The MK Meta - Episode 5: Mortal Kombat Trilogy

[Music] I want to start this video with a bit of personal history regarding this game and I'm curious to see if anybody has the same kind of memory in regards to it I was a kid when Mortal Kombat trilogy was released I was up-to-date on the next gen systems for the time which was the Nintendo 64 and playstation 1 MK trilogy released in 1996 now I'm fairly certain that I didn't play this game the same year that it came out but when I finally discovered its existence in a magazine and found it in a local store I was super hype for one reason if you're like me which I'm pretty sure could be a fair few of you and you were a Mortal Kombat fan growing up in the 90s that didn't have access to anything that resembles an arcade your only way to experience Mortal Kombat was the 16-bit ports that existed on Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis now I'm not bashing those games at all they were actually very solid ports of games like Ultima MK 3 but you didn't get the full arcade experience due to obvious hardware limitations now here comes PlayStation 1 Mortal Kombat trilogy which has crisp graphics very similar to arcade quality sound effects and music responsive controls as a kid this seemed like the perfect way to experience classic Mortal Kombat on console that we'd all been waiting for although it was definitely met with less than desirable reviews at the time from official magazines years later the game is held in such high esteem amongst the MK fanbase because we could finally play what really felt like an authentic Mortal Kombat experience that gathered as much from all the classic games as it could and mash them all together you know the drill by now though don't you this video series dives into the hardcore gameplay mechanics and competitive angle that this game brought to the table and boy is there a lot to go over here new characters new moves and a wide variety of console differences that most fans would never have realized this is episode 5 of the MK meta and this is Mortal Kombat trilogy before we get started I recommend highly that you watch my MK Mehta on Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 before this video I'll be referring to that game a lot as trilogy is taken directly from it mechanically so for your benefit it probably makes more sense that you understand Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 before trilogy because they're so similar for the sake of clarity I want to mention that most of this video is could be captured using the PlayStation 1 version of trilogy it's not only a little bit easier to work with recording wise but it was the version that I personally grew up with and have them most to talk about I think that's the case for a few people though trilogy was released on other systems as well such as the Sega Saturn and PC but I'm touching on n64 and PlayStation 1 respectively as they by all accounts were the main versions that people played Mortal Kombat trilogy was pure combat and nothing else unlike other MK games that had extra modes and things outside of core gameplay to focus on trilogy had Mortal Kombat which was the arcade mode and a variety of difficulties two versus two combats where player selects two characters each and she have to defeat both characters in around and eight player combat a best-of one round single elimination tournament mode that decides a winner at the very end players would select a character each and simply pass the controller's around each time I'm sure some of you will be familiar that yes this is almost identical to Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 of which Mk trilogy clearly took a lot of influence from before I dive into the nitty-gritty it's important to cover the design aspect of trilogy although it looks like a reskin of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 there are some differences and some new additions to the games system I'm not going to cover mechanics or roster just yet I want to get the basics out of the way first be prepared I really am going to reference Ultima mk3 a lot here the first thing many noticed was that the music is a little bit different it's mostly a combination of MK 2 and you MK 3 soundtracks but I love the tracks are both lower in pitch and slower in tempo stages would combine all four of the classic' MK titles the term for being used if you treat MK 3 and you MK 3 as separate games because ultima and k3 had new stages unlike base arcade Ultima MK 3 trilogy you would see the return of a new finishing move the brutality brutalities made their first appearance in a 16-bit home ports of ultimate MK 3 but as always with ps1 trilogy will get a more true to arcade look at what a brutality was always supposed to look like a giant combo that's different for each character ending in a big finale and of course that sweet sweet sound effect to brutalities were a bit tricky to learn it's essentially one big dialer combo and the rhythm of inputting it doesn't always feel right you need to figure out the right timing for each character and I could never do these as a kid I know it seems a little bit weird having an entire section on the options menu right but hear me out on this one trilogy featured some options that a player could toggle to really speed up the process of playing a match remember this was the ps1 we're talking about a console notorious for its load time if you didn't change any of these settings players would have to wait a lot longer than necessary to get into games a pain in the backside if you just try to find or grind a long set character select can be set to fast where the sprites are removed from the screen resulting in a faster selection versus screen can be turned off removing the vs. graphic that plays after you've selected your characters the buy-in screen