Mortal Kombat 3: How an Arcade Dud Transformed Console Gaming - PlayStation Year One
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- Опубліковано 24 лис 2024
- As part of our latest deep dive into Sony's 32-bit history, we explore the surprising and controversial story behind Mortal Kombat 3's home console release. In pursuit of an arcade-perfect port, Sony itself united a supergroup of arcade gaming giants in order to bring the experience to PlayStation fully intact. The production had unintended consequences, however, and by the time the dust settled, Sony had funded the launch of one of its biggest competitors.
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God I miss the 90s.
BAD BROODX13XXX I'm subscribing only because of that pic.......mmmmm
Franklin Scott her name Spicy J look her up she's awesome..😉
I wish USA was more like Japan in the sense of arcade culture. Arcades still thrive over there. Quarter play games basically died after the PlayStation 1 dropped.
92 over here
I miss the 70s
This is the first time I'm hearing that MK3 was an arcade dud. It was one of the most popular games at every arcade I went to.
MK3 was far less popular than the first two games though, MK2 was extremely popular, MK3 was not received so well.
@@clarenceboddicker6679 Dude did you play MK3 in arcades in the 90s?Because i did and trust me it was extremely popular.
@@xynnsryou6955 MK3 was extremely popular but it was not as popular as MK2, MK2 was when the series was at it's peak. I think it may have been because 3D fighting games like Teken were beginning to appear by the time of MK3 that it lost some of it's popularity.
I remember when MK3 first hit my arcade; it was popular for a very short time, and then people went back to playing Killer Instinct.
YEA , THAT ONLY LASTED 6 MONTHS !
Wow that Playstation 1 startup noise literaly gave me goosebumps. Miss that noise. So iconic and noistalgic.
Exact same here
I had to restart the video a couple of times, just for the hell of it!
If you have a PS4, they've got a 20th anniversary theme which includes the PS1 startup music. I've never used anything else!
Palace Of Wisdom no shit! I'll look into that! Thanks for letting us know!
Palace Of Wisdom where do I find it is it in the settings?
I remember i had got MK 3 and killer instinct for christmas at the same time. GREATEST Christmas presents i ever had.
Yoooo me tooo really awesome Christmas that year
Me too plus I got X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse on top of that for Christmas that year. Great Times...
KILLER INSTINCT!!!!!!!!! YES!
My brother got them. Which meant I got them too!
Francisco Delgado got MK11 Kollector edition and the complete Killer Instinct game ...
I would argue that “MK3 Ultimate”
had a much larger impact on the gaming community as a whole and for midway.
UHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH NO
It was called "Ultimate MK3". Smh...
I swear to God this is a true story. Joe Lieberman came to my middle school when I was 12 or 13 years old.(I'm 35 now so right about 23-4 years ago) They gathered all the 7th and 8th grade students into the auditorium, and out came Joe Lieberman, (which none of us knew who he was at that time and even if we did we wouldn't have given a shit) and he spoke for an hour to us about nothing but how Mortal Kombat, specifically, will ruin our future, our chances to get a job, will likely put us in jail, make us worthless degenerates, or turn us into violent drug addicts, all that kind of stuff, it was literally a big propaganda speech.( to newly rebellious 12 and 13 year olds I don't know what made him think it would go over well) He also said the only cause of this dangerous road was "playing Mortal Kombat" because at the time the second MK had just come out and at the time there was nothing violent like that back then other than MK, (there was that dinosaur game that had fatalities in it too but that kind of slid under the radar) so of course everyone loved Mortal Kombat 1+2. ( In retrospect, I think about it and it's hilarious cuz it's just a bunch of motion-capture people running around and sprites of digital blood and bones, that's it, but at the time mind you this was like 1994 or 5 this was revolutionary) It was crazy, he literally got booed off the stage and like 30 kids, me included got detention and almost expulsion because this guy decided to come in front of a bunch of preteens and tell them how bad the most popular game at the time was for them what did he expect? It was crazy, and I was just talking about this yesterday with somebody, and now this video pops up on my UA-cam que WITH a pic of Lieberman on the thumbnail which freaking me out. It's like I swear to God, Google is listening to what people talk about and then influencing their social media with it. It's crazy and there's probably about a 60% chance it's actually happening that way. Anyway that's my crazy story about this video.
Here's one that gets mixed reviews in gaming circles. You either understand me or despise me for it, but in the year 2000, one of the reasons I voted for Bush was that Gore selected Lieberman as a running mate.
Hahahahahahahaha, that's a great story. Droopy Dog makes one of the saddest and most silly politicians.
Fred Rogers yep he actually came into an auditorium filled with 12 and 13 year olds and tried to tell us not to play Mortal Kombat, the hottest game series at the time. Suffice to say he didn't leave very happy..lol
Jay Taber and now Lieberman has died of cancer. Hah the irony. Karma is a bitch.
drunkensailor112 the fuck man no he hasnt you got me all excited over nothing
My dad purchased MK3 at a nearby KB toys for a whopping $70+ back then. Played the game to death, had every cheat memorized, Kool stuff, Kooler stuff and 'Scott's Stuff'. One of the best games I've played.
Wow kb toys
My dad told me to get a job
Ernest Ross Wyatt same I bought my consoles all myself because my parents didn’t approve or have the money.
