most disappointing game purchases I can ever remember and I bought this game within a month of first finding it in a store. I can well remember just being appalled by how awful the music was in the game and just couldn't believe MK 2 on a newer console had such awful sounding music in it. Thing is, just remember that as bad as this was, the Japanese exclusive PSX release was far, far worse.
@@yojoeski The PS1 version does have a leg up though, you can toggle an option that has Shao Kahn saying the fighters names, an option that wasn't present in the Saturn port.
For those who have ears to hear.
The sounds of MK 2 on arcade is what makes this the greatest of all time.
Damn dude this review just gave me such a weird feeling. I distinctly remember every issue you pointed out. I was only 9 but I knew something wasn't right with this game on my beloved Saturn. To finally hear the technical explanation brought me some seriously unexpected closure from my childhood gaming memories.
There really was no excuse for there not to be an arcade perfect port of the game by the time this port came out.
Yeah I agree, I still can't believe to this day MKII wasn't an arcade perfect (or at least VERY close to) on the Saturn. To say I was disappointed back in the day was an understatement.
Yea
@@gestekoe i dunno the 32X version was pretty close. but its just my opinion
@@mattalan661832x version is great in its own right, but it was basically the deluxe edition of the Genesis port.
@@joeyjo-joshabadu9636The 32x version was literally just the Genesis version with a few more colors and sounds. Same tiny characters, animations and music. I was disappointed.
The stages on MK2 were the best in the series imo. Especially the haunted forrest stage and the armory 🔥
Mk2 is the best Game in the whole series
I really hope we see our same favorite stages re-made in the upcoming MK1!
@@Segata-SanshiroNo way. Trilogy, MK Gold was better. Deadly Alliance, Deception, and Armageddon was better. MK 9, 11 and 1 is better.
@@hitek9too255you are living too much in the present. MK3 and MK9 are the only ones that are better than MK2.
After Mortal Kombat on Sega CD and now this, it's becoming clearer and clearer why Midway developed MK3 for the PlayStation themselves.
Mortal kombat on sega cd was a really good version. And the best version on consoles for decades
@@drunkensailor112 Those loading times crippled it massively. It was the Genesis port with an uneven arcade soundtrack.
@@HisVirusness the loading times are vastly overrated. Other than the shang tsjung battle it is fine. Nothing slower than ps1, or saturn loading times
@@drunkensailor112 Overrated is the wrong word. Maybe exaggerated, but even then, I'd very much disagree with you.
There isn't even a loading screen. It's just a black background with white text that says, "Loading... Prepare To Fight". No graphic, no loading bar, nothing. Just two lines over a completely blank background that makes you want to turn it off, put in the Genesis cartridge and get the exact same experience, just with different sounds.
Yes, that was a flaw the PlayStation had, but more often than not, there was at least something on the screen to let you know the game didn't crash. And you also didn't have a fast loading version of said-game that'd give you the same experience more or less... unless you owned a Nintendo 64, and it had a port of the PlayStation game.
When I first fired up this game back in the day, selected my character and DIDN'T hear the name spoken....I was shocked, disappointed and pissed all at the same time.
I got the Super Ninteno Verison of MK2 on launch day and absolutely loved. I never really bothered looking into the Saturn version (never owned one), but I always figured that it would have been the gold standard of MK2 ports. Guess I was wrong.
My brothers and I had MKII and WWF Wrestlemania: The Arcade Game for the SNES, and I became a bit more familiarized with the Mega Drive versions for a few years now and I have to say that while both games are great on the SNES and they are nostalgic, I noticed a few things.
Mega Drive's MKII has tighter controls and the gameplay is a bit faster overall, it's darker colors and muted pallet actually favors the the MK universe, this is a personal preference, but I surely appreciate the SNES almost arcade visual quality as well.
WWF: Arcade Game for the SNES doesn't have 2x2 or 1x3, as its port only manages to put 3 characters on screen and while we didn't care at the time, when comparing to the Genesis, which has both Yokozuna and Bigelow (both missing in the SNES version), it runs at 60FPS when 1x1 and manages to keep a decent overall speed when there are 3 or 4 fighting simultaneously, while it surely will get slowdowns with that many characters, but nothing as drastic as the SNES and curiously enough, the Mega Drive version has more voices, Doink says "Put it there, pal!", and more. The 32X port of WWF: Arcade is worse than any other, while it looks the best with more colors and bigger sprites, it runs at 30FPS all the way, I think this is another case where developers couldn't use both SH-2, like many Saturn games, which suffers from subpar performance due to lack of development skills.
