THE MORTAL KOMBAT NETWORK

ULTIMATE MORTAL KOMBAT 3 REVIEW

by Vladimir Legkostup

:: Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 is an improved version of mk3, firstly produced for the Arcades and then translated for Genesis, Snes and Saturn. Was the appearance of UMK3 necessary? Sure. MK3 had all favours of perfect fighting except that some favourite main characters like Scorpion and Reptile, and thus the legendary "Toasty" and Reptile's Acid, were left out. UMK3 improved the situation

More than that, Kitana, Mileena, Masked Sub-Zero, Human Smoke and Jade came back again. And Noob-Saibot became a full-fledget fighter, not a recoulored copy of other characters. Besides the returning classical fighters, new ones appeared too in UMK3: Rain and Ermac-two ninjas, each of them having magic abilities and great power.(teleport ball of Rain is the strongest magic in the game)

New play modes were also added in the UMK3 game: 2 on 2 kombat (a team kombat for 2 players), 8 players tournaments (to create your own tournament), Endurance (with matches from mk1, but more exciting and complicated). There also appeared a sinister new finishing move, Brutality ( smashing a rival all over the screen), off course new stories for every new character, new backgrounds and lots of secrets. UMK3 for Saturn is made on a high level, however, realization of 16 bit makes you feel dissapointed.The game appeared to be too big for Genesis and Snes. As a result of it, the programmers had to cut out some backgrounds and to make the rest of them less complicated. They also had to diminish the fighters' figures and to cut out all animality! Even a whole personage: Sheeva, was deleted! Bugs came instead. Everybody knows the "secrets" of jumping over the computer rivals and of the extra background in the sky. I think these are not the planned tricks, but the mistakes of the programming codes. One more shortcoming is that some fighters have only one Fatality move while Noob Saibot and Rain have none at all. Taking into consideration all the above mentioned, the game could be considered a complete failure, but you should remember that UMK3 is the last original mk for 16 bit. Thank Midway for this unperfect, but still so neccesary conversion. UMK3 is a game finishing 16-bit and opening 32-bit era. It looks into the future!