can be turned off too skipping the option to game over and taking you straight back to the main menu match recycle is an instant match restart tool set the amount of times you'd like the game to restart after ending and you're on your way much better for long sets for sure blood has the option to be disabled which does exactly what you'd expect and now Shang Tsung's morphs Shang Tsung in ultimate MK 3 has the ability to morph on command he can basically become any character that he wants to in MK trilogy and thanks to the Playstations load time problem you have a few different options over Shang's morph possibilities all morphs lets you stay true to form and become anyone you want using specific commands only this happens there is a solution to this though because you can turn on a setting called limited morphs with this selected you can manually pick which morphs that you want on the character select screen it removes the load time but it means that you can only morph into those set characters bear in mind that you can't choose more than one of the same base model only one male ninja only one female ninja or cyber ninja I'm gonna assume it's something to do with the load time that you can't mix and match reptile with a Mac for instance perhaps it would cause a crash or something additionally if both players choose Shang Tsung player one still gets to pick to morphs but player two only gets to pick one both players can morph into all three characters though so I think the idea was that shank players would maybe agree to the three morphs or maybe you both get one each and mutually decide on the third I don't know if you both wanted to play a ninja and what have you got there first tough luck to the one who didn't because you now don't have the chance additionally additionally in 2v2 shang only gets access to one morph and yes that also counts if both players pick shang tsung so you'd have to mutually agree on the one pick that's kind of awkward the final option is no morphs like you straight off turn his ability off to morph into anyone holding block run and up in the options menu will actually unlock a secret options menu that has extra selections one button fatalities lets you perform every fatality regardless of requirements with a touch of one button normal boss damage revert some of the damage to what it should be making them a bit more manageable to fight low damage and health regeneration is essentially a way a player can makeshift a training mode it's basically infinite health so with two pads you can actually lab stuff instant aggressor immediately fills the agressor bar with one single hit don't worry we'll get into that in a sec this is a slight change of format from my usual videos because trilogy lends itself so heavily from Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 I'm not going to do my usual basics and then meta sections like I said at the start I really recommend that you check out my 4 first MK Mehta which focused on um k3 for a detailed breakdown of how the game was approached to high level because MK trilogy is played almost identically to it but since you're here here's a quick breakdown before I go into the trilogy specific changes and additions the four attack buttons were split between high punch low punch high kick and low kick with a block button on top run button allowed players to be extremely aggressive with the act of running into the opponent with a jab and either grabbing them or low crushing them with a kick based combo string if they try to interrupt you shaping what we know as run jab pressure combos were extensive thanks to the dialer combo system and characters that gained great damage from their kick based combo strings usually being considered extremely competitively viable if you got damaged from a low crush you were seen as pretty damn good the stamina bar is found underneath the health bars and is depleted by most actions preventing run jabs from being an infinite and certain combos from being too long special moves would change character utility and let you use characters a bit differently to each other but fundamentally run jabs and aggressive rushdown was the bread and butter of ultimate MK 3 as it's the same thing with trilogy it's fast and furious now that's the super fast version of it but I really want to focus on the stuff that trilogy did differently on top of the new additions to the game in general we've already established that trilogy is similar to you MK 3 in almost every way mechanically but here is what was changed or added aggressor is one of the more significant additions to trilogy a brand new mechanic that appears for each player connecting hits with the opponent builds this gauge when it fills all the way to the top it triggers automatically and it gives you a damage boost some think that you can get a speed boost from this but you actually don't the motion lines that track behind you may give the illusion of speed but it very much is just a damage boost mechanic as the name suggests it rewards aggressive play blocked hits build the gauge faster than actual hits and it's not based on damage dealt connecting hits will build a set amount and blocked hits build a set amount as well it's not something that you majorly need to think about because it builds constantly and triggers by itself but it can create short bursts of a mentum for the player using it worth mentioning aggressor is for the most part banned in any competitive play up next is the expanded roster as you may have noticed throughout this video or maybe you remember from back in the day this game introduced fully playable versions of certain characters and it's time to go through them rain was fully realized in trilogy although he and noob saibot would be first playable in the 16-bit ports of ultimate MK 3 we had a much more close to arcade look