Description
This is a capture of me playing through the arcade version of Mortal Kombat 3. This is being played through the Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection for the Switch 2. I'm using Smoke and playing on medium difficulty while completing the Master ladder.
Continuing my Mortal Kombat playthroughs, here’s Mortal Kombat 3.
I was a big fan of Mortal Kombat and Mortal Kombat II, but I started to lose interest in the series with Mortal Kombat 3. The roster was a bit lackluster (where’d all the ninjas go?), the post-apocalyptic Earth setting was less interesting, the new run button and combos overcomplicated the gameplay, and Shao Khan was a redundant final boss. I also didn’t like Motaro all that much, especially with his bullshit projectile immunity, but I’ll give the developers credit for at least creating a different sub-boss from Goro and Kintaro.
Although I didn’t think MK 3 was a bad game, I wasn’t interested enough to put much effort into it. In fact, I don’t even know when or if I played the original MK 3 in the arcades because there didn’t seem to be any arcade machines nearby. This was rather strange considering how many MK and MK II machines were available.
The only time I played MK 3 was when I borrowed or had access to my cousin’s copy of the SNES version, which I always played in tandem with his SNES copy of MK II. I’d play MK 3 for a bit, get frustrated or bored, and then gravitate back to MK II. That was it. That was my childhood experience with MK 3.
It also didn’t help that the SNES port of Killer Instinct was released around the same time, and that I was far more interested in that game. I always thought that MK 3 was trying to respond to Killer Instinct’s innovative combo system, but that it wasn’t executed as well.
However, after revisiting MK 3 decades later, I am finding the game more enjoyable than before. However, the AI is still as bullshit as ever (it took me a month to record this), but surprisingly, Motaro and Shao Khan are fairly easy with the right tactics.
With the ninjas unavailable in this game (aside from Sub-Zero), I always found myself gravitating toward the cyborgs, who were the next best thing. But out of the three, I like Smoke the best. He’s just tons of fun to play, and he has the best of both worlds (Scorpion’s harpoon and Sektor’s teleport punch). He also has Reptile’s invisibility, though it isn’t very useful against the AI.
Smoke is actually a hidden, selectable character, though the Kollection makes him available at any time. But even in the original arcade version and the console ports, you simply needed to enter a code to unlock Smoke.
In this playthrough I beat the game without using any continues, though I did lose some rounds.
Recorded with the Elgato Game Capture HD60 and the Switch 2's HDMI cable at native 1080p resolution and 60 frames per second. I'm using a Real Arcade Pro V Hayabusa joystick.