Mortal Kombat

There are a few video games out there that will probably never be forgotten, mostly because they came out at the right time and they managed to bring something new to the industry. Beside Super Mario Bros., Sonic, and The Legend of Zelda, Mortal Kombat is surely a name that carries a lot of weight, with millions of fans worldwide and a whole lot of sequels, remakes, and reboots spanning to this day.

Mortal Kombat is an ambitious, yet very basic project that aims to help you remember the good old times, by remaking one of Midway’s greatest hits. However, beside the fact that it doesn’t bring any modern elements into the mix, such as an updated graphics engine, it also lacks around 98% of the original game’s content. Hence, it’s only a remake the same way squinting really hard at an old Nintendo cartridge is a remake.

To start off with, Scorpion is the only playable character, which would also be just fine in different circumstances. In this case, however, Scorpion has been completely neutered and he more accurately resembles a guy at a Halloween party, given the fact that he can only punch and kick, with no other possible combos or special moves.

It should also be mentioned that the game only supports two players at once, with no singleplayer mode included. Hence, there is no AI to fight against and the controls for both players are awfully mapped on the keyboard, which makes it impossible to play anyway. Not only that, but the second player’s character cannot turn the other way, which means that both Scorpions face the same direction and never see eye to eye.

This makes for terrible matches with zero fun and not a lot of options. Since the combos have not been integrated, you can see all there is to see in about five seconds, depending on how long it takes you to press all the buttons that do something. The graphics have remained faithful to the original, but that’s of little consolation if there’s no reason to enjoy them.

In the end, you must know that this is someone’s amateur attempt at video game development and it certainly doesn’t try to be a serious production, so the expectations should be quite low to begin with. On the other hand, it is on the Internet and it advertises itself as a remake of an old classic, so maybe you can at least be warned before you get disappointed.