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MORTAL KOMBAT 2 Company: Acclaim Released: September 1994 Genre: Fighting Graphics: 8.5 Control: 7.5 Sound/Music: 7.5 Storyline: 7.0 Review by: Corbie Dillard ©2008 SUPER-NES.COM

While Street Fighter 2 was busy ruling the arcades, Midway was developing a new type of fighting game behind closed doors. They released Mortal Kombat upon avid arcade gamers in 1992 and it immediately became a hit. Featuting realistic digitized characters, spurting blood galore, and a nifty "fatality" system that allowed the winning player to kill his opponent in full bloody glory, arcade fans around the world embraced the blood and gore style of Mortal Kombat. So it was only natural that a sequel would be forthcoming. In 1993 Midway released the sequel and it became even more popular than the first game. Larger and more realistic characters, new fighters, a slightly upgraded fighting system, and more fatalities all added up to make MK2 one of the most popular arcade games of its' time. After the success of Mortal Kombat on the home game consoles, Acclaim released the home versions of this monster arcade hit. Some were better than others but what was perfectly clear was this game was slowly creeping up on Street Fighter 2 in terms of popularity and the home versions proved it with the console release of Mortal Kombat 2. When the Mortal Kombat games were first released, the realisitic digitized characters were cutting edge. Not many games before it sported such realism in their presentation. Even the backgrounds have a very realisitic look to them. Mortal Kombat 2 stepped up the visuals quite a bit, introducing larger characters, more detailed backgrounds, and a lot more of the bright red stuff we've all come to know and love. One other item that I always appreciated about MK2 was that the digitized characters had a more contrasted look in this game, whereas they all looked a little faded out in the first game. All in all MK2 has a distinct look and style that's all its' own. This was also the game that stirred up the old Genesis vs. Super NES battle again and I think it was pretty clear to anyone who played both versions that the Super NES version was quite a bit better, visually, than the Sega Genesis version. What little music there is in the game is mostly very dark and moody. To be honest, considering the high quality of the graphics you'd think that there would be some music to match it, but evidently Midway liked the dark and quiet mood of the game and left it pretty much the same. It's just as well because it makes hearing the voice announcer much easier and it's easily my favorite part of the game. This time around Midway went for a more "authoritative" voice announcer and the deeper voice even further adds to the spooky mood of this sequel. Most other game sound effects are limited to punches, kicks, and the occasional screaming of a character. Trust me, it all fits together as a package deal perfectly. One of the few criticisms of the first Mortal Kombat game was it's overly simplistic (and somtimes cheap) fighting system. All of the characters in the game got a few additional moves, and the new characters come with plenty. Most of the cheapness of the first game has been remedied and now it's much harder to trap an opponent in a corner and beat him to a pulp while he yanks at the joystick helplessly. As I mentioned above there are more fatalities this time around as well as some new, less bone-crushing moves called "friendships" and "babalities". Pulling of a friendship move merely makes your winning character perform a friendly gesture to your beaten opponent. Babalities basically do as the name suggests and turns your downed opponent into a cute little baby version of themselves. It's all very insulting and I saw more fights at arcades when a player performed these friendships and babalities than I ever did with the actual fatalities. The bosses in the game were still a little on the cheap side but they could be defeated with a little practice. Overall Mortal Kombat 2 was better than the first game in every single category and the home versions were as well. Some will say that the Genesis version had slightly more responsive control but I honestly can't tell the difference. The biggest discussion regarding the Super NES release of Mortal Kombat 2 was whether or not Nintendo, who was very anti-violence when it came to their console, was going to allow the blood and gore that had been censored in the first MK release. Thankfully all SNES fans breathed a sigh of release when Nintendo loosened their stance on the violence and allowed Mortal Kombat 2 to leave in every shred of bone-crushing violence that the arcade game featured. All in all Mortal Kombat 2 was a very near arcade-perfect translation and is the best the series had to offer in my book. If you're looking for a fun, and gory fighter, MK2 is your game.