Mortal Kombat Mythologies Gold 2000 (Super Nintendo Entertainment System)
Review:
Transcript
What’s going on, YouTube? This is tabmok99.
Now, we all know about the pirate Mortal Kombat Mythologies game for the Sega Genesis. But, did you know that there’s also one released for the Super Nintendo? It’s extremely rare, and very hard to find.
I first heard about in 2010, on the forum for Pirated Games Central. A user named Barver uploaded pictures of a game called “Mortal Kombat 2000” and included a picture of the cartridge as well as a screenshot showing the gameplay. He cited this game as proof that Super Nintendo pirates can’t get terribly interesting, and he said that this appears to be just a port of the Genesis version. For the longest time, I’ve been wanting to try the Super Nintendo version myself and see just how true that is. But it was impossible to find: There’s no cartridge for sale anywhere, and no ROM for download anywhere.
So I kept my eyes and ears open, and was looking for a copy of the game for myself, but couldn’t find one anywhere. Well, the years keep coming and they don’t stop coming. Finally, in 2014 I saw a post on Twitter. A friend of mine named Phelan Porteous—you might know him from the Mortal Komedy video series—posted a picture of a game he acquired called Mortal Kombat Mythologies, for the Super Nintendo. Not only did he show a picture of his cartridge, he also uploaded a screenshot showing the full title of the game: “Mortal Kombat Mythologies Gold 2000.” Now if anything, I could say that this game was rare. But the fact that he found one meant there was a good chance I could find one too. I just had to keep looking.
Lo and behold, my hopes were answered. After searching obsessively, I finally found a listing on the South American auction site called Mercado Livre. The seller included several photos in his listing, confirming that this is in fact the game that I wanted. There was just one problem: The seller was in Brazil, and there was no shipping to the United States. Fortunately for me, I’ve got connections. My sister-in-law, Mel, is Brazilian, and she’s also helped me out in the past with situations like this one.
A few years ago, there was a post on the Mortal Kombat Online discussion board from the user GusLan, who shared the fact that was a four-part comic book series based on Mortal Kombat 4, which was released exclusively in Brazil. I called Mel, and she helped me get ahold of these comics. I knew, once I saw the listing for this game, that I could once again count on her to help me out.
So I just wanted to take this opportunity to say thank you, Mel—thank you for helping me get ahold of this stuff. You’re the best.
Mel: You’re welcome, tabmok, and remember—don’t put me in your next video.
Don’t worry, Mel, I promise I won’t put you in my next video. Anyway, I’ve been waiting for years to get ahold of this game. Let’s pop it in and see what it’s all about.
Wow, did you see that? Sub-Zero just took Liu Kang’s head right off. When’s the last time you’ve ever seen anything like that in a Mortal Kombat game?
*looks down*
Never.
So this is the title screen. And as you can see, there’s no options. All you can do is start the game. There’s no password system, there’s no way to give yourself more lives, there’s no way to give yourself more continues. You just go right into the game. Whatever you’ve got, you’ve got.
Now that might be a bit of a problem, because when it comes to actually playing the game, I’m not good. I’m great!
Alright, so let’s start by looking at the moveset. The punches and kicks are a little switched around. Y is a low punch, and B is a high punch. So that’s the opposite of the way you’d expect. And then X is a low kick and A is a high kick. Again, backwards from what you’re used to. And if you duck and press Y, you do a Low Kick, which is also the same way as if you press down and A. If you press down and X, you do a foot sweep. And if you press down and B, you do and uppercut. And what’s cool is, if you hold down and B he keeps uppercutting. In fact, if you duck and hold any of these moves, he does them over and over again. But when you’re standing, if you hold them down, nothing happens. So, a little odd. If you press X and A together, he does a roundhouse kick and he’ll do it over and over again. And the triggers also do things here. The R trigger is a turn around button, and the L button is a block. And what’s also neat, is if you press L and R at the same, he runs. See, that’s a lot faster than his normal walking pace. So if you need to get through some area quickly, holding L and R can do that. Ducking works the way you’d expect, jumping works the way you’d expect, flipping works the way you’d expect. What’s different is the jump kicks. I used to think this game didn’t have jump kicks, because if you jump kick the way you normally jump kick in Mortal Kombat, nothing happens. But I found out by accident what you need to is press one of the kick buttons—or any of the attack buttons, really—and then jump. And you see, he does perfect jump kicks then. Even if you hold a punch button and jump, he’ll do a jump kick. And if you go straight up and down, he does a jump punch. And again, that’s true of any of the attack buttons. So there is no way to do a straight up and down jump kick. Which is alright, you don’t really need that attack too much.