The Mortal Kombat games were always stupidly expensive.
Very kool
I like the fantasy stages of Mortal Kombat and Mortal Kombat II, but the realistic stages work for Mortal Kombat 3, because it takes place in Earthrealm (Earth in the Mortal Kombat universe). That's why we had characters like Stryker. I really like the idea of Mortal Kombat 3, where Kombat is brought to Earth and Shao Kahn is taking over.
I really, really liked the stages as a kid and thus don't get this criticism either, at all, while being a Retropals fan. What's wrong with columns, halls and abandoned roads?
If anything, the desert from umk3 kinda cracks me up now. :)
@@NeroKnight666 I'm with you. When I first saw MK3, was in the bridge stage, with the buildings in the background. It was amazing and relatable. Plus, it's not like "simple urban stages", they all have touchs of Outerworld invasion, like Shao Khans tower in the background. Sometimes, I feel like these videos repeating the same critic over and over again, are made by people that haven't played the games back in the day. They just have watched someone speaking those things, and start repeating like a parrot. Those videos always say "they brought the cyber ninjas, that was bad", but actually, I loved Cyrax and Sektor, and saw a lot of people loving them too. Stryker was very interesting character, to see guns and grenades in the game, was refreshing. For me, the real letdown of MK3, was the Fatalities. Lot's of comic and obnoxious ideas. Even MK2 suffer from it, but in a lower scale. I miss the simplicity and brutality of MK1 fatalities.
You do realize MK1 was also on earth realm right ? Shang Stung’s island is on earth realm
This was the Golden age for developers. Four guys could make a block buster hit. Now it takes millions of dollars and large studios to create the next hit.
Though not as "good" as MK2, MK3 was still popular enough to make good profits so it should never be called a dud at all. What really killed the classic series was the overall transition to 3D graphics, though tried as they did with MK4. After Playstation all 2D games were frowned upon cause they looked outdated. The port of X-men Vs. Street Fighter gave people the impression that the PSX was lousy for doing 2D games (Never mind the good ones like Castlevania: SOTN & some JRPGs).
I was surprised Sony did published this port themselves but then it was still early years...
And fighting games saw a delcine after the peak of 1989-1995. They never really recovered although Street fighter IV was a massive comeback.
I would also point to the rose of 3D fighting games like Tekken and Virtua Fighter. It was hard to go back to yet another Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat when you could play the newest polygon brawlers.
I wasn't a fan of the 3D graphics at the time, I saw 4 and HATED it. I felt that was the end for me.
@@DTM-Books I agree with ya games like Tekken just seemed light-years ahead of past 2D titles at the time.
It was superior game. With combos and better graphics. Mk1, MK2 are good but mk3u is the best mk game ever.
Dude calls mk3 a dud.. Can't even take this video serious. Mk3 was so popular in arcades back in the day.
I can't believe this guy. 😫
For arcade popularity, MKII was the peak. You never had to queue up to play MK3
MKII was the peak.
K0RP53 um, no. While mk2 is loved like crazy, mk3 made way more money at arcades and home systems then mk2 did. And the fact that this video is calling mk3 a dud is laughable. Yes it's looked down among fans, mainly bc of lack of scorpion and other popular characters, but a dud? Far from it.
Yeah, MK3 was far from a dud. Everyone was playing it like crazy. MK4 on the other hand...
As a kid who started playing on MK1, seeing this game for the first time in arcades blew my mind. Specifically when I first saw someone run towards another player and execute a big combo. It was so brutal and amazing to see.
> bashing stryker
> calling MK4 a flop
> not acknowledging UMK3 as one of the greatest fighting games ever
*inhale*…………….BOI
Stryker wasn't bad at a high level. I didn't agree with his styling, I mean it looks like the guy is holding onto his pants leg to do a roundhouse kick. LOL. but UMK3 is amazing!
He looks like a bike cop from that late 90's tv show Pacific Blue. Stryker su-su-su-su-su-SUUUUUUUUUCKED.
UMK3 was like a gameplay downgrade of MK3. And there's a better version of UMK3 - TRILOGY.
Well Stryker was super lame in mk3 but all the other points were vaild
@TheDealSealer trilogy has literally the same cancer ai as umk3. Mk3 had great ai. Thus its the best "3" version. There were no loading times on pc. Rain was easy to beat as ai. Smoke op? He is literally just scorpion reskin. You either never played this game or you just try to find ANY counter arguments against trilogy but you fail.
"Tearing off their heads is not the best way for kids to spend their time." LMMFAO!!!!!!!!
I loved MK from the beginning. Yes, MK1 could have used a more intricate combo system and some additional gameplay mechanics to keep the fighting fresh, but I still love it...even today, I love it and LOVE how much the MK series has evolved since then.
I remember playing this on Playstation and being bown away. The crystal clear graphics, presentation, cd sound. They could finally do do arcade perfect ports for home consoles. Amazing experience.
Bowjob
Mortal Kombat 3 was one of the reasons to own a PS1 and not a Saturn. Sony paid a price that Paid off. Lots of people would have got a Saturn if it had MK3 during the holiday of 1995...
