Ultimate Mortal Kombat - Nintendo DS (2007)

Status - played a few hours   

What the back of the box says - “Play two Mortal Kombat Classics Anywhere!”  

What I say - “Play one Mortal Kombat Klassic Anywhere!”  

Genre - Fighting / Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo rip off  

Rage quitting / stress levels - Medium/low  

Price paid - AUD 15 (Ballina Pawn Shop)  

Metacritic- 73 out of 100

Mortal Kombat was my everything back in the day. Wait - just the first two games. 

By the time the third came out - I think I was more into 3D fighting games a la Tekken and Virtua Fighter which were on point back then. As you probably know - the game mechanics had been altered to include a ‘Run/Combo’ mechanic  this speed up the gameplay but you were rewarded for memorisation of moves rather than skill. I could never get into this as much than the first two games, which were a bit more easier to get into.

I have fonder memories of UMK3 (playing it at a US arcade on holidays, bigger cast including the return of favourite Scorpion) but it is still a bit of a love hate relationship with the run/combo mechanics.

Now - back to the DS “Ultimate MK” game. It contains a port of UMK3 which is surprisingly competent. It’s relatively easy to pull moves off with the DS, especially with the second screen showing special moves/fatalities (but unfortunately no combos).  You can also enter in codes for bonus characters, etc which is easy to enter with the DS stylus.

UMK - DS also contains ‘Puzzle Kombat’ - a SPF2T clone which appeared on ‘Mortal Kombat Deception’. It’s a 1 on 1 puzzle ‘fighting’/match gems and do combo game which just doesn’t hold a candle to SPF2T in terms of fast gameplay, graphics, sounds and vibe. You can perform fatalities but normally it’s just punching your foe into a shredder thing on the side of the screen.

Overall - if you like UMK3 - then I think UMK DS is a great pick up if you can find it for the right price. It was super cheap for me ($15 at a pawn shop in Northern NSW last month) which was a great little find.