Y B X A L R
↓ + Y ↓ + A ↓ + X ↓ + B L + R
Low Punch High Punch Low Kick High Kick Block Turn Around
Crouch Kick Crouch Kick Foot Sweep Uppercut Run
He has two special moves in this version. If you hold A and B and duck, he does the Slide. And if you press down, forward, and Y he does the freeze. What’s interesting is if you press down, back and Y, he also does the freeze.
↓, →, Y ↓, ←, Y ↓ + B + A
Freeze Freeze Slide
So that’s it for the special moves.
Just like a cat, Sub-Zero starts out with nine lives. I’m glad they start you out with so many, because you can’t add any more in the options.
There goes Kano. I’m gonna freeze him.
Now this just isn’t right. Everyone knows the deal. When you freeze someone, they get hit by ice, they get frozen. Whoever heard of someone getting hit by ice and not frozen?
*gets hit by ice and not frozen*
Okay, fine, I guess the game is more realistic. But still, they’re missing half the fun.
So the fact that you can’t freeze anyone is not cool. But there are some redeeming features here. There’s spikes coming out of the floor, and there’s stones that come down from the ceiling to try and crush you. It’s weird that they didn’t use the crushing columns that they had in the original Mortal Kombat Mythologies, or in the pirate Genesis port. But hey, it’s something.
What you’ll also see is that they’ve got different enemies, too, like Jax. That actually doesn’t make too much sense. I mean Jax and Kano are mortal enemies. They wouldn’t team up with each other against someone like Sub-Zero. But let’s put the plotholes aside. I actually like the fact that in this version of the game, you don’t fight palette-swapped characters, you actually fight different people.
Now here, they’ve recreated my favorite scene, where you jump down from the balcony to get down to the lower level. And what you’ll quickly discover is that there are no checkpoints here. Yeah, that’s right. You die now, you have to go back to the very beginning of the level. But, having said that, the enemies don’t respawn, so it’s not like you’ll have to fight your way through them again. So it’s kind of a toss-up. And like usual, once you get to the end of the level, you climb up the rope to finish it. Unlike in most video games, when you climb up a rope here, it’s like when you’re actually climbing a rope and you have to stop a minute to catch up. Now that’s no big deal, it really doesn’t make any difference here. But it will make a difference when you get to World 2.
It’s not actually Quan Chi’s sanctuary, that’s a typo. They switched the names for World 2 and World 4. This is actually the Temple of Water. This level’s got its own set of challenges. It’s kind of similar to the Genesis version, but with its own twist on things. Like, as you’re jumping from one column to the next, there’s also acid dropping down on you. And as you’re climbing down ropes, you have to be careful because now there’s spikes coming at you. Now those spikes instantly kill you. If you’re climbing on a rope, and you get hit by a spike, that’s it—you’re done.
Now remember how when you’re climbing up a rope, Sub-Zero has to stop to kind of catch his breath? Well that makes it even harder when you’re trying to climb up a rope and you’re trying to avoid these spikes at the same time. But I figured out that if you rapidly tap up on the controller, as you’re climbing, that kind of helps a little.
In World 2, you’ll sometimes fight Jax, and you’ll sometimes fight Sonya. One thing I don’t like is that when Sonya throws a fireball at you, you can’t duck it. You can try and duck it, but that fireball’s going to hit you. The best thing you can do is get lucky and jump over it.
And there’s also parts of the level, where when you climb down the rope, you instantly climb down to your death. I guess I’m kinda used to that now, from playing the Sega Genesis version, so it doesn’t seem to bother me as much.
So you have to collect the keys in a specific order. Here’s where you get key 1, and here’s where you use it. And here’s where you get key 2, here’s where you use that. And here’s where you get key 3, and here’s where you use it. And then you get access to fight the final boss. The boss in this case is Jax. What, you were expecting the God of Water? I suppose this would be an opportune time to point out something I really like about this version of the game. The animated backgrounds. It really shows, especially in this part of the level. In the official Mortal Kombat Mythologies, it’s supposed to be running water. Here, it looks like acid. That’s actually better.
But if there’s something I would change, it would be the fact that there are no lifebars for the enemies. It drives me nuts because you can’t tell how close you are to winning. You have no idea if you’ve almost got ’im or if you’re miles away from victory. But, what are you going to do?
Now that brings us to World 3, the Element of Earth. There’s a lot of stuff going on in this level. There are holes in the ground, so you’ve got to be careful not to fall in those. And of course, there’s fireballs that shoot up at you from the ground. But what really caught my attention are these little metal monsters. What ARE those things? I’m not 100% sure, but I think they might be from another video game.