It's noticeable that when the WWF Genesis version has 4 players fighting in the arena, there are less colors for the sprites, it's a small compromise to get all characters in the arena, specially against the SNES version that doesn't feature this and has only 6 characters and overall this is the less appealing port of the game compared to the others visually, but it's more fun to play than either the SNES and 32X. I'm so used to the SNES layout that I configure the controller to play just like that version, this is the best Wrestling game I've played, probably because it doesn't try to simulate the sport, it's a fighting game with better nuances than any MK classic.
MKII for the SNES is great, but the Mega Drive, like I said plays tighter and a bit faster, its voices sound a bit harsher, but are quite good, specially when compared to SFII and Thunder Force games, for instance.
MK games on CD based systems play worse than the 16-bit counterparts, even if the ports were arcade perfect, loadings bring it down enough that coming back to the cartridge systems make sense.
MKII is notable for being one of those games that no matter the difficulty you select, it will default to the very hard in the third match, this is true for the arcade, SNES and a few other ports, I think the Mega Drive behaves a bit differently, but it still scales the difficulty up, MK difficulty settings are almost useless in many versions.
They should have used the RAM cart for this one. If only for Shang Tsungs morphing.
Love your Sega content forever ♾️
Thank you.
@@SegaLordX I'm an Sega baby from the 80s.
Yes. There is plenty of other consoles we need a sega channel like this one to keep bringing info for us segaguys.
I hope Sega comes back some day. To the console realm
I want to be buried with it
I owned Umk3 on the saturn back in the 90s and it was a superb release, very close to the arcade version.... well except for one problem, the long load times between each combats and it evens loads when you perform a fatality which is a bit annoying.
Visually the game looks the part and the sound quality is good despite missing a bunch of sound effects and the music being all mixed up. My biggest issue with the game is the stuff you were able to do in pretty much every port you could not do in the Saturn or ps1 version. Kitanas fan lift pushes the character way too back so you can’t really do her air fan throw with her flying punch move properly. Raiden for whatever reason can’t do his jump kick into the torpedo and there’s just numerous gameplay mechanics that were altered and changed for no reason at all. Saturn port is probably my least favorite home console port unless you count the master system
Strange, I just ordered Mortal Kombat 2 for the Saturn, and then you release a video on it! Thanks for yet another amazing video!
Now I'm gonna go back and watch the 32x review you done 👍🏾
I'm willing to bet the reduced SFX quality is due to the same issue Shang Tsung has - higher quality samples = larger files, larger files = more data access on an already-strained medium. It still manifests as microstutters like SLX notes, but if they had used arcade-quality samples it'd be a Shang Tsung-esque pause anytime a new SFX loaded in from disc.
That sounds likely, but my guess is that Shang Tsung actually contributed to the issue as well as being an example of how bad loading could have been. They couldn't stream CD audio without annoying pauses because mid-match loading was necessary for Shang Tsung's morphs, so they used MIDI arrangements of the music. Using MIDI arrangements meant keeping a MIDI soundset in audio RAM, which in turn limited the amount of audio RAM available for sound effects.
I like to go back to this one every now and again. It’s impressive in some ways, but I like it on the 32X a lot more. I really need to check out the rom hacked version that you made a video on. I just need a Mega SD.
I personally do prefer the original mk2 32x as the newer ones have had a few tweaks that make performing moves easier and hence not like mk2.
However they are worth a look to see if you like the changes in the rom hacks.
The 1.0 version has just minor changes but the 1.5 version of the hack the changes are more extensive.
The 32x version of the game is actually my favourite version of the game even above the Arcade version. As I do prefer the soundtrack.
Probe's first mistake was porting this from the PC version instead of the actual arcade version. It looks good but has many issues. We never truly got an arcade perfect MK2 on console. 😢
Wasn’t the Midway collection on PS2 basically just emulation of the Arcade ROM?
