Mortal Kombat 2
Midway, 1993, Fighter / Versus
Firstly, I apologise in advance if I sound biased at all during this review.
I grew up with the first two Mortal Kombat games and I truly believe that the first two, by far, are the best Mortal Kombat games... But hey, that's just my opinion. On with the review!
Arguably the best Mortal Kombat game is Mortal Kombat 2. The original Mortal Kombat game was a massive success not only at the arcades but also on the home ports, and Mortal Kombat 2 simply did the right thing at the time and just kept a good thing going (with some minor changes).
It kept using digitized character models like the first game did, but a lot more detail can be seen in Mortal Kombat 2 thanks to the newer technology available at the time. The animation is still perfectly fluid. The backgrounds are a lot more detailed than the first game and the music is as awesome as ever.
Mortal Kombat 2 has multiple finishing moves for each playable character (almost half of which AREN'T violent!), as well as some major plot twists (Wikipedia has all that information) and bizarre new playable and unplayable characters in the mix.
The last two bosses are much different than in the first game and be warned that they require a much different style of play to beat.
A lot of creative inspiration is apparent in the level design and the same goes for both the playable and unplayable characters.
The controls are exactly the same. You still have to press a button to block.
Check it out for yourself, I can't say anything more without spoiling the game for you!
But here are some screenshots of me playing the masterpiece that is Mortal Kombat 2:
The character select screen.
The very top of the ladder, showing the last two bosses.
Oh that's GOTTA hurt!