Back in the day, it was a dream to even think we would see Mortal Kombat on the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). It was not too far off considering both the Nintendo Game Boy and Sega Game Gear (both 8-bit platforms) received a version of Mortal Kombat and Mortal Kombat II (albeit with edits). It was never meant to be considering the NES was simply no longer commercially viable and no publisher would take on the cost to make the port, even if Nintendo would have facilitated it. That has not stopped fans from making this port a reality, well, beginning to work on it.
Right now, the port of Mortal Kombat to the NES is pretty bare bones. I have known about it for awhile but chose to wait till something tangible was completed. Simply showing a low-resolution character select, or title, screen, was not good enough to start the fireworks for. At least not in my opinion.
In the last three months, progress has been made on this port. From Johnny Cage to Raiden and Sonya, we now have things to get excited about happening on the screen.
Please keep in mind, this is the 8-Bit Nintendo and there are hardware limitations all over the place.
Character select sprites garble but that is more a bug than game breaking problem. In game, looking at Progress Raiden MK1 NES we can see amazing detail in the background and the characters.
There is a bit of parallax scrolling, something the NES was not easily capable of. The characters have many frames of animation from waiting to attack to getting up as well. I did notice only one hit in this clip had blood, the rest had nothing, probably a bug to be fixed.
Next, looking at Sonya vs Sonya in Mortal Kombat 1 NES (Progress Sonya) we see the same level as before. There are several attacks shown which brings me to my next point.
Flicker is rearing its head here. When Sonya attacks she disappears, when on the ground, chunks are missing. These are obviously the limitations of the NES hardware – long time fans understand this.
What do you think? Head over to Vasyanchichek’s YouTube channel to see more and drop them some support. We need to celebrate developers doing things we enjoy. A supportive comment, like, a share, subscription, it all goes a long way to help them know someone cares.
Let me know what your favorite Mortal Kombat release was. I am partial to the SNES version because I could play it at home. My mother was dying from cancer and it brought her such joy seeing fatalities such as Jax. One of the few times in her later years we saw her smile, heard her laugh.
