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Mortal Kombat II should have been Released like THIS Version of the game!

It's AMAZING that you can play as JADE, SMOKE & NOOB SAIBOT!

1 Downfall: These Code Inputs work ONLY FOR PLAYER 1 to play as any of the Secret Characters! (Let PLAYER 2 enter the codes for Player 1 instead but, let Player 1 select a character 1st.) (Player 2 can still go to select another character afterwards while the code's still active.)

Unfortunately, there's NO CODES to play as KINTARO Nor SHAO KAHN either. (BUMMER!)

Other than those problems, the game is made "WELL DONE!"

One of my greatest pet peeves about the fighting games of old is the inclusion of characters that are meant to be fought against but not played as, which is usually because they're tuned to be much more powerful than the player roster, and the Mortal Kombat series is no exception, having locked out Reptile, Goro, and Shang Tsung in the first game. Although the second game got the same deal, MottZilla did an exceptional job getting around this, and his efforts are to be commended here.

This hack allows players access to Smoke, Jade, and Noob Saibot by ways of secret input codes on the character select screen, and although the inputs are proprietary to this hack, they're incredibly easy to remember, requiring nothing more than simple directions and two button presses. To sweeten the deal, sound cues were added to let you know whether or not it worked. The entire execution is so well put together that the presentation is nothing short of professional.

My only gripe is that the instructions don't make it clear that the cursor has to be on the very edge of the roster grid when the input is entered, so if you were to enter the Smoke code, you would have to move your cursor to the rightmost edge before tapping that first Right on the D-pad. Granted, it seems like a minor issue, but it took me a little while to figure out why the codes weren't working.

I also like the fact that this hack requires secret code entries instead of simply having them immediately available from the character select roster, since this leaves the original base game unchanged for purists who prefer to keep things as they were meant to be. It makes even more sense to do so when keeping in mind that Jade and Smoke both retain their baseline advantages, while Noob is still nothing more than a Sub-Zero pallet swap.

Despite the initially unclear instructions, this is a clever hack with a high-grade cleanliness and execution, and it's one that I would gladly recommend having as a replacement for the original base game. I also hope that MottZilla will one day expand upon his work and include Kintaro and Shao Kahn, but what he has accomplished here deserves a hearty Dan-Forden "Toasty!"

Back when this came out on the SNES, my friends and I always wanted to see this happen. I think making it a secret code to enter to play as the characters works so much better than changing everything about MK2. Now if only you could edit the character portraits in VS and it would be complete.

awesome game but each hidden character should have their own portrait instead of using codes to pick them