There is nothing here that reminds you that you're playing an N64 title (the intro graphics are especially painful). Apart from compiling three MKs into one cartridge (which must have been difficult, given the limitations) developer Williams did not seem to have put a major effort into creating this game. Let's face it, the N64 is better at creating smooth animations using polygons than at prepainted bitmap animation, whether in three or in two dimensions (Street Fighter EX is an example of a 2D fighter with polygon fighters). This is not a question whether 3D fighters are better than 2D fighters. A couple of years ago Mortal Kombat Trilogy would have created quite a stir in the gaming scene but now as it stands next to games like Tekken 2, Virtua Fighter 3, the Street Fighters, and Mace, it shows its old age. But on the N64 the player animation is choppy and the flat, rather unexciting backgrounds look like they suffer from a low color palette. One of the reasons Mortal Kombats were made with digitized footage of actors was the idea of creating life-like, realistic animation. The N64 version features no load time, lots of fighters (among them: Kano, Reptile, Mileena, Kung Lao, Shang Tsung, Sindel, Sektor, Stryker, Nightwolf, Sheeva, Kitana, Scorpion, Sonya, Smoke, Rain, Jade, Baraka, Johnny Cage, Ermac, Noob Saibot, Sub-Zero, Kabal, Jax, Rayden, Cyrax, Liu Kang, Motaro and Shao Kahn,) plenty of speech, the same soundtrack and plenty of gore. It doesn't help much that we get three games in one since the differences between the single installments of the MK series were pretty much cosmetic - and Midway didn't go back to upgrade the sprites from the earlier installments or really add anything new. And what Williams/Midway gives us is a direct translation of a dated arcade game. Which is fine if we were dealing with a five year old arcade machine - but what we have here is a Nintendo 64, the hottest home video game machine on the market. When you look at the screenshots, you'll quickly notice that the game looks pretty much like the arcade Kombats.
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