Mortal Kombat II
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 "Now the Kombat Kontinues..."
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Mortal Kombat II is a fighting video game originally released in 1993 for the arcades and later ported to various systems. It is the second installment in the Mortal Kombat series.
Plot
After Shang Tsung failed to defeat Liu Kang in the Mortal Kombat tournament, he begs his master Shao Kahn to spare his life. He tells Shao Kahn that if they hold it in Outworld, the invitation for the next Mortal Kombat cannot be turned down, and the Earthrealm warriors must attend. Kahn agrees to this plan and also restores Shang Tsung's youth. He then extends the invitation to the thunder god and Earthrealm's protector, Raiden, who gathers his warriors and takes them into the Outworld.
The new tournament is much more dangerous, as Shao Kahn has the home-field advantage, and an Outworld victory will allow him to subdue Earthrealm.
According to official creators, Liu Kang won this tournament as well, defeating Shao Kahn and his bodyguard Kintaro.
Development
According to the project's lead programmer Ed Boon, Mortal Kombat II was "intended to look different than the original MK" and "had everything we wanted to put into MK but did not have time for." In 2012, Boon placed creating the game among his best Mortal Kombat memories, recalling: "When we did Mortal Kombat II, we got new equipment and all that stuff, but it was funny because when we started working on Mortal Kombat II, the mania, the hysteria of the home versions of Mortal Kombat I was literally all around us. We were so busy working on the next one, going from seven characters to 12 and two Fatalities per character and all these other things that that consumed every second." Both the theme and art style of MKII were slightly darker than those of its predecessor, although a more vibrant color palette was employed and the new game had a much richer color depth than the previous game. A new feature was the use of multiple layers of parallax scrolling in the arcade version. The game was made to be less serious with the addition of humorous alternative finishing moves. Some of the considered Fatalities were rejected as too extreme at the time.
Care was taken during the programming process to give the game a "good feel", with Boon simulating elements such as gravity into the video game design. The game's lead designer and artist John Tobias noted that the previous game's reliance on juggling the opponent in the air with successive hits was an accident and had been tightened in Mortal Kombat II. Boon said that the reason to not completely remove it in favor of a different system of chaining attacks together was to set the game apart from the competing titles such as Street Fighter and allow for players to devise their own combinations of attacks. A double jump ability was implemented but later removed. At one point, a bonus stage was planned to feature "a bunch of ninjas jumping all over the place and you would swing at them, just like you're in the middle of a fight in a kung fu movie." All of the music was composed, performed, recorded and mixed by Dan Forden, the Mortal Kombat series' sound designer and composer, using the Williams DCS sound system.
Like the first game, Acclaim handled the home conversions. San Francisco Chronicle claimed in 1994 that Acclaim had spent $50 million on developing, manufacturing and marketing the game.
Why It's Still a Flawless Victory
- For starters, it does so many improvements over the first game, such as better controls, more characters, more opponents to fight and had other upgrades that will be talked about.
- As stated in WISAFV#1, there's more characters and a lot of them we're introduced with this game, such as Liu Kang, Smoke (despite not being playable), Kung Lao, Kitana and Mileena, most of them would later be major characters of the franchise.
- Great graphics that are a huge improvement over the first (despite looking good), and look very good for it's time, as they are very detailled and colorful, and the characters sprites are a little bit more detailed than the first game, such as Sub-Zero and Scorpion sprites, which was especially done via a camera by recording the actors, especially since their costumes were much higher-quality.
- Also, the new characters sprites look as great as the returning one, are very detailed and had good characters designs, such exemples include Kung Lao, Kitana and Mileena (even though the latter two mostly are color changes in their sprites in comparison to the later games of the franchise).
- The environnements even look like they come from a 2D Sega Saturn game rather than a 1993 Arcade game, as they look very detailled and their designs are of course very cool to look at, as well as fitting for a dark game such as Mortal Kombat, also they are darker than the ones featured in the first game.
- The Game Boy version is surprisingly pretty good, along with the Game Gear version, as their framerate is way better than in the first game port (although the Game Gear port of it was decent) and the controls being fairly fluid, and they also feature a great soundtrack and more clean graphics. In fact, the Game Boy version can be considered as the best fighting game on the Game Boy.
- Once again, the controls are very good since they are tight and responsive, which is especially true with the Sega Genesis and SNES versions.
- Awesome soundtrack, especially the Arcade and SNES ports musics, all of the musics fit the overall dark tone of the game and especially fit the stage theme, and of course they are great to listen to, this include but not limited to:
- Nintendo learned their lesson about censoring games from the mess up that was the SNES port of the first game and allowed blood in their SNES port of MKII, which made fans happy and as a result of also improving the gameplay from the first game SNES port, that port ended up being considered one of the best console port of this game.
- The Arcade port included a port of Pong, which is a nice touch and what better is that it is an upgraded port of the original game.
- Besides the original ending, the game's story mode can be finished using other playable characters, resulting in different endings for each of them, much like in the first game.
- The Friendship move was introduced in this game and become one of the most famous part of the franchise, and some of those range from awesome to hilarous.
- This is one of the few times that the Sega 32X port was good and actually makes this one of the bad console’s good games. Addtionally, it also adds some stuff the Genesis version didn't have, such as more character grunts, Shao Kahn saying more stuff as an announcer, and features better graphics.
