Mortal Kombat 3 PS1 Review - A Near Perfect Arcade Port of a Classic Fighting Game

Mortal Kombat 3 what else can I say about this iconic classic, this hands down for me personally is one of my favourite fighting games of all time and it was published and developed by Midway for the arcades in 1995 and it later then got a release on consoles mainly the likes of the super Nintendo, sega mega drive and also the PlayStation one and if you're not familiar with the idea behind this game it is a direct sequel to mortal kombat 2 but instead of the first two games being based off the mortal kombat tournament itself, the third game moves away from that as Shao Kahn the main enemy of the game, he invades Earthrealm so if you've ever watched the mortal kombat movie that was released in 1995 and even mortal kombat annihilation you can see where they got those ideas from for the movies. 

They got them pretty much from the games and the PlayStation version is considered to be the near-perfect arcade conversion because that was always a thing back then where games were released as ports from the arcade. 

Sometimes they never lived up to the popularity or pretty much pixel-perfect adaptions to what was presented in the arcade titles because in most cases the arcade versions were usually always flawless. 

This version of the game was the closest one to that. But funnily enough my first experience in mortal kombat 3 wasn't with the PlayStation 1 itself, it actually started back on the super Nintendo. 

My friend that lived across the road, he had the super nintendo and this was long before we had even been introduced to the PlayStation. 

We didn't even know what the PlayStation was at this point and it was in late 1995 and he managed to get mortal kombat 3 within the first week it was released. 

Still, i remember him telling me a story that he ended up paying big money for a back then, he paid like something like 70 irish pounds for it back in one of the game stores which was crazy money back then and then he was only about 13 or 14 back in 1995. 

So yeah you can kind of get an idea how the years have gone by pretty much and i remember him taking the game over and we had already been familiar with the likes of mortal kombat 1 and mortal kombat 2 but it was a mortal kombat 3 where i really started to really fall in love with the franchise although i was familiar with the likes of certain characters in the previous games and i had my favourites but mortal kombat 3 took it up to a whole new level. 

The gameplay was a lot faster compared to the previous two games, there was loads of additional features, extra fatalities and what I loved as well was the combat system. 

The fact that you could do combos and just really just destroy your opponents, i remember us playing mortal kombat 3 on the SNES, the Super Nintendo version i will admit in my opinion even though right its not as well refined as the PlayStation version or the arcade version, the Super Nintendo version of that game was a damn good version of it. 

It actually played faster than the PlayStation version. 

The soundtrack on that version of the game was absolutely epic, if you don't believe me go on to watch other videos on youtube right now and listen to the soundtrack and you'll be blown away by how good the Super Nintendo version was. 

It was incredible and it was just as good as the other versions and it was actually it played way faster it was just it was so funny the sound effects and everything i remember myself and derek and my brothers we would sit on a saturday night or the weekends my parents would go out and we'd be left in the house like we were obviously old enough to look after my younger brothers at the time. I was about 13 or 14 and we played more combat three for hours. 

Now myself and derrick where the only two that where good enough to really pull off the combos and i can never really do the fatalities, derrick could do the fatalities but just the laughs, i swear to god the laughs that we had with that game, I love playing with the like of playing liu kang against Kabal because every time liu kang got hit because the screams were completely over the top. Whenever you done a fatality on liu kang was just completely out there. 

You'll never forget and we be in stitches laughing, it was just it was so funny, we had such a ball playing mortal kombat 3 over the years. 

So then eventually when it did come out when i managed to get my hands on the PlayStation version i was excited to get to play it all over again but i will admit i was kind of like at first a bit put out because like this game's a lot slower but then i was so used to playing it on the super Nintendo because it was so mental. 

It was just so fast-paced and to play it where it actually was a bit slower on the PlayStation version but then again the graphics were better and the sound effects and that were a lot more refined because it was as close to the arcade version as possible so it did take a little bit of a while to adapt to it but i will admit when i got into that game as well i equally enjoyed it as much and again just mortal kombat 3 is just it is an epic game it's an all-time classic if you haven't played it or any original ones you do need to play it. 

There's only two things that i will say honestly that i do not like about mortal kombat 3 and that is the level of difficulty because no matter what difficulty you play on it's so hard to win games because the ai with all these old type of fighting games they always use cheap tactics to win matches so it'll frustrate the hell out of you but it's one of those type of games you'll keep coming back for more. 

You'll be a glutton for punishment and the second thing i hate and probably the most that everybody hated about Mortal Kombat 3 was that they left out scorpion, which is pretty much the franchise's staple. 

The most iconic character in the mortal kombat universe and they left them out of the game. 

You were devastated, like where's scorpion where's scorpion like you did have a couple of hidden characters like if you could do like cheat codes if you finish the game you could end up unlocking a robotic version of smoke which ideally was scorpion anyway. 

He was essentially the same type of character but just with a few different moves but you know the usual things where you had like the claw and that made up for us to be honest, you found yourself using smoke a lot more because it was as close to scorpion as you could get but i still feel that leaving scorpion out was a miss on that part but they made up for it and later instalments of the game because later on, on the super nintendo and even on the mega drive they did release another version, ultimate mortal kombat 3 which brought a lot of those characters back that where cut out of mortal kombat 3 and then later on the playstation they brought it mortal kombat trilogy which combined all of the characters from all of the original three games all in one package and that in itself was just epic. 

That i'll be honest i played that for ages even to get back to playing likes of original versions of jax and kano and even raiden, all you had to do was just press start on the character and it would change back to their original like mortal kombat 2 or mortal kombat 1 counterparts and again they're all their own unique move sets that were tied to those versions of the character as well which was really awesome. 

So in terms of how good mortal kombat 3 was even aside from the nostalgia, it was a commercial success in the arcades and even for the likes of midway as well. 

It ended up making tons of money, loads of people played it, people spent hours in the arcades, it sold tons of copies on consoles and which did lead on to the sequels of ultimate mortal kombat 3 and mortal kombat trilogy also receiving equally as good a success because it was a really good mix of gameplay visuals, the fatalities and even likes of the combos and with the additional sequels there was also additional features also added in. 

And even with the likes of mortal kombat trilogy i do remember or certain cheat code that you could use where you can unlock everything so you could have one hit fatalities as soon as you would finish off an opponent you literally could destroy them with only one button and depending on the button you would press would pull off a different fatality or brutality, animality whatever it was that was there available at the time so it definitely made it a lot easier especially for us not so good gamers that couldn't pull off a fatality it was just brilliant. 

There's not much i can say about this game other than say that it is a classic, yes it will drive you mad but it's one of those games you'll still go back and play it again. It just was brilliant and it was this game that really got me into the franchise and even though i had really enjoyed the previous two games which i did, it wasn't until mortal kombat 3 where i really fell in love with the franchise, it was just a pity that left it scorpion that's all i'm going to say about that but it more made up for it with later titles so it was worth the wait. 

But i would love to know your thoughts on mortal kombat 3 if you have played it yourself and if so what version of the game did you manage to play? 

Did you play it on the PlayStation or on other consoles like the Super Nintendo, mega drive or did you happen to play it in the arcade and if so what are your stories of this epic game?

I'd love to hear them so be sure to share them in the comments below and be sure to keep watching to see more content on other games similar to Mortal Kombat 3, you can check out the blog where we will be diving into the iconic elements of these classic video games and as always keep those gaming memories alive...