10 Thoughts On…Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection (Sony PS3)

Although I preferred SNK and Capcom fighters as a teen, I’ve grown to really enjoy the Mortal Kombat series. Although the game was light on gore, Mortal Kombat Vs. DC Universe had a very solid engine and treated both sets of characters with respect. I loved it and it went on to win our 2008 “Fighting Game of the Year” award. So far, Mortal Kombat 9 has captured my heart like no other game this year, and I’m still playing it now while Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 is rarely used (although part of that is I have a lot of reviews and the other part is I’m waiting for UMvC3). With all this in mind, I decided to pick up the Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection. After all, it was only $10. Sure I owned all three games for various other systems and I even have MKII for the PS3 already via Midway, but this was all three games in what was promised to be an “arcade classic” quality collection. Well, the truth is MKAK is FAR from that. After only a few hours with the games, here are ten quick (and pretty grumpy) thoughts on the Kollection.

General

1. Woah. The game froze up for a noticeable amount of time after I changed some settings the first time. I thought the game was going to crash. Not the best first impression to make.

Mortal Kombat 1

2. SEVERE lag between the time you hit the pause button (Which is select instead of start? Who the hell thought that was an intelligent decision? It’s also the only button you CAN’T change on the controller.) and the time it actually goes into effect. There is some lag with button presses as well. Hell, it’s worse than what we saw in last week’s Street Fighter III: Third Strike The time you are allotted to do your fatality is almost non-existent. The time you have to input your fatality is drastically reduced from other versions of the game I’ve played.

3. I honestly don’t remember having to go through an “endurance round” after beating every playable character. I remember a version of the endurance round in Ultimate MK3, but not in the very first game.

4. Man, MK1 plays like crap. There, I said it. I have loved the past few games, but man does MK1 show how far behind it was to King of Fighters and Street Fighter II back in the day. It’s still better than Pit Fighter though.

Mortal Kombat II

5. I have fond memories of MKII. Hell I bought it for the PS3 back when Midway was still around for a scant $2.50. Remember the days before trophies kids? Sadly, there are again noticeable control issues and bugs here that are NOT in the earlier PS3 version of Mortal Kombat 2. I’ve seen things like CPU character shooting projectiles off before the “BEGIN,” characters jumping through moves, severe collision detection issues, attacks hitting through blocks, moves hitting when characters are too far away for them to hit, and the same control lag issues that plagued MKI in this version. This is downright unacceptable. If this is a straight arcade port why does one play pretty flawlessly and another have so many problems?

6. LOTS of problems getting the game to recognize Fatalities, Babalities and Friendships. I’ve done Raiden’s friendship twenty times in a row and it won’t accept it a single time. It’s one of the easiest one to pull off too!

7. Much like MKI, this version of Mortal Kombat II is so far from “arcade perfect,” that it is laughable. The earlier PS3 release of the game is far superior and hell, the Midway Arcade Treasures port for the Game Cube, Xbox and PS2 has less bugs and control issues that this turkey. This is a massive disappointment to me and I have to wonder if anyone actually playtested this thing.

Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3

8. This is both the best and the worst of the games. It’s the most playable and it doesn’t have nearly the lag problems the other two do, but when there’s a bug, THERE’S a bug, I was fighting Jade and before we got the “begin” she did a jump kick across the screen to hit me and was halfway done what would turn out to be an INFINITE COMBO before the match was actually supposed to begin. By the time I got control of my character, her attacks still went through my block and I was dead by the time the counter’s time hit 98. How the hell did THAT get through QA?

9. A lot of the UMK codes don’t appear to work. Many were tried, both with online opponents and with two players on the same console and they didn’t stick. As well, we ran into a bug after playing a two player match on the same console. The game went back to the “choose what mode” screen and wouldn’t accept any input for a while. Then when it did, it would only let the winning player go into the normal Kombat tower. This only happened once, but again – man, what a bug.