"You Weak Pathetic Fool" Qualities
- The AI is extremely unfair as the computer opponent will professionally block or dodge your move within frames of it starting, and always finds ways to counter. The difficulty setting only changes whether or not the AI decides to do this, meaning the AI loves to cheat no matter the difficulty. The sub-boss, Kintaro, and the bBoss, Shao Kahn are the worst offenders.
- There aren't any mini-games between the fights, which is a bit disapointing especially if you liked the Test Your Might mini game from the first game.
Reception
The initial critical reception of Mortal Kombat II was overwhelmingly positive, with Sega Visions describing the way in which the sequel was directed as "sheer brilliance", and Nintendo Power calling it "the hottest fighter ever". Tony Brusgul of The Daily Gazette opined the "incredible" hype surrounding the game was "well deserved", describing it as "a perfect blend of great graphics, action and violence". In his review of the arcade release, Rik Skews of Computer + Video Games (C+VG) wrote: "the only true rival to Street [F]ighter II" returned "in a sequel that bites off the head of the original."
Regarding the Genesis version, Mark Patterson of C+VG wrote that "Probe has done an incredible job with this conversion. Everything is here, and I mean everything." Sushi-X of Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM) called the Genesis version "a great translation considering its limitations", commenting that its graphics and sounds are not as good as those of the SNES version. A reviewer for The Detroit News was "very disappointed" with the Genesis port and recommended the SNES version instead.
The four reviewers of EGM hailed the SNES version as a "near-perfect" translation of the arcade game. A reviewer for The Baltimore Sun called the SNES version "the best game I've ever played - a true translation", and Patterson noted it was the bloodiest game Nintendo has yet allowed to be released. C+VG declared it "the most perfect coin-op conversion ever". Next Generation stated about SNES version that "with full creative license, Acclaim has produced possibly the best arcade conversion ever."
Regarding the portable console ports, Patterson stated that "no Game Boy owner should go without this" and called the Game Gear version "still the best handheld beat-'em up" on the market though lacking much canonical content. EGM reviewers concurred that the Game Gear version "has eye-popping graphics, and great control - so much so that you won't believe this is a portable", but were less enthusiastic about the Game Boy version. Though they commented that it is better than most fighting games for the system, two of their four reviewers said that it was not worth getting with the game available on much more powerful platforms.
Critical reception of the Amiga version was also mostly very favorable, including Ed Lawrence of CU Amiga declaring that "every person who own an Amiga has to own Mortal Kombat 2. In terms of revitalising the Amiga market, this is far more important than any Commodore buy-out could ever be." In a rare dissenting opinion, Jonathan Nash of Amiga Power dismissed Mortal Kombat II as "a clearly nonsensical title", recommending to "buy Shadow Fighter instead". The later PC version was also well-received, with Next Generation stating that "if you like fighting games, this is the best that's available."
About the 32X version, IGN's Levi Buchanan stated that "if you do not have a SNES, this is the home version of MKII to get." In contrast, GamePro remarked that the 32X version offered too little improvement over the Genesis version, even failing to correct the control shortcomings, and was technically poor given the 32X's capabilities. In a review of the 32X version of the game, Next Generation opined that "MKII is a great game, but it's a serious case of 'been there, done that!'" Brazilian magazine Ação Games gave the 32X version 5 out of 5 on all six categories.
Reviewing the CD-ROM based Saturn port, EGM commented that the graphics are identical to the arcade version but that there are missing sound effects and "unbearable" slowdown when first performing a special move. They rated it the best home version of the game to date but said that with Mortal Kombat II having considerably aged by this point, any port needed to be near arcade perfect to stand out. Next Generation said that the Saturn version was arcade perfect, but that the Mortal Kombat series as a whole was grossly overrated and lacked any gameplay innovations to make it stand out from other fighting games. They summarized that "if you are a fan of the game (and you know who you are), then the Saturn version is everything you can hope for - an arcade-perfect translation - and yet, there is nothing outside of a flashy presentation and a little gore to recommend this game over a million others just like it." Scary Larry of GamePro agreed that the Saturn port "duplicates the arcade version perfectly" but argued that the slowdown and load times make the game frustrating to play. He concluded that the conversion would make a decent holdover until Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 was released for Saturn but fails to measure up to Mortal Kombat 3 on the PlayStation. Sega Saturn Magazine was extremely disappointed with the final version of the Saturn port, calling it "much worse than any of the versions seen on the cartridge format", as opposed to the vastly superior pre-release version they had reviewed five months earlier.
Awards
Mortal Kombat II received numerous annual awards from gaming publications. Game Players gave it the titles of "Best Genesis Fighting Game", "Best SNES Fighting Game" and "Best Overall SNES Game" of 1994. The staff of Nintendo Power ranked MKII as the second (SNES) and fifth (Game Boy) "Top Game" of 1994, while the magazine's readers voted it to receive the 1995's Nintendo Power Awards for "Best Tournament Fighter (all Nintendo platforms)" and "Best Play Control (Game Boy)", with the game having been nominated by the staff also in the categories "Worst Villain" (positively, an equivalent of "Best Hero") and "Best Overall (all Nintendo platforms)". VideoGames named MKII as the "Best Fighting Game" of 1994, also awarding it second place in the categories "Best Super NES Game" and "Best Arcade-to-Home Translation". Other awards included "The Best of the Show (Super NES)" for the SCES '94 from GamePro and "Bloodiest Game of 1994" from EGM. In 2017, Gamesradar listed the game 29th on its "Best Sega Genesis/Mega Drive games of all time".
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