Yeah i had MK3 for Snes and i loved it and mk trilogy for ps1 love that as well
You make no sense. Saturn had Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 which was a better version of Mortal Kombat 3. Saturn failed for a lot of reasons, but not having Mortal Kombat 3 was not one of them. lol
@@pauldavis5665 I think the Saturn version came out like a year later. I may be mistaken.
Saturn had UMK3 and MK Trilogy. It was not some huge dealbreaker.
"Arcade Dud"?
MK3 came out in the arcades when I was 11-12, and it was ALWAYS the most popular cabinet in any arcade.
I watched the video to find out why it was considered a "dud", but didn't hear any sort of argument outside of, "I thought the fatalities looked silly"..
Okay..?
Going to file this one under clickbait.
It was the whole reason I wanted to go to the local mall arcade. You kidding me?
I know, right? This whole video is just one big rewrite of history. Bandwagoners bashing MK3. You and I are the same age, we both remember how much attention it got and was pretty awesome for its time. UMK3 still gets online matches after 20 years.
You had to wait in line to play up against the guy that's been beating everybody else and then he just kicks your ass. At least that's how I remember it in the arcades.
100% agree. Same here.
It was less successful than both it's predecessors. So in that sense it was a dud.
I really really think that UMK3 is the best classic MK game ever. Maybe I'm blinded by nostalgia but I still enjoy it to this day. And Trilogy was even better.
Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 is my favorite in the series.
I liked MK Trilogy. Was do overwhelming but so good lol
Mine was MK2 followed by UMK3
There's a lot of inaccuracies in this review.
First the home ports of MK3 were not published by Acclaim. MK3 marked the first time Williams Entertainment did the publishing, and they used Sculptured Software to develop the home ports.
Also the graphics of MK improved with each new edition with there being a huge leap in the digital Sprite detail between the 2 year gap from MKII to MK3.
The theme of MK3 is the combat is taking place on Earth, it's told in the storyline for peaks sake. That's why you see subway, the street, bridge etc.
I personally like the style they used which I recall recognizing at the time was the game taking a modern approach, hence their use hip-hop sampling of some of the background stages that add to the allure that you are fighting in the current real world as oppose to the Outworld, which is where MKII was based. Not sure how you didn't see this. Looking back now their use of a modern theme gives MK3 a 90s feel to it, which would be worth pointing out if you didn't see it as dull.
vh9network Great comment. The design and tone of MK3 was the best of the original trilogy. It’s the point in the series where you can tell that the creators were getting very inspired and branching away from Kung fu cliches. We all love Kung fu cliches (they were still present in MK3) but it was overall a much more creative project. This also marks the first game in the series where the characters branch outside of being just standard archetypes. The first two games’ characters were literally a series of archetypes that John Tobias jotted down in notebooks. Liu Kang = Hero, Raiden = Mentor, Scorpion = Hunter, Sub-Zero = Hunted, Sonya = “the girl”, Jax = “the black guy”, etc. MK3 was the first to offer a bit more variety, motive, and creativity with the characters.
The home versions of Mortal Kombat 3 were published by Acclaim in Europe (except for the PlayStation version, which Sony handled).
But yeah, this video is off about when Midway took total control of its properties in the consumer market. Midway released few arcade games between when it acquired Tradewest and when its first right of refusal licensing deal with Acclaim ended in anticipation of Midway entering the consumer video game market itself.
Marco Polo Because the island was a kind of extension of the outworld. MK3 takes place on the streets.
Don't you love how almost nobody who makes youtube videos about video games knows what the fuck they're talking about? We have such a shitty, inaccurate history of video games that nobody knows what they're talking about. They always get something wrong.
I like MK3's style but i do miss the Shaw bros/Wuxia aesthetic that MK use to have.
I thought I was the only one who appreciated the image of Joe Lieberman holding a Justifier.
BlizzardOfTheCoast - SNES lightgun for Lethal Enforcers. I remember you had to order the pink, player 2 gun directly from Konami and it connected with a telephone-looking plug into the bottom of the blue, player 1 gun. I hated daisy-chain controller crap, like the 3DO had.
Arcade dud my ass. MK3 was amazing. Yes the MK3 game on PS1 was awesome too. The latter half of this video is just cherry picking.
Yeah, I don't know where he gets off by saying it was a dud.
I know where I lived, MK3 was really popular.
Kids were cutting class to play it in the day time because at night, there
was a big line to play from all the adults getting off from work. lol
This dude pulls facts out of his ass. "Arcade Dud"? It was a smash, as big as MKll. "Made the PS1 successful"? Say what? It got released on PS1 MUCH LATER than when it hit other consoles. Everyone had it already. It sold small numbers on the PS1.
MK3 was amazing. The setting was fantastic, especially back in 1995. It felt very modern and realistic.
Agreed
You sound like you were born at a very young age
That PS startup sound is like a time vortex, transporting one back in time over 20 years. Taking a breath during the sound amplifies the effect.
Even I, that was a die hard Nintendo fan, and despised Sony and the PS1, today, feels nostalgic of that era and the war between Saturn, PS1 and N64. The Saturn intro too, make me feel nostalgic.
God, that Playstation 1 intro brought back so many memories.
