Review
The Mortal Kombat community has usually held Mortal Kombat II in high regard as the best of the series, where everything came together into a finely polished product. This game made waves in the arcades and at home on the slightly underpowered 16-bit consoles. When the announcement was made that Mortal Kombat II would appear on the Sega Saturn, Kombat fans cheered -- the Saturn's 2D horsepower and CD-ROM should have the ability to deliver a near Arcade-perfect rendition of their favorite game. If only this was so.
Mortal Kombat II for the Saturn is a prime example of a port gone wrong -- the developers at Probe messed this one up. From the get-go, you're treated to weak sounding PCM music and atrociously long load times. Jump into the game and things get a lot worse.
Mortal Kombat II is a one-on-one fighter where burly warriors take each other on in a martial arts duel to the death. At the end of the deciding round, one fighter gets to kill the other with a "Fatality" that involves everything from decapitation to evisceration. It's all a lot of fun -- in the Arcade, anyway.
While the graphics and backgrounds are straight from the arcade version and aren't "squished" like the SNES and Genesis versions, there have been some significant animation cuts. Even worse, the game actually lags in the middle of special moves! Hit forward-forward-punch for Liu Kang's fireball and you'll have to wait a second for the game to load the move off of the CD. This is simply inexcusable for a fighting game, and the fact that this slipped through Sega's quality control is apalling. Even the game's multiple fatalities force you to wait a few seconds while they load -- talk about painful. You don't even get to hear the voice of the gravelly-throated Mortal Kombat announcer.
If there was no lag between moves, Mortal Kombat II might be acceptable, but as it stands, this is merely a pale shadow of its Arcade older brother. If you're looking for a top-notch Mortal Kombat II experience, be sure to check out the excellent Sega 32X or SNES versions -- just stay away from this mediocre fighter.
Graphics 
Arcade-perfect sprites, with cool-looking backgrounds.
Sound 
Lousy PCM musical tunes, and missing voices and sound effects.
Enjoyment 
Hopelessly lagged special moves and poor control.
Replay Value 
Lots of secrets--but you probably won't have the patience to find them.
Documentation 
Decent fare from Sega. A large, black-and-white manual.