for both of these characters rain had a wicked moveset the weather ball which could control opponents and set them up for juggles lightning strike which creates a massive blast on top of the opponent once again setting up four juggles and the super kick which was simply performed by the back high kick roundhouse input only rains will send them across the screen and once more allow for a juggle rain was top tier in trilogy because on top of his excellent combo damage launching options and amazing load crushing combo string in high kick high kick low kick roundhouse his super kick was an infinite if juggled correctly I'll get into the details of that later on there was also a really weird thing where if he connected a weather ball he could connect up to four of them if he used it by itself allowing for massive damage for basic timing really when people talk about the brokenness of trilogy they're usually referring to noob saibot this character like rain made his return from 16-bit in this game and kept his busted move set as well not only that noob saibot have incredible launching possibilities in both his dire combos and special moves in the form of clone lunge and teleport his projectile would be the most broke move yet in all of classic Mortal Kombat's the disabler this move would disable the opponent's ability to block and on top of that they were completely unable to land hits in this state as well although their attack animations do come out nothing happens his special moves collectively led to massive infinite if he touched you one time you are probably dead if he hit you at any moment Noob Saibot was one of the first ever multiple Kombat characters to be so infamous that soft bans would apply in some tournaments others would ban him outright a personal favorite of mine chameleon was finally playable for the first time as a secret character pick any male ninja and while the game loads in hold back high punch high kick run and blocked altogether as the round starts voila chameleon appears with a slightly transparent visual effect and of course his gameplay mechanic which was that every few seconds hit transform randomly into one of the ninja characters if you have the timing of the transition down you could stay as the ninja in question for another cycle so long as your active frames of a special move were active right as the transition begins at least that's what I discovered anyway it's been hard to find a lot of information on chameleons in all honesty I'm going to assume the active frames keeping you from transitioning has something to do with preventing a game crash if the game tries to change a ninja with a move they don't normally do being out there but I'm not sure it is exceptionally common in moves the only specific ninjas have chameleons may have the chance of becoming too soft banned characters in noob saibot and rain but he becomes them for such a short amount of time and the player such little time to adapt that he was never really banned in America the short time limit was seen as pretty balanced female chameleons would replace the male version for the n64 as a console exclusive this version alternates between Molina Jade and katana Raiden Returns but because he wasn't playable in Mortal Kombat 3 or Ultimate his mk2 sprites would be used his moves are all there from mk2 as well but a new running animation and Tyler combos would be given he did gain a new move with the ability to shoot a lightning bolt across the other side of the screen and it appears behind the opponent his strings in general were kind of simple this four hit launcher for example this may be just for uppercut animations in a row but functionally it's a very good launcher Johnny Cage returns but shooter ongoing disputes that motion capture actor Daniel piscina had with Midway at the time piscina was replaced by a different actor Chris Alexander he had all of his moves false balls shadow kick and red shadow kick which did less damage but went further and shadow uppercut only thing he lacked to his nut punch which I can only assume is so they didn't have to make a new animation for everyone in the game who got hit by his string why is he was also as expected a launching string and a kick string Baraka has some pretty standard new strings and once again his MK 2 special moves in blade spark and chop chop but in trilogy he has a new move blade spin which involves forward down forward and then the block button pressing it repeatedly to spin for longer it's a really strange move but kind of hilarious rumor has it the blade spin was originally going to be a move in MK 2 but I honestly can't remember where I saw or heard that so take it with a pinch of salt the ps1 satin and PC version of this game had some extra content that the n64 didn't first of all boss characters all 4 classic bosses were playable in trilogy with the exception of old shang tsung but the n64 version only had Shao Kahn and motaro playable and even then they could only be unlocked via cheat code' the other versions also featured Goro and Kintaro bosses would have some new animations for player purposes such as a jump but you couldn't really attack from these jumps so they just felt a bit awkward really the aggressive AR would be disabled if you played as boss characters too that actually isn't much to say about the bosses believe it or not they very much are their boss selves with player control they behaved the same way but the inclusion of launches and the like made some of the older bosses feel pretty funny to combo against motaro for instance had some weird juggle state if he was airborne giving some different combo potential in the ps1 Saturn and PC version players could actually select legacy versions of specific characters this doesn't apply to every character by any means but Kano Raiden Jack's and Kung Lao can have their