It's interesting to be a Mortal Kombat fan. Thanks to Midway's Arcade Classics series I have MK 2 and 3 to go along with Deadly Alliance and Deception, but it made me realize there's two MK games that probably never will get a proper translation: MK 1 and 4.

 

MK 4 was basically Midway trying to see if they could make a 3D fighting game, but they used the Zeus hardware that was never used again for any other game afterwards. Because of that, there's never been a good console translation since no one wants to take the time to learn hardware that's not used anywhere else.

 

MK 1 has the problem of coming out so long ago, when console technology couldn't hang with what the arcades were coming out with. The Genesis version had all the blood and fatalities, but the graphics were crap. The SNES version had the graphics, but it was in Nintendo's pussy period where the blood was replaced and some fatalities were changed. Ironically, now MK 1 is considered too old for a release on newer consoles and the only places you can play it now (like the TV Games version) has things cut in order to get it to fit on whatever format it's on.

 

Interestingly, MK 1 was taken off of the Midway Arcade Treasures set because it's included in the Collector's version of MK: Deception for PS2 and XBox. Us Cubers, however, didn't get a Collector's version and apparently are just forgotten about.

The X-Men arcade game from the early 90s.

I always wanted a home port of the X-men arcade too.

 

 

MK1 for PC was really close to the arcade. I don't see anything wrong with the PSX and N64 ports of MK4. The graphics are fairly good and they have new content. Do you really want a version of MK4 without a subboss, Noob, and the ice level?