While mk3 was a bump in mk history, to say it was a dud or showed mk was declining in arcades is straight up laughable.
shinnox right, there’s no way
shinnox mk3 was a dud, that's why they brought out umk3 and trilogy. Mk4 was the worst
MK3 didn't bomb or anything but it did leave a bad taste in some player's mouths. I still remember a lot of my friends back in the day would play it like crazy but would also talk about how MKII was better. I was 10 years old when it was released and while I liked some of the changes, I thought a lot of the fatalities were stupidly retarded and weren't worth the time to try and learn. If I thought that at the age of 10, I can only imagine how a lot of 15-20 year olds would have felt. It was a fun game, yet also a flawed one.
I think Mortal Kombat 3 like a modern Call of Duty game. It still made money and people played the hell out of it, but it really did start the decline of the series. In my opinion, Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 is the sequel everybody wanted and that's what Midway should have put out the first time. It also didn't help that there was an over saturation of Mortal Kombat-related media and merchandising by 1995. I think a lot of people just got sick of it.
Huh? When a game company opts to create variations of a certain game, it's not because it was a dud. It's because it was good... Street Fighter 2 is the most famous reference. If the game was a dud, they would opt to rebuild it from the ground up ASAP.
YITT Except Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 was released only 7 months after Mortal Kombat 3. At least most updates of Street Fighter II occurred yearly.
Is there anything behind the story this game was also created because of how terrible the PS1 port of Mortal Kombat 2 was?
Larry Bundy Jr? What are you doing here? HELLO, YOU!
What made the PS1 version of MK2 so bad?
MK2 for psx came out in 96 only in Japan due to japan being behind on the MK fever and also it was a contract agreement for that terriory only with Acclaim and Probe being the developer. MK3 for psx was then bought by Sony for exlusive publishing rights. This meant that due to the hype of the Playstation, Sony wanted a heavy hitter for the holidays with a known fighting game which was MK. Also, the movie came out that year so getting in on the profit was the goal here.
@@RossWyatt Are UA-camrs not allowed to have interests outside of the content they produce?
@Damar Fadlan Yo, how are you
@@RossWyatt MKIII on PS1 changed gaming forever for PS1. Too bad that it was never appeared in Playstation Classic mini console.
This was the number 1 game we were trading at school. Most people I knew playing this had a Super Nintendo at the time too.
I can't believe how lucky I was having MK2 and MK3 on PC. Its ports are probably the best out there.
Don't forget about Trilogy.
MK3 1995 was huge hype then..very nice
You lost me at the title. I was in the arcades when mk3 was current and it was most definitely NOT a dud in any way. Everywhere I went those machines were jam packed. I will however watch the rest of your video for laughs.
It's the UA-cam MK3 bashing bandwagon. They likely weren't even alive to have played it at the time.
Dang the nostalgia from hearing that PlayStation sound
How was MK3 a "dud"? It and the "Ultimate" version were pretty popular, big hits from my memory, actually being there when they were new. In fact, I remember the night they put UMK3 in my local mall arcade, there was a HUGE crowd around the game as some dude sat there and beat it. Everyone was cheering when we put on the "Supreme Demonstration", which showed all the finishing moves. Good times.
On a side note, the N64 port of MK Trilogy was nearly arcade perfect, especially compared to the PS1 version with it's (still persistent) loading issues. Except for one thing: the sound was atrocious. It seriously sounded as bad as the Sega Genesis ports. And it wasn't even the fact that N64 lacked CD audio. Plenty of other games, including the home port of another Midway hit, NBA Hangtime, had WAY better sound. The in their rushed development cycle, the development team just cut corners, I guess, and included shitty 16-bit sounding audio. BAD 16-bit audio (as SNES had a lot of great sounding games too). Otherwise, MK Trilogy on N64 was a great game (if you could get beyond the AI being an asshole).
I remember Scorpion & Reptile being huge fan favorites. "Get Over Here" was such an iconic line. What was Midway thinking removing them from MK3? When UMK3 came out I remember as a kid already feeling like the franchise had become saturated.
I still have the PC CD-Rom version of Mortal Kombat 3 for DoS, good old memories.
1. Completely ignores the presence of the SNES MKs.2. The PS1 version was also ported to Windows (not the MSDOS version of MK3)3. MK3 was not irrelevant fast. Wtf are you talking about? It was promoted like crazy. In the Mk movie, spinoff vhs movie, comics. It was hype!! The series even reached a younger audience at this point. If anything , MK Gold/ Sub Zero mythology / and special forces were slowing down MK by the end of the 90s.4. If fans had a problem with MK3. It was the lack of ninjas, sub zeros design was frowned upon AT RELEASE! now Mk3 is considered a classic. Those complaints lead up to the "expansions". UMK3 and MK:Trilogy which were all received very well by fans. However in the long run / competition scene MKT is the weaker of them in terms of balance.5. Mk4 was not a flop. WTF are you saying? Mk4 had a successful arcade tour before launch. Some fans actually like MK4 vs MK3 because to some it felt like the mythical days of MK2 in terms of its atmosphere. Midway had one more MK related arcade game called the grid in 2000. Which featured MK4 based characters and it played like a third person smash tv. Now that game was a flop because gaming was heading out of the arcades and into the consoles with the sixth generation of gaming (wrapping up the 5th).6. Acclaim did not have the license to MK3 ports. All were done by Williams / sculptured software (except windows/ps1). So Snes, Dos, Sega Genesis, Game Gear, Master System, etc...research your shit a bit more.