alternate version selected if the player presses select while hovering over the icon complete with classic fatalities as well the characters would keep as many if they're old moves as possible but once more with some new additions and combo strings to fit the UM k3 style on top of a really funny and easy combo string in high punch four times and a low starter Kano had his Kano ball and blade toss only they gave him a new move too which was blade spin this was actually really important because it gave Kano a launcher in classic as well as um k3 something pretty important for damage in this game he has this weird thing where his jabs have less frames on them than other characters so you can potentially squeeze in more high punches in some of your punishes classic Raiden has mk1 Raiden's moves as expected strangely his launcher took a lot longer to recover than a lot of other characters but you can still combo from it but it feels very strange indeed classic Raiden has this weird thing as well where his crouching low kick has less recovery frames than is crouching high kick so it can often juggle more than it should and in some versions infinite entirely Jax's previous version is Mortal Kombat 2 and this character is dangerous he was given an air version of his grounded energy wave but it keeps the grounded version - although there is a slight cooldown on air wave it works so well in harmony with ground pound on top of that he's got some decent keep out tools with all of this stuff combined he does lose the launching corner string that mk3 Jax has and he loses the - punch - it's actually a bit undecided amongst the people I've spoken to that played trilogy at high level where the MK 2 or 3 Jack's is considered better they're very different finally m'kay - Jax's extended grab does significantly more damage than MK 3 Jack's I'm talking about a third life ouch last on this list is Kung Lao save the best for last in this case both versions of Kung Lao can infinite with their spins and dive kicks however MK 2 Lau has more parting for it thanks to a launching combo string something MK 3 loud doesn't have this string by itself does tons of damage both on hit and block one of the strongest moves in the entire game when blocked in because of divekick castle combos possible in both versions of this character this launcher leads to a simple 50% damage and beyond even without use of infinite sand loops which arguably I'm not very good at mk2 Lau is pure damage a very dangerous pick MK to allow for some reason additionally has Raiden Superman and yes even the air version or inclusion but every little helps when your top tier one thing trilogy did with the base um k3 style is make a few changes to the existing characters now I'm not going to talk about tier lists and stuff here as character viability was pretty similar across trilogy and um k3 those characters never really changed top tier Ultima MK 3 characters were still the same level of good in trilogy for the most part some characters though would receive new moves which allow them to either be played a little bit differently or just help them in general here are some trilogy exclusive versions of some of the cast starting off with the main man Sektor is much better in trilogy damage wise because of one inclusion the ability to fire a double missile which has performed with back back forward low punch this move alone gives sex-talk a better ranged game and importantly much bigger damage payout as you can end combos with high punch and double missile the constant issue that sexual faced back then is that while smart missile is on screen he can't shoot a straight missile until it explodes there's some kind of weird missile limit system this would be semi fixed in some versions of um k3 where smart missile and straight missile can be on the screen together if you're playing one but this missile limit remained in trilogy ps1 double missile really helps damage and range in some cases giving him above 50% damage for an air teleport or a teleport punished Nightwolf has a faster version of his shoulder charge it does less damage than regular charge but it goes much further overall not seen to be that useful but any change is always welcomed if it comes with no setback additionally it's been a mechanic since um k3 but rarely talked about and in some cases not known when the opponent is in recovery frames of something or hits done in other means night Wolf's projectiles start up faster in trilogy when a faster start up special comes out because of this mechanic the attack shines red rather than green it's not different um k3 but it is a new visual indicator this startup mechanic applies to sin Dells breath and sectaurs missile as well mk3 Kung Lao can move while spinning in trilogy tempest Lau from MK X seems very similar to this right something he couldn't do before there is also a double teleport which can mix the opponent up a little bit if they're too comfortable waiting for the regular version MK 2 Lau cannot do the double teleport Liu Kang has a red bicycle kick as an extra move it goes further than the normal one he still keeps the normal one though striker gets a double grenade with two different angles more damage of course and covers a wider area but the recovery is way longer Kano gets given the crazy Kano ball if you ever wanted to turn Kano into a living pinball well this is your answer apparently it's ultimately a bizarre set of movement that makes him very hard to predict there is said to be a few patterns but ultimately it's a move that you can use when the chips are down and it really freaks out the opponent Sindel has a double breath like sector it's a great source for extra damage simple but effective scorpion suffered a common issue and that he was just a worse version of human smoke in ultimate MK 3 nothing he had was different