Mortal Kombat Advance

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Mortal Kombat Advance
This port went backwards instead of advanced... in more ways.
Genre(s): Fighting Platform(s): Game Boy Advance Release: NA: December 12, 2001 EU: February 21, 2002 Developer(s): Virtucraft Publisher(s): Midway Games Country: United Kingdom Series: Mortal Kombat

Mortal Kombat Advance is a fighting game developed by Virtucraft and published by Midway Games in 2001 for the Game Boy Advance. It is a port of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3.

Why It's a Porting Fatality

1. False advertising: Due to the game's name, it could easily mean that the game will be some port of the original Mortal Kombat, but after noticing the character select screen, it clearly shows that it's a port of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3.
2. Atrocious controls. Sometimes, they do not respond, which will make you vulnerable your opponent's attacks. Normally, the GBA has four buttons (A, B, L, R) and the D-pad, which could meant the game would use four buttons for attacks, but for some reason, the developers decided to just use the A and B buttons for attacks, making it difficult to perform some special moves and fatalities.
3. The graphics are very mediocre for a Mortal Kombat game. Some of the colours don't look too great. The game also barely has any blood (due to the GBA's audience being younger), and the blood looks too dark. Also, several animations are missing, and the backgrounds aren't animated for the stages that were animated in the original version.
4. The A.I. is very cheap and absolutely horrendous. On normal and higher, the A.I. gives you no chances to attack, as it uses the opponent's attacks like crazy, doesn't stop attacking you when you're blocking the opponent's attacks and uses special moves faster than they could. The A.I. is no better on the easy and easiest difficulties, as if you walk towards the opponent, they'll go back, and then they will do almost nothing, since you'll just abuse your normal attacks and give them no chance to attack, which is laughable.
   • The only way to counter the A.I. is by spamming your kick, which completely destroys the fun and doesn't make you develop a strategy to defeat the opponent. In the original game, they made you have some fun and develop a strategy to defeat them, but here, all they allow you to do is just spamming.
5. The fatalities for Ermac, Human Smoke and Kitana are abysmal; they just uppercut the opponent, destroying them, and that's it.
6. The game has a lot of bugs and glitches, some of which can cause the player to scratch their heads due to a confusion:
   • The remains of the opponents disappear in some fatalities when the "Fatality" text appears.
   • Kabal's head disappears in his fatality when the "Fatality" text shows up
   • Sometimes the character's name changes after a fatality to a different name, such as being changed to "Scorpion". This can be seen especially in endurance levels.
   • Throwing the opponent at the corner can glitch them out.
   • If the opponent tries to perform a fatality on you while walking next to you in the corner, your character will go to the left, then come out of right, and softlock the game.
   • Sometimes when Sub-Zero freezes you, he cannot hit you, making you completely invincible (though it might make Sub-Zero able to attack you easily thanks to the game's cheap A.I.)
7. The music is weak, and it sounds like it wasn't ported correctly, as some themes sound unfinished, and some themes are just short loops.
8. For some reason, if you perform a fatality with Shang Tsung while shapeshifted, the game not only announces that the character you shapeshifted wins, but on the tower before the next match starts, the shapeshifted character's portrait is shown rather than Shang Tsung's, something that did not apply in any other Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 ports.
9. Most of the sound effects are out of place. Several sound effects are from Mortal Kombat II, mainly the Mortal Kombat II veterans' names, which is out of place and unacceptable for an Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 port. And for some reason, some of the male characters (especially ninjas) have Sheeva's voice lines, mainly when they jump, which is out of place, and kind of strange since Sheeva doesn't appear in the game anywhere.
10. The ending is like absolutely nothing, instead, if you defeat Shao Kahn, only a short cutscene will be shown, then his lost treasures aren't available. Instead, the game just cuts to the ending screen about the character you've played (or shapeshifted while playing as Shang Tsung), and then the game cuts to the credits.

Redeeming Qualities

1. The options menu is well done. Rather than just simply configuring the difficulty and contrast, you have optional blood and fatalities, which can be good for those who are not into violence but are still fans of the Mortal Kombat franchise.
2. While this was introduced in Mortal Kombat Trilogy before, this is the only version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 where Rain has a fatality, and his fatality is decent, despite using the same sprite for the opponent after finishing the fatality.
3. Rain and Ermac have nice, unique friendship moves.

Reception

Mortal Kombat Advance received negative reviews upon release. The main criticism for the game were the controls and the A.I.. On Metacritic, the game has a 33/100 from critics (based on 16 reviews) and a 3.4/10 rating from users. Due to the game's flaws, the game is not only considered to be one of the worst GBA games, but also one of the worst Mortal Kombat games ever made.

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