So this level has some rope climbing scenes, just like the last one. Only now the flying spikes can come at you from two different directions at the same time. Whaaat? I’ll be honest—it caught me off-guard the first time it happened. But once you’re expecting it, it kind of loses the element of surprise. You know that old expression—fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, well, you’re not gonna fool me again.
In this level, you’ll fight three different enemies. We’ve seen Jax before, we’ve seen Kano before, and—oh, yes—Liu Kang. Yeah, I’d know that boomerang anywhere. Yeah, that’s right, Liu Kang—the guy that we just saw Sub-Zero decapitate in the intro. So, as usual, there are three different keys to collect. Here’s where you get the first key; here’s the room where you use it. Here’s where you pick up the second key; here’s the room where you use it. Here’s where you get the third key; and once you use the third key, it opens up the door for you to fight the boss.
The boss this time around being Sonya. So that means that this level technically has every single enemy that you’ve fought up till now. And again, one of my favorite parts of the Super Nintendo version, as opposed to the Genesis version, is the animated backgrounds. It really makes the came to life. Unlike Sonya, who will soon be dead.
Oh, look, not only did they get the name of the stage wrong, they got the name of the stage wrong. Yeah, this is supposed to be Quan Chi’s sanctuary, but they call it the element of water. Not only that, they misspell it with a “W” just like in the Sega Genesis version. So that’s two mistakes for the price of one.
In this final level of the game, you’ve got to face all four enemies. You’ve got to face Liu Kang, you’ve got to face Kano, you’ve got to face Sonya, and you’ve got to face Jax. But the craziest thing in this level—the craziest thing in the whole game, actually—is this thing. I don’t know what to call it. A skeleton in a box? It’s like we’re playing Mortal Kombat Halloween Edition. Make no bones about it—this is one of the strangest things you’ll see in this game.
At this point, I’m really close to beating the game. All I’ve got to do is find the three keys, put them where they belong, and move on to fight the final boss. I can’t wait to see what’s going to happen. I mean, who is the final boss in this version? And based on that amazing intro sequence they had, what kind of things can we expect for the ending? What kind of special surprise do they have planned in store for us? I can’t wait to see what it is!
No. No. That’s it? *drops controller in frustration* That was the big ending? What was that about? “The End. Thank you for play this game.” I mean, technically, that’s the exact same ending screen as in the Genesis version, but there should have been more to it. You just find the three keys and put them in place and that’s it, huh? No grand finale, or final boss, or anything. I don’t know what I was expecting exactly, but, I kinda thought there’d be more to it than that.
Let’s compare this to the Sega Genesis version and see how they stack up against each other. The Super Nintendo version has an intro; the Sega Genesis version doesn’t. The Sega Genesis version has options and even a password system, where the Super Nintendo doesn’t. On the Super Nintendo version, you use all six buttons. The Genesis version only uses three. Both versions have different music. As far as which one’s better, that’s more of a personal preference. But the sound effects on the Genesis version actually come from Mortal Kombat games, where the Super Nintendo one doesn’t. In fact, the Super Nintendo version uses a sound library from Super Buster Bros. What else? Oh yeah, on the Sega Genesis version, you can actually freeze people. Not so on the Super Nintendo. On the Super Nintendo version, enemies actually stay dead. On the Sega Genesis version, they’ll respawn forever. And trust me, that gets old fast. The Sega Genesis version uses checkpoints, so it saves your progress mid-level. In the Super Nintendo version, you’ve got to start from the beginning. And the Sega Genesis version has a final boss, Sindel, which the Super Nintendo doesn’t have.
So, all things considered, is there one better version? I don’t think so. I think they’re both good in their own way. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say that the same team worked on both the Super Nintendo and the Sega Genesis versions. It’s just that some of their ideas made it into one version, some of their ideas made it into the other. And for whatever reason, none of the versions are totally complete.
If you want to pick up a copy of this game for yourself, there is one on eBay at the time of this recording. But I’ve got to warn you—it’s “very expensive” (Mr. Dink).
I’m very fortunate to have found my own cartridge of this game. I’m really happy that I had a chance to play through it. I feel like a room without a roof. You’ve seen how rare this is, you’ve seen how hard it is to get ahold of this game. So I’d like to change that. I’m going to conclude this video with this offer: if anybody out there wants to send me some copying equipment, just send me a message through my YouTube channel. I’ll do what I can to try and dump this game, and put it out there and make it playable for everybody online.
Well, thanks for watching my video. See you at my next review!
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