A playthrough of Acclaim's 1994 fighting game for the Sega Genesis, Mortal Kombat II.

Played through as Johnny Cage on the medium difficulty level.

Precisely one year after "Mortal Monday" heralded the arrival of Mortal Kombat for the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis, "Mortal Tuesday" likewise marked the launch of its enormously popular sequel's 16-bit console adaptations.

Though its graphics and sounds were substantially worse, the tighter controls and relative lack of censorship in Probe's Sega Genesis version of the first Mortal Kombat led to it being widely regarded as superior to the Sculptured Software-developed SNES game.

The bloodless SNES version of Mortal Kombat quickly became a symbol of how uncool and out of touch Nintendo had become at a time when the company was struggling to maintain its majority share of the market. The company had spent much of 1993 taking cheap shots at Sega with their moral grandstanding during the US Senate hearings on video game violence, and that position had cost them. Unwilling to cede yet another win to their competition, Nintendo finally relented on their censorship policies for MK2, because really, who gives a damn about innocent children when profits are at stake?

That hypocrisy paid dividends when the SNES version became a critical darling and the fan-favorite home version of the game. Despite the damage done by MK1 and the system's reputation for catering to a younger target audience, the SNES version of MK2 managed to sell nearly as many units as the Genesis one did. That's quite a turnaround.

That doesn't mean that Mortal Kombat II for the Sega Genesis sucked, though. Far from it. It wasn't as good as the SNES version in most respects - it looked and sounded less like the arcade game and had fewer game modes - but it was a respectable conversion that played well so long as you weren't using a 3-button controller. For the truly adventurous, it also offered full Sega Activator support. I have no idea how or why that happened, but if you've ever dreamt of how cool it would be to play a 16-bit fighting game by flailing about in a plastic octagon, here's your chance!

It's a very good game overall, though it doesn’t feel quite like the coin-op. The character handling is heavier and the timing of moves and combos is different, but all the characters and moves are faithfully represented, blood still gushes by the gallon, and the new soundtrack - though different from the arcade's - is excellent. It's just unfortunate that it is let down by the digital effects, or rather, the lack thereof. Most of the arcade game's samples were left on the cutting room floor, and their absence is keenly felt now that so many of the crunchy impact sounds have been reduced to wet FM farts.

There's not much practical reason to play MK2's 90s console ports these days, but that's besides the point. Popping this one into the Genesis for an afternoon is a fun reminder of the excitement that came with playing it at the peak of its popularity, and I had a great time getting reacquainted with it all these years later.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.

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