You sound like someone who wasn't even there.
MK3 sucked shit; always did; always will.
Nothing will come near what MKI and MKII did in terms of getting kids excited for jamming quarters wherever they could find a machine; let alone the home releases.
Why the fuck are you still around
Hipster Black Metal's account fits my experience, outside of MK4 not being a flop. Maybe it sold well to arcades, but there was no one actually playing it here. War Gods killed all hype for future 3D Midway arcade fighters.
Hipster Black Metal - Few seem to remember Mortal Kombat Gold on Dreamcast, that was a much improved MK4. It added great characters like Baraka & Kung Lao, and improved on the shoddy graphics of the PS1 port. I had a lot of fun with PS1 MK4 and Dreamcast MK Gold. People still request the return of Reiko and we even got Tanya as MKX dlc; Both were MK4 new characters. Quan Chi, a very popular MK character, also debuted in MK4. The game's speed was solid and I liked the weapon implementation. Fatalities in 4 were generally better than MK3.
I mean, I know where I was, the game was HUGE in arcades. So I'm not sure what he is talking about, but I do agree that it wasn't as well received critically as MK 2 was in its run. Still, I even think the flop didn't really occur until after 4. 4 wasn't as big, but I still remember it getting hype because of how they moved into the 3D style for the first time.
I have brain damage that causes memory loss. Hearing the playstation 1 intro brought back a flood of memories and now I'm emotional because I really miss those days and realized how much I've forgotten and I know that shortly after I write this I'll forget a lot of what I just remembered lol
Mk3 was huge back then and a great game I still loves these old mk's over the new 3d crap. I wish they would make a modern mk with HD digital characters.
Guys, he's only saying MK3 is a dud compared to MK2 and I totally agree with him. MK1 was ground breaking with its gore and fatalities, MK2 perfected that concept by adding multiple fatalities, friendships, babalities and pit stage fatalities. And they were all well thought through and animated. Like the first time I saw the Pit II fatality, mind blown. The leap from MK1 to MK2 was gigantic. MK3 gave us some new gameplay features, such as combos and the run button, but no one had been waiting for that. It's always been about the gore and fatalities, and the only thing new to MK3 were the poor animalities. Additionally, the fatalities felt very cheap and some characters were dull, exactly how this video described it. I grew up playing MK1 and MK2 in the arcades and I really wanted to like MK3 just as much as I liked MK2, but it just didn't work. The magic was gone. I had seen it all, and better executed as well.
MK3 was in no way a dud. When it came out for a year afterwards there were LINES virtually every day from open to close for people waiting to play the game in the arcade. You need to check facts...
I was there in the arcades it was not as popular as the first 2.
Tobey Starburst I was there in the arcades too, it was twice as popular. You’re remembering things wrong
Mortal Monday...Fuck I feel old 😢.
8:35 - "Beating out contenders like Kileak and Total Eclipse: Turbo." What a feat!
I always thought Sub-Zero looked like David Hasslehoff in Mortal Kombat 3 (on the select menu). I'll always be the most fond of Mortal Kombat II. That game made an impact on me like no other game. And when Nintendo released it on SNES with all blood and fatalities, I went ape crap.
I spent hundreds of hours with my friends playing the galaga game unlock in MK3, it was so fricking fun
Mortal Kombat Trilogy!!! It was a Playstation exclusive that was an upgrade to Ultra MK3. Such a value. Easily one of the best fighters on the PS1. I geeked out on this game as a teen, and still love it on emulation.
mk trilogy was on n64, pc and saturn also
@@shyguy85 Ah. I suppose I assumed it was ps1 only. I didn't have a pc at all back then let alone one in the living room. I was a big Shang Tsung player, pc would have been nice, cause ps1 would freeze when you transformed into another player since it was CD only, not enough ram I guess or they didn't program that into ram.
Sonya and Kano didn't skip out on MKII ........ They're literally chained up in the background of one of the stages.
RAPEand DEATH .... KILL
0:01 Oh.... jesus that feels GOOOOD, that PS1 startup sound.
Still funny to see a MK game without Scorpion...
What were they thinking?!
iPlaySEGA ed boon himself said scorpion is his favorite character... weird
And giving us instead that dud of a character called Stryker... WTF?
Perhaps the biggest flaw with MK3 and Ultimate MK3 was the fact that Raiden and Johnny Cage were absent in both games, especially since they were my two most favorite characters in the series.
9:42
Um, you could unlock Smoke in the original arcade version with the Ultimate Kombat Kode :V
I mean, it was only the biggest thing that Midway constantly advertised about the game
Kaihedgie - Cyber-Smoke. He was way toned down in UMK3, along with Kabal. Human Smoke was hidden in UMK3.
And there must have been a setting in the aracde game to make him a regular character, because I remember playing as him multiple times at Scandia arcade in Fairfield, California. I remember pulling off his 'blow up the world' fatality, and I definitely didn't put any codes in to play as him.
Either someone flipped the DIP switch or had unlocked it legitimately and left it like that :V
@@yittmashups Once someone used the Ultimate Kombat Kode it perma unlocked the character, but yes there was a setting in the games test menu to enable him.
