Mortal Kombat (Game Boy)

Mortal Kombat (Game Boy)
This is why porting a 1990s Arcade game into an 8-bit handheld console sometimes doesn't turn out to be a flawless victory.
Genre(s): Fighting Platform(s): Game Boy Release: NA: September 13, 1993 JP: December 24, 1993 EU: February 1, 1994 Developer(s): Probe Entertainment Publisher(s): Acclaim Entertainment Country: United Kingdom Series: Mortal Kombat Successor: Mortal Kombat II

Mortal Kombat is a fighting game developed and released by Midway Games in 1992 for the Arcades. It is the first installment in the Mortal Kombat series. The game has been ported to various platforms in 1993-1994, with most of them being published by Acclaim Entertainment. This page will cover the Game Boy version, which was developed by Probe Entertainment.

Why This Port Isn't A Flawless Victory

1. Very sluggish gameplay; the backgrounds move like as if they were jittering, the characters move really slow, and their animations look really choppy and not fluid.
2. The graphics are rather primitive for a 1993 Game Boy port. The characters' sprites don't look very good, the backgrounds look dull, and the characters' icons look really bad; Liu Kang looks like as if he had one big tooth, Raiden looks like someone walked on him in the bathroom, Scorpion and Sub-Zero's icons barely look like their original ones (even in the Game Gear port), and Sonya has dark eyes that look like as if they had no soul, making her look rather creepy.
3. Horrible soundtrack in general. Most of the songs were not carried from the original version, and the fights just use 2 themes instead, even if there are three stages. The music also sounds like as if it is screeching, which sounds very annoying to listen to.
4. Atrocious controls. They also feel delayed, as if it took like a second for them to respond, or sometimes they feel unresponsive. Additionally, the characters only have regular punches and kicks instead of low and high punches and kicks. This is because the Game Boy has only two buttons, the A and B buttons.
5. Due to the slow gameplay and awful controls, special moves and fatalities only work whenever they feel like it. Most of the time, no matter what you do, the game does not respond to the special moves' inputs, which can leave you vulnerable if you don't manage to hit your opponent with them. It also takes like more than 90 attempts just to perform special moves and fatalities.
6. Speaking of fatalities, they are awful, with the exception of Scorpion, Sonya and Liu Kang's. Kano just kicks you into the air, Raiden turns into a lighting bolt and electrocutes you, and Sub-Zero just dashes into you and knocks you out with his punch. Out of all of the ones that are "new", Sub-Zero's one is arguably the worst, while Raiden's one is arguably the least bad, but is still not very great.
7. The hit detection doesn't always work. Sometimes when you perform a kick while moving forward into your opponent, instead of hitting them, your kick will just go through your opponent without hitting them, as if the opponent's hurtboxes were turned off.
8. While it's nice that this is the only version of Mortal Kombat where you can play as Goro without glitches or cheats, playing as him is awful. His stomp move sometimes doesn't work, not to mention it deals too much damage if it connects. Also, for some reason, every playable character (as well as Shang Tsung, an unplayable character)'s name is changed to names of various developers of this version, which can be confusing as if they either were proud of their work or were ashamed of this port and wanted the player to punish them as a result.

Redeeming Qualities

1. As mentioned before, Scorpion, Sonya and Liu Kang's fatalities were not changed and still remain good.
2. This is the only version of Mortal Kombat where Goro is playable without cheats or glitches, even if he wasn't executed that well.

Trivia

• Johnny Cage was planned for this version, but he was cut out. However, he still exists in the game's files, but he uses Sonya's sprites. Nothing except his name is present in the game's resources due to missing his own graphics. He also doesn't have his moves with the exception of a fireball projectile that is identical to Shang Tsung's

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