Mortal Kombat Games on the Saturn

[shaddow085]

I am having quite a blast now with MK 11 on the PS4 and I want to get o know the old MK games a bit better.

So I wonder what are your thoughts about the  old Mortal Kombat Games on the Saturn?

Are they worth getting/playing or would it better to look somewhere else?

I also have a PSX, Mega Drive/Mega CD and Dreamcast.

The Mega CD Version of the first MK seems to be interesting as well. Not sure about the Price Point of that Version though.

For now I want to focus more on the Saturn to be honest and consider the other consoles only if the Saturn Version really sucks.

Would be pleased  hearing some opinions. 

[assman]

MK2 is a crap port. It looks great, but everything else is off-kilter (remixed music, botched gameplay, missing voice samples, etc.). The PS1 version is based on it, but with better music and more voice samples. Unfortunately, there really just wasn't a good near-arcade-perfect port of MK2 on consoles, despite how massively popular it was and having fully capable hardware to port it to.

Ultimate MK3 is a relatively decent port, although it's basically just a port of PS1 MK3 with the updated content added to it. What this means is that a lot of gameplay tweaks and re-balancing from UMK3 arcade didn't make it to the Saturn port, although the average person won't notice this. This is by far the best non-emulation console port of the game.

MK Trilogy is a simple port of the PS1 version. I think it's more than worth playing, but there's absolutely no reason to get it over the PS version (especially the Greatest Hits version which had bugfixes and tweaks).

MK1 CD is quite a bit improved over the Genesis/MD version (more voice samples, more frames of animation, more background detail, and the original arcade soundtrack-- although a number of tracks are missing and what's there is often misplaced). It's still a weak representation of the arcade game graphically, but overall this is the best non-emulation console port of the game. You can also burn a copy of the game since the Sega CD hardware has no copy protection.

If I were you and didn't want play the games on MAME, I'd probably just get the MK Arcade Kollection (I have no idea if it's playable on the PS4; it was originally released for PS3, 360 and PC). It has its own issues (mostly sound glitches), but you're at least getting the original arcade versions (in emulated form).

[shaddow085]

Thanks a lot for the advice. Yeah the Arcade Collection sounds interesting. I will check out if is available for the Ps4. If not it would not be a big problem. Still have PS3 and also a 360 in working order.

[sych]

Jul 16, 2020 17:38:27 GMT shaddow085 said:

Thanks a lot for the advice. Yeah the Arcade Collection sounds interesting. I will check out if is available for the Ps4. If not it would not be a big problem. Still have PS3 and also a 360 in working order.

Last time I checked Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection was on the PS3 PS Store. I'd say get that and don't bother with any Saturn version. Saturn UMK3 is decent but not brilliant.

[shaddow085]

Thanks for the advice. I got it by now.

[flex]

Jul 16, 2020 17:18:19 GMT assman said:

MK2 is a crap port. It looks great, but everything else is off-kilter (remixed music, botched gameplay, missing voice samples, etc.). The PS1 version is based on it, but with better music and more voice samples. Unfortunately, there really just wasn't a good near-arcade-perfect port of MK2 on consoles, despite how massively popular it was and having fully capable hardware to port it to.

Ultimate MK3 is a relatively decent port, although it's basically just a port of PS1 MK3 with the updated content added to it. What this means is that a lot of gameplay tweaks and re-balancing from UMK3 arcade didn't make it to the Saturn port, although the average person won't notice this. This is by far the best non-emulation console port of the game.

MK Trilogy is a simple port of the PS1 version. I think it's more than worth playing, but there's absolutely no reason to get it over the PS version (especially the Greatest Hits version which had bugfixes and tweaks).

MK1 CD is quite a bit improved over the Genesis/MD version (more voice samples, more frames of animation, more background detail, and the original arcade soundtrack-- although a number of tracks are missing and what's there is often misplaced). It's still a weak representation of the arcade game graphically, but overall this is the best non-emulation console port of the game. You can also burn a copy of the game since the Sega CD hardware has no copy protection.

If I were you and didn't want play the games on MAME, I'd probably just get the MK Arcade Kollection (I have no idea if it's playable on the PS4; it was originally released for PS3, 360 and PC). It has its own issues (mostly sound glitches), but you're at least getting the original arcade versions (in emulated form).

I have the 32x version of MK2 and its great! Easily the best port in my eyes shame the Saturn version didn't live up.

[Team Andromeda]

Mortal Kombat Ultimate on the Saturn is incredible, much better than the PS version and you also have the Saturn's incredible 6 button pad.

[zyrobs]

Note that all the Saturn MK games benefit a lot if you have an ODE. It removes the CD drive seek times, and this can make a lot of difference. MK2 loads a lot DURING the fight for some reason, but with an ODE you almost don't realize that this is happening, while with a vanilla Saturn it lags the fight a lot. Things like the music change on finishing moves will be faster too.

MK Trilogy is better on the Playstation because they really built it with that in mind, some things like transparency effects are poor meshes on the Saturn.

Also worth noting that no console port, except maybe the later emulated ones, run any Mortal Kombat game at the native resolution. They all run at a lower resolution with downscaled sprites. The original arcade machines used a medium resolution, and they have much more detail than any other console port until they made emulated compilations.