@@sloppynyuszi It's emulation on that Midway compilation, but Midway had some piss poor bug checkers as certain songs don't loop properly, and in the end credits, once the music runs through one loop, it stops, leaving the rest of the credits silent. MK3 also had that same issue on that compilation, MK1 on the stand alone bonus disc for MK Deception had the exact same issue. UMK3 on the bonus disc for MK Armageddon had frame rates that would dip low, and at times, your character would disappear off screen, to pop back up moments later when the framerate would catch back up.
True
The PS3 port was arcade perfect but few know it exists.
Probe’s first mistake was existing and even trying to port video games .
They are the shit stain in 16-but gaming history
I remember being so excited to see this on the shelf, half an hour after getting it home I was absolutely gutted. Seriously made me doubt my Saturn purchase, in England it was a grim time to be a Saturn owner.
I love this about your reviews - they aren’t all fluffy unicorn perfect stories. On the contrary you pick them apart but using both retrospective and contemporary knowledge. Great again - thank you
Purple meteor > purple tentacle
I literally finished MK2 today on the Sega Saturn and I have a lot to say about it. in my opinion, the midi music in this version is not even bad. the strangest soundtracks are found on the fighter selection screen and on the battle plane. All the rest of the music is not shameful and, in my opinion, is good. The AI in this game is quite easy. in the arcade everything was much more difficult. In general, enemies in MK2 on Sega Saturn are divided into two types: there are enemies who catch your projectiles (they are the easiest) and those who do not catch them (they are more difficult). but know that Shao Kahn and Kintaro can still kick your ass. In general, you will develop tactics yourself so as not to reveal all your cards to me) the Saturn version looks great. By the way, when Shang Tsung turns into someone, the game automatically degrades the texture resolution of the fighters! from 32bit to 16! Well, in general, this is so that performance does not deteriorate. There are much fewer loading screens than in the ps1 version, which makes the Saturn version the winner in the war between Saturn and psx. The plot is told well and there are no questions about it. Well, that's all. this was my opinion about MK2 on Sega Saturn. By the way, I'm Russian, so I apologize in advance for mistakes)😅
I remember feeling so defeated and disappointed when I played this game. I was a huge mk2 fan and had high hopes this would be my dream port, no such luck. How could they omit the fatality voice effect, it was like a staple of the game.
I wanted this as a kid. As a kid, I don't think some of these issues would have bothered me. I didn't play the arcade game, so the sound differences I wouldn't have been aware of.
I think at this point, like you said 2 and half years after the arcade release, the market for MKII on the 32bit systems was a very small. The desire had faded by then.
@11:05 even Santa Clause getting in on arcade conversions?😂
OMG, I don't even remember this game hahahaha 😂
It either didn't get much attention here in my country or I completely erased it from memory.
But I remember how CD consoles struggled with Shang Tsung's morphing. The lack of loading was N64's card in the sleeve for MK Trilogy years later.
As the brutal AI, it brings me back memories on many games, especially SNK games like Art of Fighting and World Heroes.
They played SO BADLY, but we were young and had time to learn the game's patterns and adust accordingly.
I've played them quite a lot in the early 90s.
Then I remember replaying them on emulators in the late 90s and thinking "How DAFUQ did I manage to play and even BEAT this thing??? It's so horrible!" hahahaha
Good times.
The PC version had ALL the Arcade voices. Stuff like "Liu Kang wins", for example. They managed to remove these from the Saturn port. It's absolutely bizarre.
PCs had more RAM and loaded off a hard drive. What they should have done for the Saturn version is had the round announcements stored as CD audio. Seek time might have led to a bit of a pause in announcing them, but it wouldn't have taken up any more audio RAM or required more loading. A few games took this approach.
I remember getting this at a local store for $20 brand new in 1997.
I played the shit out of the first three Mortal Kombat games, both on Genesis & in the arcades when I was a kid (my old man was friends with a few big arcade owners, being a collector of hundreds of pinball machines and the occasional arcade video game. Business meeting while the arcade's closed and free play unlocked on whatever I want? Yes please.). I don't have this Saturn version but man, I tried playing the Genesis versions last summer. Oh boy was I in for a surprise, that AI whooped my ass unapologetically. I don't think I even got to the second stage on any of them. At least they worked... and for what it's worth I'm more of a Capcom & SNK kinda guy. Anyway I told myself after that experience that I'm probably never playing these old MK games again.
Glad to have recently discovered another quality retro-based channel. Keep up the good work, sir.
Actually I wasn't too bothered about MK2 when I bought the Saturn because I had already played and replayed MK2 a tonne by this point and I was ready to play something new.