to human smoke and everything he had was inferior this changes somewhat in trilogy because he was given a forward moving teleport this is given additionally to regular teleport and it's a move only he has both teleports can be used once in the same combo allowing for better damage this has other uses too though a jump kick can now be confirmed into forward teleport and it will mostly connect no longer being positioned specific like cross up teleport every confirm teleport exists you can now double the teleport damage neutral is a bit weird a - because of the predictable mobility and this to me is one of the better moves in the game because it gives scorpion identity something he didn't have before I didn't highlight this in my ultimate k3 video so allow me to cover it here as it is a thing in both ultimate mp3 and trilogy respectively jab cancelling jabs can be counseled out of their recovery animation if you cancel the button into something else this is most common when the Run button is used but you can press other buttons to simply put in put a high punch or low punch and then immediately input the other button that you wish to press it cancels out the last few recovery frames causing this punch to recover quicker it allows for some custom combos that aren't usually possible and it makes other basic combos much easier the example I'll use here is rain's roundhouse infinite it's only possible for rain to walk forward and roundhouse after high punch if the high punch is canceled with something else using this technique I use run this act of high punch up in the air walk forward and late roundhouse to cover just enough height on the other side to repeat only works because of jab cancelling otherwise we can't both jab and walk forward with enough time to spare there's tons of combo examples using this but reigns is extremely out there because of the severity of the combo in question another thing that exists in both trilogy and MK 3 is the relaunching combos they exist in autumn MK 3 but really ran rampant in some versions of trilogy on a far greater scale the basics of it is that off specific launchers a perfectly timed jump would connect right as the opponent is about to touch the ground if you hit the sweet spot you'll actually get another full jump in the most notorious example of this in ultima MK 3 would be mass Sub Zero who can rep this quite easily but in trilogy they were everywhere the difficulty of relaunching combos differed but fundamentally it gave some characters that already had good damage an even more devastating option this is another one of those things that I really didn't touch in my u MK 3 video but wouldn't be doing this style of MK true justice without curve ringg eventually it really was a big deal for some characters it's worth mentioning that with relaunches in mind it can be character specific and it can very much be hurt box specific and even then it doesn't have a chance to work 100% of the time for some characters when it works it's great when it doesn't that's just the way it is right so we've established all of the characters and the basic gameplay itself now I want to go into the trilogy system if you've played both trilogy and you mk3 you've likely always felt that something about trilogy just feels that little bit different that's because it is and it's mostly due to game speed arcade Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 runs at 53 frames per second this is the standard for the game now trilogy is a game that runs at 60 frames per second this slight increase in fps results in a game that runs a tiny bit faster and why the game automatically feels just that little bit more fast-paced the game speed combined with the slightly downgraded graphics and music shapes the game into a really fun and unique Mortal Kombat experience but still isn't quite the same as authentic arcade scene to be the shining golden standard for the time many arcade MK enthusiasts to this day tell me of how they never really touched trilogy because they were arcade players anything else just felt weird to them remember to that back then the options for a proper arcade stick for use at home was almost non-existent so arcade users would be alienated from trying trilogy due to its console exclusivity it's not like now when we can just plug a converter in and use whatever we want in those days you kind of had to make do with the stuff that the console had readily available but now the section that I've really wanted to go over you'll notice I haven't talked about the n64 version in this video at all really accept the female chameleon character I've been saving it till now because the n64 version has great relevancy when it comes to the MK Mehta believe it or not the only similarity that the n64 and other versions share with each other is the game's title because almost everything else is mechanically significantly different I suppose we'll get the obvious stuff out of the way first trilogy on n64 has far inferior graphics and sound ps1 trilogy is a downscaled version of arcade but this is even more in that direction it's almost like a slightly upgraded version of the 16-bit versions of um k3 there's less colors in turn resulting in less visual detail and there's so much compressed audio that everything just sounds fuzzy the opposite of ps1 trilogy and the music the less said about that the better here's a comparison [Music] [Music] but that's just the obvious stuff the stuff you already know if you grew up with this version of the game even with these extreme downgrades certain competitive scenes and players actually preferred and prefer to this day the n64 version and that is for a few mechanical reasons first of all a new game-mode I hadn't mentioned this in the mode portion way back at the star of this video because it's greatly significant to the n64 