Yeah, he was probably the most popular character around where I'd play at. Someone unlocked him on the machine, and people would always get Smoke and do his uppercut combo.
MK3 was super popular and most kids really liked the dial-a-combo system from Killer Instinct. I dumped a bunch of money into them, and they were pervasive, because MKII was huge as well.
It's funny how mk had to wait until mk9 to be super popular again.
actually those ps2 games did well. positively reviewed and sold well. popular for you maybe
@@mrrogers88 Deception, Deadly Alliance and Armageddon weren't drawing in hundreds of pre orders per store. 9 revived the hype.
Minor correction: Mortal Kombat#1 (both arcade and just about every home port, all of which I played hundreds of hours of back in the day when they were released) has LOADS of different combos. They actually differ depending on which version you are playing. And they are mostly accidental, just like the unintentional combos in Street Fighter II. In both games the combos occur as inputs cancel out animations, later this became a standard feature in fighting games, but on purpose instead of by accident.
Yeah, it was such a dud, that it spawned several sequels, right up to current consoles, made a fortune overall, and is still one the best fighting game series out there, if not the best.
MK3 is not one of the best fighting games dumb fuck.
I'm feeling the Mandela Effect pretty hard here, I could swear Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 was on the Playstation at some point.
wow I didn't know about the legal disputes with the actors going from MK1 to MK2.... I had heard about the Daniel Pesina thing from a certain twitch stream several months ago someone playing Bloodstorm in MAME... but I guess that would explain the abscence of those characters in MK2!
Great retrospective, I love this series.
*MK2 to MK3
"According to experts... for kids... tearing off others' heads is not the best way to spend their time."
Thank you kind experts for your enlightening study into video-game violence... here I am 30 years later and I am a completely normal adjusted person who has only ripped off 1 person's head my entire life. MY ENTIRE LIFE.
Yeah i got mk3 on Megadrive! wasn't until i bought my Sega saturn and imported Ultimate MK3 with the Converter to play it on Pal. Now that version was arcade perfect!
I remember being a kid, came home from school one day and my dad got me this game along with the strategy guide, what a day, what a game.
I'm not going to comment on the "MK3 was a dud" thing, everyone else has already lambasted you enough over it... but I will say; Mortal Kombat Trilogy is, hands down, the best and greatest MK title yet.
... and man, hearing that PS1 bootup sound gives me delicious shivers. Spectacular machine with a legendary, unrivalled, catalogue.
one thing you really can't say in a MK game or almost any fighting game...."dude put a shirt on"
"Itsa little too violent I think"
PIMP SLAP
@4:30 love the placement of the Early Childhood rating on that guy's head. It's like calling him childish especially with him holding dat goofy gun lol.
What the hell is this guy talking about he wrong on so many levels
Shut up, you fake Arab.
You're also the reason some are ok with being racist.
Muhammad Muwwakkil agreed
YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO ADRIAN
@@SumDumGai5 Grow up bud, you sound like a child. The guy only posted his opinion in the beginning. It is not until after you posted a comment that is typical of a child's mentality that he revealed he is also childish.
Those years are gone, but we will never forget their greatness.
Never
Odd that the SNES version of MK2 was notable as the first game Nintendo allowed to be released uncensored, yet it was censored in Japan, and then neither 16-bit port of either MK3 edition was released in Japan, as well the Game Gear port of MK3 became a rare EU-only release.
Didn't know SNES MK2 was censored in Japan, that's interesting! I guess it didn't sell well enough to justify bringing over MK3. There was also a Sega Master System version of MK3 amazingly enough, though it was only released in Brazil. Such a weird release history!
MK2 on SNES was only different because America introduced a formal ratings system for games, and from then on Nintendo games could have blood etc (in america) and have an appropriate rating. Ultimately Nintendo didn't want to lose money/sales in comparison with the first MK on Genesis. But without the ratings system being introduced, MK2 on SNES would have been censored for sure. Without the competition of Sega, we most likely would not have got to enjoy the awesome snes version of MKII with full fatalities, blood etc.
Jonny Sorensen The ESRB wasn't yet established when the 16-bit versions of MKII released. The Genesis version still used Sega's VRC age rating on the box and SNES's went with a generic age advisory label in the corner of its box (only US SNES game to have one I believe).
The MK3 cabinets at our arcade were always taken! If it was a dud, then I'd love to make a game like that one!
Is there any connection to Sony pushing out MK3 as the PS1 port of MK2 was so terrible, it was only ever released in Japan? But I believe Ultimate MK3 never came out on PS1 as Sega paid for it to be "next gen" exclusive for the Saturn, remember reading it in Gamesmaster magazine.
But by huge coincidence, I just bought one of Midway's PS2 Tool development consoles off eBay last week, pretty cheap ATM too.
Hey Larry! It looks like PS1 MK2 arrived in Japan in late 1996, though development was probably completed earlier that year, given that the Saturn port launched in March of '96. It's possible that Sony saw how badly MK2 was shaping up on the PS1 before deciding to go in-house for MK3.
