Mortal Kombat II: The Tournament of All Tournaments

Yes, we have played this game over and over to death already. We first experienced its debut on arcade back in 1994, then again on home consoles thereafter, then again in Midway's Arcade Treasures 2, then again in MK: Shaolin Monks, then again in the PlayStation Network which now offered online feature. Unfortunately, this review applies only to MKII as a whole and not just one version of the game it was released for. Like the first MK game, MKII features digitized motion captures characters, it also features blood and gore which the first had, but were censored in the console versions for some reasons. So what is MKII, let's get to the point...

Mortal Kombat II is the sequel to the first Mortal Kombat, just think of it as a second tournament to the first like WrestleMania II was to the first WrestleMania. Unlike the first MK though, each and every arcade and console versions of MKII doesn't had the blood feature censored, the game also kept its gameplay balanced true to the arcade original. Almost every versions plays true to the original, the game features twelve selectable characters each with their own unique special moves and fatalities and other finishers. There are also new battle stages, tons of hidden features, and secret characters to discover as well as two new tougher bosses to toggle. Unlike the first MK where gameplay is very limited, in MKII gameplay is just fine even for the Sega Game Gear and Sega Maser versions; heck, even the Game Boy version of MKII, although, lack the blood feature of the other versions, plays much superior than any portable MK games available, yes, even better than the glitchy PSP version as well.

Also what made MKII the best it can be is that the contents it feature are very fun or very enjoyable for examples the fatalities, unlike the first MK or the third MK where all you just do is hit a combination of direct movement and some buttons to see a fatality, here in MKII you do the same, but in some creative way. In one fatality, you had Johnny Cage do his head decapitation fatality which he done only by knocking one head off your opponent, but if you hold a series of buttons, you can make him knock as many as three of the same heads. Another example is Sub-Zero, you can have your opponent frozen then knock his or her body to pieces or you can have them frozen then knock them into the Dead Pool as a block of ice or you can have them frozen and ice grenade them to pieces that way, or you could be Raiden and electric shock your opponent, but to do it you have to quickly tap two buttons together to finish the job giving the player that feeling that they are zapping the opponent instead of just watching the game do it itself. Other creative fatalities are Kung Lao's moveable hat toss fatality, Scorpion's Distant Hell Toasty fatality, and Reptile's invisible kill fatality. I could go on end with these, but I really don't want to get bored just telling so go ahead, go out there, grab a version of MKII, grab any versions, it doesn't really matter which one you get, they all play perfectly fine, some may be better than others, but they are in the same quality unlike the third where quantity replaced quality. Just remember that MKII is the ultimate tournament of all tournaments, it doesn't matter which versions you get, the quality will still be the same no matter how limited the content is and yes, even the Sega Master version can be that darn good even with eight kombatants.