However as a retro gamer I did think to go back and play MK2 on the Saturn and generally I was suprised at the lack of quality considering what the Saturn was capable of.
It's not even in the same league as the Capcom or SNK fighters on the Saturn
Nope not even close to the quality that Capcom put out or the neo geo ports. People always want to use the ram cart excuse but look how excellent Capcom ports like X-men children of atom, darkstalkers 2, street fighter alpha 1 and 2 came out without the ram expansion. Same can be said for the neo geo ports, World heroes perfect, Fighters history dynamite and galaxy fight. Of course the ram expansion games will come out to be much better games for Capcom and neo geo but the people in charge of those MK ports on Saturn definitely didn’t do the greatest job of porting MK2 and even UMK3 which literally just copied the same UI as MK3 for ps1.
shoutout to Darryl Tsung06 on his recent video on how to beat the AI in this game!
11:05 “…and Santa Claus…”
Did I miss something? Is St. Nick developing fighters rather than just buying em for kids?
Imagine the excitement when I bought this game only to be frustrated with the hiccups it came with. If only they had a ram cart, or piggybacked off of one, this would have been perfect port. This video brought back memories. Excellent review. Exactly how I was feeling.😎😎✌️✌️✌️
I have UMK3 on my Saturn I bought it b4 my mom got me the console. I begged her to rent a Saturn out from a VideoCentral and it had the strange D pad American controllers with it. I got mine on X Mas with the 3 pack in games Virtua Fighter2 Virtua Cop and Dayyyyyytoooonnnnaaaaa... Surprised I never wanted MKII for it because I really had more love for it. I think getting the Genesis MK II really left a scar on me or something. It had really disappointed me.. Even though I appreciate that the Graphics were higher resolution on Genesis than the blocky SNES fighters.. It was just that outside of that it didn't have the arcade feel whatsoever. Sound FX really irked me on it. The SNES at least captured the Arcade s whole feel and presentation.. Even if it was kinda crammed in there.. MK 3 on Genesis was really impressive as the trilogy on 16 bit consoles were to me. Yeah Probe really dropped all kinds of balls when porting this damn game. SCULPTURED were the best at it..
As a kid (well just out of school) that was a huge MKII fan, i wasnt very good at the game. I still wanted an arcade-perfect game and felt like i got it for the most part with this release. But when i really wanted to play MK @home and with a reliable port, i would pop the SNES cart in... I still have both copies, but today i just play my Arcade1Up.
Great video as always, SLX. I always have the urge to play Sega Saturn when i watch your videos.
I remember getting this for a whole $20 in 1996 at a department store. This was leaps and bounds ahead of the Genesis version at the time, and I really enjoyed it as a kid! I noticed the loading times and off-sounding SFX and music cues immediately, lol. Still packed with memories from this one!
Oh ya?
MK2 created for a 32 bit system from 1994 turned out to be vastly greater than MK2 created on a 16 bit system from 1988?
Shocked.
Im shocked i tell you.
I never got a chance to try MK2 on the Saturn (I had it on the Genesis) so it was really intriguing watching this video! MK2 was my personal fave
My gem is mk trilogy on saturn. Love that game
its not a bad game but its not perfect
MK's AI used input reading to cheap shot the players attack... every-time you pushed a button, the game would let the CPU character respond first, then it would let the players inputs register which result in the CPU character beating the player every time.
Hel yeah! It overrides your input, you could be in the middle of an uppercut and boom!~your shit is cancelled by the cpu throwing you or something. Mk3 is really bad with this too.
I always wondered if that's how it really worked! Thanks for the education!
@PCarDriver87 It's pretty fascinating, they did some breakdown videos on this in other videos. If you complained back in the day people thought you were a sore loser but it really was cheating you
8:14 😂 The hell was that death scream?! “Agh I guess.”
Nice vid! Curious, do you have any plans to make one for the Saturn port of UMK3? I was familiar with the 16-bit versions back in the day, but always wondered how the Saturn port fared since it was the exclusive 32-bit version 😎
Another great video bro. I enjoy watching your channel a lot.
I appreciate that. Thank you.
Okay at 7:55 Where he does the fatality comparison, I fucking Died when the saturn one played.