I also heard that the Saturn version of UMK3 was a paid exclusive, but I couldn't track down a definitive statement confirming that was the case. Interestingly Saturn UMK3 reused a lot of assets from PS1 MK3 (the menu system, etc) and some speculate that it used the same Sony-funded engine and codebase. Pretty wild times for Midway.
Yep, that's the one. It loads certain animations and voice samples mid-match, and gameplay freezes whenever that happens. Not a great idea for a fighting game!
Larry we meet again...
UMK3 came out on the Genesis.
Right. My point was that it ended up not being exclusive to Saturn.
You know where you were when you saw an MK cabinet for the first time.
MK3 was one of the first games I got with my psx.
For some years I was going around referring to the Animalities as Beastalities before I realized my mistake.
MK never lost me 🤔
Damn i love that sound..awesome games for me were
-dead in the water (like a boat version of twisted metal)
-army men world war 1 n 2 also air attack 1 n 2
-dino crisis
-forsaken.
Too many actually
Pit Fighter started all this
Well yeah, but Pit Fighter was pretty ass
No, Street Fighter II did. Pit Fighter only started the pre-rendered characters bit, which was inevitable during the time period. That game was such crap.
Mortal Kombat is barely any better than Pit Fighter.
ASS fighter... RAPE fighter
Another inaccuracy is that MK3 16bit cartridge version had only 15 playable characters. It had 17. You could play as Shao Khan and Motaro as well.
I saved for a long time for a 3D0 because they advertised MK3. Then it was cancelled and I heard about a Nintendo/Sony CD system coming out. I bought the Playstation Day 1 and waited what seemed like an eternity for MK3. I loved it but the load times were terrible.
All the games load times on PS1 were atrocious.. I could go make a sandwich and eat it while waiting for The Need For Speed to load. 😂😂
Thanks for taking the time to produce this video.
This was an excellent look at the game and its history. Great work. And I'm looking forward to your look at WWF Wrestlemania!
I may be wrong, but hoping he's not one of those people who has no knowledge of wrestling from that time period, and does a review. He got a few things wrong about the MK3 stuff, so I am skeptical about him talking on a WWF game.
The days of freedom. So nostalgic.
That mortal Kombat game that kid sounds guilty
That ps1 sound really takes me back, old school!
Mortal Kombat did not have the same fluid movements and attacks of Street fighter.Street fighter was a better made game, Mortal kombat was only realistic graphics and blood.I think it looks cool but Street fighter had better movements and special moves.
What I discovered later on is the first two Mortal Kombat games have juggled combos if timed right. Having the Super Nintendo version, the gameplay on the first one is completely nerfed, as if censoring the game wasn’t enough, making juggle combos nearly impossible.
That combobreaker in Killer Instinct was a lifesaver
Dude, Playstation was in no way responsible for MK coming to home consoles. you're thinking of SEGA and SNES. Sony was the next-to-last adopter of MK, only followed by XBOX. Nice try though buddy. Better research next time, maybe?
Drummerrific Bob Watch the video...this is about how the PSOne version came to be the unique/exclusove port it was...and that's bc Sony paid out the ass to make that happen.
i had the genesis version and it was very good,not arcade quality but very good.
I played mortal kombat on sega genesis and still have the game and console with no cords to this day
That ps1 intro sounds like it came from the Roland JD990. So iconic and classic!
Arcade dud ?
Mk3 was the best fighting game ever made besides street fighter 2 challenger edition. I personally think the combo addition was freaking bad ass. Part 1 and even part 2 was too slow and stiff in comparison. Put 3 was a waaaaaay. Faster n better improvement
It was a dud dumb fuck.
Yep, I remember Mortal Monday. My dad took me to Toys R Us and we got the Genesis version.
I'd like to be the first to say *TOASTYYYY*
That opening fanfare for Playstation 1 is just beautiful.
MK3 was nothing even close to a "dud."
Bland! That's the word I've been trying to find for the last 25 years. Thank you.
Who's excited for Mortal Kombat 11? 😊
The sound effects of doing combos in MK3 (UMK3) just had a certain... punch to it ( i suppose pun intended ) that aren't in the other games that made making those combos ever sweeter. Sort of bassy....but just impact was awesome. I would love to see Netherealm release a true Arcade port of MK3 (or UMK3) on Steam. I would buy that in a heart beat.
"Dud"? It absolutely wasn't. There was stiff competition at the arcades back then among players and within the industry. So this is a slander piece on the UA-cam BANDWAGON against the best game of the series, tied with the modified update of UMK3. Saying that punch/kick combos were emphasizing memorization over skill is a false dichotomy, it's apples to oranges. The game takes tremendous skill to be good at, or you never played competitively. There is never supposed to be 'balance' in fighting games, some characters have an advantage, especially when pitted against other characters. Putting combos in the game spiced things up over everyone trying to uppercut that made MK1 and 2 look boring. Where are fighting games today? They all have punch/kick combos. Also the run button made MK1 and 2 look slow by comparison, EVERY game now has a quick dart or full out run/dash towards your opponent, so don't bash the run button, it has become a necessary mechanic. 20+ years later, UMK3 still has an online presence that was ignited when the xbox 360 released it as a standalone port with online matchmaking in 2006.
Thank you!
People act like dial-a-combo doesn't take skill.