specifically and it is an exclusive mode 3vs3 Kombat 3v3 acts just like 2v2 only adds another character because the old-school communities love these multiple character modes 3b3 becomes somewhat of a standard that the trilogy tournaments are played on there's also the factor that n64 Trichy faces zero load time compared to ps1 resulting in a much faster experience in between games overall the payoff of heavily compressed design thanks to the cartridge instead of disk meant that at the very least load time wasn't a factor a common benefit of the n64 console it's always said that due to the downsizing required to run MK trilogy FN 64 it resulted in resolution differences which in turn makes the game feel a little bit more closed in the characters almost seem slightly bigger on the screen than ps1 because of it it makes specific characters and combos feel drastically different to boot reigns infinite for instance is miles easier to perform on the n64 version of the game because his infinite is so heavily focused on where you are on the screen when roundhouse connects you kind of have to be you roughly in the middle of the screen to make sure that rain can turn around in time and I feel like that position is way more lenient on the n64 due to the screen size there's also the factor of speed a common misconception as the n64 trilogy is miles faster but this isn't necessarily true there is a bizarre almost frame skipping feature that n64 trilogy has which gives it on occasion a rather inconsistent framerate it feels a little bit more like the game is struggling to run or chugging in general at times it looks and feels way faster than PS one and in other instances it's extremely choppy the inconsistency of the FPS makes some players believe it to be faster but on average it's actually the ps1 version that's faster more often than not going back to rains infinite you feel like you have more time on the n64 thanks to the speed another thing that makes certain combo is hard to perform in the ps1 version execution-wise on the subject of execution here's a really weird one teleports had a less cooldown on n64 trilogy because of this feature some really wacky combos with specific characters become possible outside of combos the teleport still creates this really strange neutral where I mean what the hell just look at it buttons were drastically different in frames to the point where trilogy has a different meta layer entirely compared to um k3 individual buttons like the high and low kicks sport significantly faster recovery which means you can actually poke with them in a way that you couldn't in previous trilogy Zhou mk3 in general sweeps were more plus on hit which gives you guaranteed orphans crouched high kicks while useless in um k3 were pumped up in trilogy to where they functioned as almost universal anti airs not everyone had a decent crouched high kick so it wouldn't always function the same way but for a lot of characters they hit great two anti-air to begin with and then they recover fast enough that you can combo with a follow-up to but now crouching pokes are often plus when connecting with the opponent which means that if you hit one of the crouched attacks you kind of get free rein to move in and start your own offense this is a huge change and it makes the run jab rush down player have to think twice when going in these changes make trilogy a bit more varied if someone's run jabbing you hit them with a crouched poke and gain advantage and now you can do the exact same thing in return very different to ultimate MK 3 for sure but now let's talk about characters too I mentioned earlier the n64 trilogy had less boss characters but that's not all Andy then the characters that existed in the game had some slight changes as well besides the fact that rain and noob felt a little bit different in general I'm not going to cover every character here just a few key examples that demonstrate the base differences Sektor was actually a better version of himself on the n64 that strange bug I mentioned where smart missile and straight missile couldn't be on the screen together isn't a thing on this console Sektor is able to smart missile and then use either single or double while the smart missiles active I'd go as far to say as trilogy n64 Sektor could very well be the best version of the character in classic Mortal Kombat's he has to relaunch combo possibilities the extra damage thanks to the double missile and in this version he doesn't suffer from the missile limit combine all these together and you pretty much have a very dangerous character compared to his other versions teleport characters immediately become more useful with the changes to teleport cooldown I mentioned before and no need to use specific examples here but remember human Smoke scorpion and Ermac all have a teleport in the same style crouched high kicks were broken on n64 with some characters they led to infinite Shiva is a notorious example because of her crouched high kick easily juggling an opponent and recovers super fast zero caller pushback on this move as well meant that after any launch that Shiva had you in you had done it was a good anti-air but the infinite is what people remember this existed in small cases for some characters in other versions like mk1 Raiden or m k3 Shang and Jax but n64 Shiva will always kind of remain the main example that people remember the last example I want to focus on is sub-zero not usually a character that you'd think about but trust me on this one in other versions of trilogy masked and unmasked sub-zero are actually two separate characters and there's a reason for that their move lists are split between the two characters to balance it out in n64 unmasked sub-zero doesn't exist but the masked version does instead of keeping masked as is they for some reason gave him the specials of