I had completely forgotten that I pre-ordered this from EBGames only to return in a couple days later, one of the few games I've ever returned in 30+ years.
both Saturn and PS1 could have done arcade perfect ports of MK1 and MK2, it was very disappointing that there was no MK1 version and that MK2 had unexplicable flaws. I couldn't believe the SNES had some of the voices the PS1 version was missing. The music at least on PS1 is MIDI or FM generated, by the console's chip, it's not CD audio tracks like in MK3, so it's not CD quality. The loading times make it unplayable. The best home ports avaiable in the 90s were SNES and PC. The PC port has a couple of flaws, like Scorpion's walking position is wrong, it's the asme as Sub Zero instead of walking with his arm up like he should (it's a small detail but it drives me nuts!), but MK2 PC has all the sounds and voices, it looks decent, the gameplay is ok, and it's in general a more polished and consistent port.
The SNES port is awesome considering the limitations of the hardware, but it's obviously a scaled down representation, not arcade perfect.
Funnily enough, I just watched your reviews of Sega Rally (Saturn) and Sega Rally 2 (Dreamcast), two arcade ports that fall short of the visuals of the original machine, but still manage to be fun games in their own right, and can be respected for their technical achievement on their respective systems. In contrast, this port is the opposite; not pushing the hardware, full of bugs, but visually close. Of course, MKII, as you say, was already kind of old by then, so there's really no excuse, added to that, the Sega Rally series has a much more influential legacy, IMO, in both arcade and home systems.
This might be the first Saturn game I purchased. Brand new, years before I bought a Saturn. I'm a big MK fan. 50+ physical copies. MK Gold was also my first dreamcast game, years before I purchased a dreamcast.
7:59 sounds like he is Genuinly on FIRE! and 8:13 sounds like a Mild inconvenience like he just hit his Toe on a sofa LOL the Fire doesn't even hit him 🤣🤣
Nice.👍
When I was small, it was the biggest dream for gamers, to get an arcade perfect port of MK2 for consoles back then. If only it had materialised perfectly.😧
While Saturn had the hardware to run arcade perfect version of MK2, it had not enough RAM to have all the data for immediate use.
PC port was the best home version of MK2 and it was designed for machines with 4 MB of RAM (while it could use more to reduce loading times) so it was a good starting point for Saturn port. However CD-ROM games on PC installed crucial data on HDD for fast access. This is why stutter is barely noticeable with 4 MB of RAM and there're no issues at all with 8 MB.
While 4MB of RAM was usually enough for PS1 and its early 3D. Saturn should have at least 6 MB to show its 2D capabilities.
When Saturn and PS1 started their life in Europe and USA, PC games already required 8 MB of RAM and soon 16 and 32 become a minimum.
I remembering my folks purchasing a Saturn for me as a kid. It was expensive as hell, so I had a choice between two games; MKII and Solar Eclipse. I'm glad I got Solar Eclipse.
I had heard horror stories of this port... I had no idea it was THIS unoptimized...
Sega Lord X- Keep up the great (and truthful) reviews
Looked good, but those sounds and music were jarring to hear. Thanks for the review!
The most frustrating thing about the Playstation and Sega Saturn Ports of Mortal Kombat 2 and 3 was how they butchered the sound design almost entirely. Even Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 on Sega Saturn was missing the stinger transitions where the music would change up dramatically during a fatality and the outro when the round was over was replaced by the audio track just cutting to akward silence. This persisted in Mortal Kombat Trilogy for Saturn, PC, and PS1.
Not only did we never get any arcade perfect ports of any of the original 3 games/UMK3/Trilogy on any of the better consoles, they all had weird issues that got in the way of enjoying the game.
The N64 version of trilogy was the most polished from a gameplay perspective, had proper audio stingers and atage outros but had horrible midi music and muffled audio, Shao Kahn only had 1 laugh, and even though the visuals looked crisp and stages were seemingly higher resolution, the fighters were missing frames of animation.
I only had a PS1 and N64 growing up, but I qas very envious of anyone who had a Saturn because I was well aware of its 2D capabilities, so when I walked into KB Toy Store and saw Mortal Kombat II and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Saturn versions sitting on the shelf, I thought to myself "Oh man I bet tbe Saturn Version is amazing".
Welp... at least I didnt get the short end of the stick for once, unlike most of the PS1 ports of Capcom Fighters I had to suffer through (Street Fighter Alpha 1, 2 Gold, 3, and JoJo's bizarre adventure were the only decent PS1 Ports).