MK3 was one of those games where it's "cool" to say it was the worst when actually MK4 was the worst!
Funny thing about MK4 is that they took away the combo strings and made it 3d and retained the popular
characters from the first game. It still sucked!
So all that crap about why MK3 was not good was just that...crap!
I remembered big crowds every time I went to arcades.
Playlist iPhone Yep, we agree, MK4 sucked and looked goofy. They tried to take the CGI approach and make it 3d and gave weapons. People just jump on the youtube bandwagon of bashing MK3/UMK3 and forget that 4 ever existed.
MK3 brought mechanics that have become industry standards. Running or darting at your opponent. Serious air juggling didn't exist before MK3. Dial-a-combo came the same time as Killer Instinct, but nobody bashes that franchise for it.
Mostly Accurate Reviews
I respect Killer Instinct but let's be real,
Mortal Kombat inspired KI the most.
There was a bunch of MK wannabes in the 90s and KI was the only one that survived
MK3 is the best game in the series?? Hahahahahahhahaha!!!!!! Not even close dude. What a joke.
Bob Cook,
not sure how old you are but lets put the statement in it's rightful context.
How are we measuring what's the best?
I'll tell you what makes Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 the greatest;
Back when MK3 was released in arcades, it was king. And trust and believe
they had lots of competition from games like Killer Instinct, Tekken 2, Street Fighter Alpha 2, Marvel vs Capcom, etc.
Sony was able to pick up early rights to release MK3 on Playstation so now, you
can play MK3 all you want at home, right?
Midway decides to upgrade MK3 to UMK3 in the arcade and people still wanted to play it!
It was very popular.
With that said, let me ask you Bob, as great as MKXL is in all it's glory, do you really believe that
it could achieve the same success in today's video game climate that UMK3 did back then?
Lets say Neatherrealm came out with Ultimate MKXL and they added characters like Terminator and RoboCop and a bunch of other stuff not in the MKXL, to make it more appealing. Do you think it would be a hit if it showed up at an arcade like Dave and Busters?
I remember the dissapointment in my heart when I got this for sega. You couldn't even play it without a 6 button controller
The kast for MK 3 cast one of the best ! idk why people were whining
Flynn Livescmd not to mention there was a SHIT load of fatalities including stage.
The new characters were bland, the moves stupid (running past someone and making them spin around like a Looney Tunes cartoon?), and the fatalities lost their dark edge in favour of stupid slapstick scenarios. The gameplay had some neat new dynamics, but this entry in the series sorely compromised Mortal Kombat’s core “otherworldly” aesthetic, and she’s a lot of fans as a result.
*shed a lot of fans
i still remember playing the ps1 demo disk i got with my ps1 that had metal gear on it
Man, I totally remember the incredible hype and subsequent lukewarm reception of MK3. I think at least half the issues of EGM that year had MK3 on the cover. Then the game came out and it instantly looked outdated and cheesy next to stuff like Toshinden and Virtua Fighter 2.
Kinda crazy to think how digitized graphics were considered super cutting edge but then almost completely forgotten over the course of around 3 years.
professors84 it wasn't that digitized graphics weren't awesome anymore. I thought wrestlemania the arcade game was amazing at the time. It's just that mk3 was just an awful game. Mk2 was the pinnacle of the series, even to this day. I think an arcade perfect port of mk2 would've done better than mk3
EGM itself even made fun of itself for so much MK3/UMK3 coverage years later.
That's funny because Toshiden is damn Near unplayable today, hasn't aged gracefully at all. It was the worst 3D fighter. The fighting game that took over from the late 90s was Tekken, it took the crown from MK that held it with its 2D digital fighters. This video author is off in not pointing out how Mortal Kombat never did find its footing in the late 90s to transition to 3D. MK4 flopped because gamers recognized that Tekken was a better 3D fighting game.
The funny thing is that MK3 still looks cool as fuck and those first 3D fighters look like garbage now.
stratogustav exactly!
Is there something wrong with the Super NES version of Mortal Kombat 3? It seems the game punishes you for being good. After I defeat one opponent with relative ease, the second fighter in the tournament totally rips me apart in a matter of seconds! The moment the match begins, the fighter instantly runs up to me and combos me to death before I have a chance to do anything. When I lose, hit continue and return to the tournament however, the fighter is back to being easier (way less combo-happy). This pattern persists for the entire tournament, which means I go back and forth between losing, winning, losing, winning, etc. It seems the Playstation and Genesi s version are a little nicer in this regard.
Jump kick someone to death. Watch them fall over to stand back up.
Just to fall over again. MK3 was bad. The controls were stiff and unresponsive.
The only thing it had going for it was the title.
Saved by the grace of mk4 and 3d arenas.
Mortal Kombat 3 was a step sideways after the killing the sequel made.
Yes it was popular in the arcade. So was NBA Jam, Tekken 3, and Street Fighter. They were just better games.
Richard Gesegnet have to agree with this. The graphics were nice, the stages were awesome, the fatalities were cool, the roster was phat. The gameplay? Pfft. Wooden and unresponsive compared to SF2 or KI
I had this on ps 1, i got a triple bundle when buying the ps1. I also had battle tosinda and ridge racer. Nostalgia at its best!
"Riiiiiidge Racer!"