Unofficial Mortal Kombat Games Review

A Complete Report; by Vladimir Legkostup a.k.a Vladirus

MORTAL KOMBAT 1

MK1 opened the series of Unofficial Mortal Kombat games and also, unofficial games in general, because earlier programmers just remade old games (by adding numbers in the titles,changing main characters,etc) Two variants of the game were produced: a good 
one, and a not so good one. The first variant is an exact copy of MK1 for 16-bit, only in graphics and with a simplified gameplay. The 
second one is its rather free version with weak drawing and bad sound.
Later the authors of the first variant produced the majority of unofficial MK games for 8-bit, each time doing it still better. 

MORTAL KOMBAT 2

	The translation of the second part of MK for NES was apparently carried out by the same team as MK1. The gameplay was left practically unchanged, but the rest of the game was more completed (Sub-Zero at last learnt how to freeze, blood appeared, etc).
It looks alot like the original game except for cut out Fatalities and the interface. Some of the backgrounds are even more detailed than their analogues from 16-bit versions (for example Dark Monk is absent at the Tower stage in the md (genesis) version).
	Fair sound accompaniment emphasizes the quality of the product and moreover it holds to mkstyle. One of the main shortcomings of the game is a very low level complicasy, you can easily win using only one trow.
Its enough to do it contstantly and the rival wouldn't even be able to rise to his feet and make a block.

MORTAL KOMBAT 3

Mortal Kombat 3 is based on the engine from MK1 and MK2. In contrast to previous parts only 7 characters of 15 are left in mk3 and their doubles are of different colours.
	The positive points of the game are: perfect drawing and animation of characters, as it was before, special effects have made better; blood and increased level of complecity and a small number of continues (the exitement from the increased complexity of the game has become stronger).
The shortcomings of the game are: its musical design (on the most part of backgrounds misic doesnt correspond to the mkseries); Fatality, endings and many favorite characters (and he cyborgs) are missing.
	Summary: despite of the shortcomings, with the experience of creating previous parts of mk, chinese programmers managed to make the best fighting for 8-bit of all the unofficial games . MK3 deservers the highest appraisal for its high playability together with perfect external design.

MORTAL KOMBAT TRILOGY(MK5)

The authors of this game had some problems with its name, just after the trilogy title screen, there appears a screen with logo of MK5 :)) But as a matter of fact, the game is another variant of MK3.
	Despite of its name, there is not a single new character from Trilogy or Ultimate. The game is hard to rate: on one hand, it suffers from a weak imaging of personages, on the other hand, there are well-done backgrounds, most of them animated.
On one hand, there is the sound that should be immediately switched off, on the other hand it is the only one unofficial game where fatalities can be done!! The game could surely get the highest appraisal in advance because of the fatalities, but having played the game once, you realize that trilogy is the worst of the list under consideration.
	Why? The problem is in operating, it doesn't work well, or to be exact, it works like it does everything on itself. Once pressing button A, you can get a whole series of strokes, when pressing it A again, a fighter makes a block or demonstrates some special move.
The very sense of the game is lost because of this, the computer plays with itself and you become audience. As a result, hardly anything could help the game to be among the best.

DRAGON
Dragon for 8-bit is a variant of the game about Bruce Lee, but with the characters from MK1. The story of the legendary Bruce is now of the legendary Liu Kang. Dragon is a classical beat-em-up. Liu moves trough the levels, killing the enemies and meets level-bosses (characters of MK1). 

MORTAL KOMBAT5:SUB-ZERO(FOR GENESIS)
The first unofficial MK game for genesis and the second for 16-bit (first was on SNES, which was a version of MK2 with playable hidden characters). Thanks to more powerful platform on wich it is based MK5 excels exeeds MK for NES, both on drawing and gameplay. It reproduces the PSX version quite exactly allthough it is not ideal. The figure of Sub-Zero is borrowed from MK2 and all rivals are from MK3.