Developer: Sculptured Software Publisher: Acclaim Release: 09/13/93 Genre: Fighting
When Mortal Kombat hit the arcade it was one of the few games able to steal attention away from Street Fighter. Digitized graphics were nothing new; Pit Fighter was available at the time. But MK took it to the next level and with its old martial arts feel was a hit. To say the home release was hotly anticipated is an understatement. Mortal Monday was one of the few times a game received a definitive release date and every major platform outside of the Turbo Grafx-16 would receive a version. While Sega Genesis owner’s got a version with all the blood and fatalities intact via a code SNES owner’s had to deal with a “family” friendly edition devoid of what made the game popular.
Nintendo’s decision to censor Mortal Kombat bit them in the ass hard. Let’s not kid ourselves; the gruesome fatalities alongside the digitized graphics are why Mortal Kombat was so popular. Sega’s aggressive marketing toward teenagers and older gamers was paying dividends as the Genesis was gaining steam. With its “adult” content Mortal Kombat had garnered a huge amount of attention making it even more popular. All eyes were waiting to see how the home ports would turn out. While the Genesis version is the uglier of the two it has all the content intact and outsold the Super Nintendo game significantly. It was a mistake Nintendo would not make again the following year as it helped to create the image that they were for kids.
So yeah, there is no blood in this game. All blood has been replaced with sweat and most of the fatalities have been redesigned to be less…violent which is pretty silly. To be fair a few of the new fatalities are actually pretty cool. Sub Zero’s ice smash is an awesome substitute for the spine rip. Raiden shocking you in to a pile of dust is only slightly different from having your head explode. But they are a poor substitute for what gamers wanted. Many spent years trying to find cheat codes to turn the blood red. While you could do so with a game genie code eventually the game still has plenty of other issues it could not fix.
The censorship sucks to be sure. But the main reason this version of Mortal Kombat ranks so low is the controls. This should have been an easy slam dunk as the default SNES controller has six buttons and you can remap buttons freely. But the controls are sluggish due to very awful input lag. The first time I played the game I thought there was something wrong with my controller. But no, it really is that bad. Executing special moves is hard which is awful considering the inputs are so simple. Mortal Kombat is not a combo heavy game but trying to pull them off here is a chore. The problems do not end there however.
There are numerous oversights when it comes to the gameplay resulting in glitches and infinite combos. In the arcade when you unleash a flurry of high punches it pushes the opponent back after a certain number of hits. That is not the case here, meaning you can trap your opponent in the corner and infinite them to death! If two characters throw fireballs simultaneously one randomly disappears midstream. Against Sub Zero this is incredibly frustrating. The AI in the arcade was stupid and could be baited in to a jumping attack that could be easily punished with an uppercut. That does not fly here as the AI is aggressive and will throw you repeatedly at the first opportunity. There are still gaps in their logic but this makes the game better in multiplayer. But if you are going to do that you might as well play the Sega version.
The one area the SNES Mortal Kombat is superior is its presentation. Across the board Sculptured Software did an excellent job bringing the game to the SNES. The sprites are larger and the increased color palette makes the digitized graphics pop. The backgrounds are also fully intact and the texturing and detail on many of the environments looks great. It is shocking how simplified they are on the Genesis, with whole background elements missing for no reason. The animation is also notably better; Sub-Zero is a unique sprite rather than a recolored Scorpion here. A few curious omissions are the missing bio and ending pictures. I guess something had to be cut. Most of the digitized speech is intact and is clearer as well. It makes the unresponsive controls and censorship that much worse as this could have been the definitive version for its time.
In Closing
There is no getting around it; the SNES version of Mortal Kombat has problems. The input lag alongside the censoring means there is no reason to play this game instead of the Genesis version. It is a damn shame too as aesthetically this is closer to the arcade. But all the production in the world means nothing if the game plays like trash and sadly they dropped the ball here.