10. Like the other games, there are several noticeable problems here. Your character is frozen for a second or two after unpausing the game, Anamalties have a problem being recognized and while Ultimate Mortal Kombat is the best of the three, it’s still got far more issues than any “arcade perfect” game should have. I can play this on my Sega Saturn or Nintendo Game Cube with far less issues that I’m having on this PS3 one. This is about as bad as it gets.


There are so many problems with Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection that this “Ten Thoughts” can’t even begin to cover it. Look, I like Mortal Kombat and MK9 is arguably my game of the year. This shoddy half-assed collection is so badly done that it’s not worth any amount of money, much less the $9.99 they are asking for this. This is so far from “arcade perfect” it’s not even funny. Stay far away from this thing and stick to the cheapo version of Mortal Kombat II. It might not have trophies, but at least it’s extremely playable. You know it’s bad when I can honestly say the Sega Saturn version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 or the versions on Midway Arcade Treasures 2 play better than what’s in this collection. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going back to the earlier MKII game so I can remember how good that game is supposed to play compared to the one in this crapfest.


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12 responses to “10 Thoughts On…Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection (Sony PS3)”

  1. postmortem Avatar
    postmortem

    MK1 had 3 endurance rounds after the mirror match, so that is true to the arcade. Im sure you cant get babalities and friendships to work because you are hitting punch buttons in the round. In order to pull off one of these moves you need to not use punch. Animalities can only be performed after doing a mercy move in the 3rd round when it says finish him. There are lots of glitches and different sounds on this version though. I own every MK arcade and these are definately not arcade perfect.

    1. Alex Lucard Avatar

      Postmortem – No, I’m quite familiar with how to get Anamalities and Babalities. I own multiple versions of both MKII and III. It’s just the game has lag and control recognition issues so they’re not coming through as well as they should. I appreciate the attempt at help though!

      Appreciate the reminder of the Endurance Rounds in MK1 too. It’s been nearly seven years since I’ve touched that one. I was never a fan of the original (Too much King of Fighters!) and so I honestly couldn’t remember those.

  2. PS3 FAIL Avatar
    PS3 FAIL

    Just downloaded the Trial on X360, seems ok to me.

    1. Alex Lucard Avatar

      Interesting, because the XBox 360 owners I know are saying it’s just as bad, if not worse there.

  3. John Sergel Avatar
    John Sergel

    It’s really bad I just downloaded it on my Xbox during my lunch break….. It’s buggy as hell. Online is a joke. Probably the single worst thing is in UMK3 scorpion doesn’t say “get over here” it’s cut off at “get”. The pause menu thing is killing me as well

    1. Alex Lucard Avatar

      John -sorry to hear you’re having problems too. Everyone seems to be.

  4. Chris Garber Avatar
    Chris Garber

    the AI is ludicrously cheap! grrrr played it all day on 360, only beat mk1!

  5. smoky Avatar
    smoky

    I haven’t really come across most of these bad reasons myself. I hope you guys have some video proof. I have only seen an online menu bug so far. and I can be sure that:

    mk1 has always had endurance rounds

    all AI has always been cheap. it was to encourage multiplayer mode

    Start was moved to the Select button to be able to fight Smoke in MK2, something the Midway Treasures version of MK2 accidentally prevented

    you guys that are disappointed about this game having flaws even the arcade version has: do some more research first

    1. Alex Lucard Avatar

      I hate to break it to you “smoky” but nearly everyone who bought the game is complaining about it. There’s a ton of video proof up on youtube already.Sixth Axis, Dual shockers and every MK fan site have brought these very same issues up.

  6. Draven Avatar
    Draven

    Wow, i haven’t had one problem with it on my 360 and i enjoy playing it.

    1. Alex Lucard Avatar

      Draven – considering Netherealm has come out publicly and admitted this collection is horrible, apologized for it being nigh unplayable and is promising to fix it…you’re either lying or the only person on Earth not having these problems.

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