The 32 bit consoles had too little RAM.
The N64 cart they used had too little ROM.
The Saturn port needed to use the RAM cart. The N64 needed a larger ROM. The Arcade ROM was 27 MB so a 32MB cart like the one used for Zelda would fit it without any cuts. Instead they only used 12MB of ROM so a lot of data got compressed or cut. I guess 32MB would be too expensive in 1997, for an early N64 title. And 1998 to late to release a 2D MK game.
Point is though, all of the 5th gen consoles had the capabilities for a perfect port. But all of them also had bottlenecks with data size access.
Darkstalkers and Darkstalkers 3 were quite competent Capcom ports to the PS1.
@@Bloodreign1 But still had animation frames being cut.
Pc should've been much better than the saturn and ps1 port of mk3, umk and mkt. Had n64 used Decompression technique to store every single missing content, cd media, optical magnetic disk or used zipdrive, superdisk and ect floppy like disk. The n64 would've been the best home of mkt and most likely pc port would be like the n64 port.
I never could get into MK aside from the 1st one… because of the genesis blood code (down, up, left, left, A, right, down) 😂
Street fighter 2 had me for years.
This is so tragic. Saturn had the potential to be the bet port ever. But Ultimate MK3 was pretty awesome on Saturn. I remember playing the shit out of that one.
That toasty finisher on the Saturn 😂😂😂😂
I always love your mortal kombat videos as you're such an excellent mortal kombat player
I still play the Saturn version of MK2 from time to time, even though I mostly gravitate to the 32X and SNES versions, in terms of original home ports of the game. It’s just a damn shame that it was the best LOOKING console port of the game, but was plagued with so many bugs. At least the Saturn port of UMK3 was WAY better and much closer to it’s arcade counterpart.
COOL.
Huh, I was playing this earlier today and wondering if my CD image had some kind of flaw when Scorpion never said "GET OVER HERE!"
my dad and I went all over NYC to find this game back then. Settled for mk2 since mk3 didn't come out til mk3 ultimate
Awesome video SegaLX!
Great review. This game was such a blaster at the time.
i still play it
A blaster? Like the one Han used to shoot Greedo?
I still have this turd in my collection, just because. I remember when it released, I was so excited to think I was getting something better than the SNES version. I was so pissed. Here the PSX was getting a great version of MK3, but the Saturn couldn't get a great version of MKII? What a joke. That's when I really stopped by anything that Acclaim published until I either played it first or read multiple reviews. Good and honest review.
2 MB RAM was simply not enough for games like this, especially with CD systems that needed to load everything in it (unlike ROMs where you can instantly load any data you need in real time). Maybe if the devs made use of the RAM expansion carts this would be a perfect port.
Or used twin rom media like they did with king of fighters.
Nope, UMK3 was a superb port and the only issue was Shang Tsung morphs.
Love this series! I enjoy all your content! Thanks!
When you played the reference audio clips I momentarily, seriously thought you voiced over the Saturn one it's that bad 😂
So happy I chose the SNES version many years ago
Woke up right now to my AC being out. Now, to watch new epicness while I wait for the tech lol yasssss!!
For me, at the time, the real baseline was the SNES. Arcade was a thing of its own.
Exactly
Right, Francois!
Just like how Street Fighter II Turbo on the Super Nintendo isn't arcade perfect by any stretch.
However, the music from the SNES port had its own nostalgic charm.
Yup. Easily the best console version available, which was surprising after the debacle of the original MK.
@@FlandersB there was a MK 1 port on the Saturn?
@@FlandersB Yeah MK on SNES was terrible. Graphically better than the Genesis version but woof, the lack of blood and fatalities made the Sega version a flawless victory in comparison.
Ultimate MK3 was pretty good on Saturn at least.
The SNES was the best port at the time.
Hah... never had MK2 on Saturn. I was fully VF/Fighters Megamix by this point. Thanks Lordster! SEEEEEEEEEGAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
If you put the Saturn MK II disc in a CD player the last track is the MK announcer saying "It's official, you suck!"
Would've been nice to see ANY of the other characters used instead of just Scorpion the whole review. Was curious to see how the Saturn handled all the other characters
But I'm fighting all the other characters. They are all here. Some multiple times. I even lost purposely a number of times so you could see a few other fatalities(which got the video flagged as 18+ only). I used Scorpion as he is my primary and I play best with him.
