Mortal Kombat 4 (Game Boy Color)

Mortal Kombat 4
MK4 Arcade wins. FATALITY!
Genre(s): Fighting Platform(s): Game Boy Color Release: NA: December 12, 1998 EU: 1999 Developer(s): Digital Eclipse Publisher(s): Midway Games Country: United States Series: Mortal Kombat Predecessor: Mortal Kombat 3 Successor: Mortal Kombat Advance

Mortal Kombat 4 is a fighting game released in 1997 by Midway Games for the Arcade machines, Microsoft Windows, PlayStation, Nintendo 64 and Game Boy Color. This page will cover the Game Boy Color version, which was released in 1998 and developed by Digital Eclipse.

Why It's Not Toasty 3D

1. Terrible graphics which would cause an eye strain. The original Mortal Kombat 4 was made in full 3D, so as a result, the developers had to re-draw or edit sprites to fit the limitations of the Game Boy Color. This resulted in all the backgrounds consisting of random, saturated colors with little to no detail on them, and characters are difficult to recognize due to the terrible coloring choices (black, white, and one solid color).
2. Stiff controls.
3. Awful, repetitive soundtrack. There is only one song that plays throughout the entire game.
4. The entire port is just a lazy reskin of the Game Boy version of Mortal Kombat 3, with only a few minor changes. Even Sektor's missile can be found in the game's files, Shao Kahn remains to be the announcer for the game (sans the characters' name announcement), and the arcade ladder is ripped straight from said port.
5. The fatalities, instead of being done in real-time during the fight, are just grainy and monochrome FMV cutscenes that are hard to see and last for about a second. What's even worse, the character that the player is performing the Fatality is the same character, no matter what other character you play as.
6. The voice samples are horribly digitized and difficult to hear.
7. There are no sound effects.
8. The ending is just your character performing a Fatality on Shinnok followed by a paragraph of text.
9. Frequent slowdown.
10. The opponent A.I. is terrible, making the game very easy and short.
11. Misspelled names of some of the fighters. Examples include Liu Kang as LUIKANG and Scorpion as SCORPIO. We can understand why Scorpion's name is misspelled because there is a character limit, but there is no excuse to misspell Liu Kang's name.
12. Special moves only work when they feel like working.
13. Reptile is purple in this version when he is supposed to be green like he is everywhere else in the series.

The Only Redeeming Quality

1. Like the other versions of Mortal Kombat, Scorpion, Sonya, and Liu Kang's fatalities stay the same.

Reception

The game currently has a rating of 2.37 on GameFAQs.

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