I was never a Mortal Kombat fan, though I did go see the first movie in the theatre. Mostly because one of my favourite bands, KMFDM, was in the soundtrack. The game always felt like it was a homebrew game or something, with the cheesy characters and weird animations. I guess that was the charm of it for a lot of people. I totally get the appeal, but it just wasn't my cup of tea. Like Sega Lord X, I looked at Mortal Kombat as an outlier when compared to the Capcom fighters.
As for Akklaim, man. They were so often the publisher that released games not meeting their full potential. Yet, I had a few Akklaim titles in my NES collection.
Agreed I also wasn't a huge Mortal Kombat fan back in the day. I liked the Capcom and SNK fighting games better.
I'm Sega Lord X and I DO love me some Sega Saturn
I have MK II on PS1, Sega Saturn, Sega CD, PS2 ( from the midway arcade treasures collection). also had it on Windows DOS
The SNES/Genesis version of MK II ( I owned these as well in the past), but gave these two copies away. Oh and I also own the Arcade1up MK II arcade machine ( got it for $40 brand new) back in 2019 before the pandemic hit!
Mortal Kombat 2 wasn't released on the Sega CD only MK1 , I think you have meant the 32x
@@chiefthunderhorse4430 thanks for clarifying. Let's just say I pretty much had all the MK II games on every single system, it was hard for me to keep up!
The Super NES version is still the kimg of the home ports.
Thanks for the video! I appreciate it!
The Sega Saturn version of Mortal Kombat 2 looks excellent. 😀👍🎮
That’s the only positive it has that it looks great, there’s too many sound effects missing, the in game loading is annoying and there’s gameplay mechanics that’s were altered and changed for no reason that you were able to do in even the genesis and snes ports
When I picked MK2 up on Saturn, I was so pissed that I went back to the 32X version. Ultimate MK3 on Saturn got me away from MK3 on PS1 for a few months, but then MK Trilogy arrived on PS1 and N64, and I shifted to those versions.
I'll always love MK II on SNES and Gameboy
Will you do a review on Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe on the PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360
how was Ultimate MK3 on the Saturn? because I wanted a MK game on the Saturn but I guess MK2 won't 😅
It always baffled me why the first Mortal Kombat games never made it to the 3DO.
And the jaguar as well.
It's not worth converting it to those platforms as it wouldn't sell enough copies to make it viable.
@@brendanroberts1310 That's kind of what I'm saying, the 3DO didn't have the games to make it viable I'm not saying it would have saved the console but it would have moved a few more units. Mortal Kombats popularity was so big at the time and for what was supposed to be the adults game console it would have been beautiful. But we'll never know now.
Awesome video as always
Those are some very cartoony pans banging on pans sound effects.
seegaaaaahh
I always wondered why the PS1 Japanese-only version felt so off. Had no idea it was basically a carbon copy of the Saturn version(or maybe the other way around), though the PS1 has more annoying loading. You do have the choice to turn on player names in the options menu of the PS1 version, which leads to even MORE loading.
When I first put it on it looked so good I was like so excited when it when I played it and then there was like the first round there was no Shang tsung wins and I was like damn this sucks
Great review again 🤘🔥
Probe Entertainment? Yeah, figures, they butchered every port they did in some way. The SNES port was done by Sculptured Software and they did great.
They've made MK3 for both (SNES and Genesis). Problably Midway realized Probe will make a poor job again.
Actually I was dissapointed to hear that music and sound effects were f**ked up) Common!!! This is the console which is possible to play the music CDs! Why they couldn't put the arcade quality sound in the game? ((
But anyway I will try to play this version, it is interesting to find a key for this hardly resisting AI)
Thanks a lot for the review)
Its always good to see Scorpion kicking ass in MK II.
MK Trilogy review next? I recall that one was a much better game than MK2 port...
And umk3
When I bought my second hand Saturn this game was still in the drive (don't know if the guy who sold me the console knew), and I thought it was a nice surprise, since I played the SNES version a lot, and could even reach to Kintaro in the arcade version.
But what started as a nice surprise became a big disappointment. It looks better than the SNES version, but that's about it.
Funny thing is, it's still sitting in my Saturn, since it's my only game with the box missing.