unmasked plus all of his masked sub-zero moves while retaining the combo strings of the masked version which includes a launch this version of sub-zero has straight freeze ground freeze air fries and ice clone all in one character this has a huge amount of knock-on effects that make this character arguably the strongest version of sub-zero in mortal kombat history because of these specials mask sub-zero can do things that he usually couldn't for example ground freeze had a short Sun time usually but grounded the opponent if he punished him in the air you're actually able to air freeze and combo into it from the ground freeze because they're not frozen double ice backfire never applies allowing for a much longer stun duration on top of corner carry you can get a free neutral jump kick into his launcher string taking his base damage and making it significantly higher after doing about 40 percent damage easily end a combo and air freeze and it sticks the opponent in place the ultimate setup move that can chain your offense all over again every freeze leads to crazy damage and if the ground freeze hits you're in a terrible position as the defender because of his other freezing options to say this character is nuts is a huge understatement another example of n64 mayhem when it comes to community trilogy is somewhat of a hybrid if he knew how to play ultimate MK 3 you by default already knew how to play trilogy even if he'd never touched it before this in turn meant that if you went to a classic event at any moment for a you MK 3 tournament and trilogy was playable also you by all means could get involved in that too even without knowing the smaller details you'd probably be fine at this stage it was somewhat of a seesaw effect with mortal combat during this timeframe you see as I mentioned earlier about arcade players sometimes giving this game a Miss and not visiting it until years later it did have some smaller knock-on effects trilogy being a console exclusive title was an indication that serious Mortal Kombat could now exist in a console space even with the downgrade the game had to undertake to be playable on home systems but at the same time it was somewhat of a sign that arcade era Mortal Kombat was about to become no longer the only way to experience competitive Mortal Kombat because this entire new version was only Bornholm systems in the first place trilogy was for the most part a side event game um k3 would be the main event or at the least the game people attended the tournament for as their main focus and trilogy would be there so players could enter that as well really you can find a lot of competitive footage at classic m'kay gatherings if it's America once again the combat network team would host events and sometimes trilogy would be quite the focus mainstay names like Rio and shock would be common tournament attendees $9.99 Phil and more pretty much all the people that you may have remembered from ultimate MK 3 there is a yearly classic m'kay tournament in Ohio that features many old MK titles trilogy wants more being a mainstay game out there but the main community I want to focus on in this video lies in south america south america has a surprisingly large and very dedicated ultimate MK 3 community that spans different territories and includes a lot of talented players even in 2019 I had the chance to speak with Brazilian player by speed also known as canal by speed on YouTube he is a really big content creator in that part of the world and classic MK is his bread and butter in researching this video I knew I had to get him on board and pick his brains about specific areas of that community I didn't cover this community my own man kiiied EO but always knew it was there I want to thank him for giving me his time and helping me shine some light on a community that truly keeps classic m'kay alive South America still has tournaments to this day both for ultimate k3 and trilogy this is where everything I've talked about with arcades and ports and the like changes up some arcades existed in South America sure but Mortal Kombat arcades were not so regular for everyone Mortal Kombat machine you'd have 20 to 30 SNK machines for games like King of Fighters playing arcade Mortal Kombat in that part of the world was a rarity but what wasn't was the ease of access to console ports like Sega Genesis or Super Nintendo because of the 16-bit versions South American players could still play MK and grind it more efficiently it's why if you go on YouTube and search for any south-american Ulmer Mk tournament there's usually a good chance that even now in 2019 the game is played on a Sega Genesis or something because for the player base the 16-bit version became the tournament standard with trilogy however this is where the n64 version of the game truly stood out as a competitive title for the South American scene I asked speed why they favored the n64 console so heavily and he gave me a few reasons remember this is entirely mechanics and has nothing to do with visuals or sound this community was developed from home ports so arcade accuracy wasn't really important the crouched pokes on n64 sometimes being Plus on block and incredibly fast it combines both of these that makes them wonderful options to interrupt run jab pressure originally create an ultimate MK 3 it's a turn stealer and it breaks up the constant run jab offense that some players found quite repetitive and tiresome to be honest the rush down meta becomes different when on the n64 version trilogy offering players a bit more depth than they would usually find with ultimate it's definitely not for everyone and it is absolutely a different experience the classic skin versions of characters was something the player base didn't want to deal with MK 2 lau was quoted quite regularly as being quite the problem character and n64 not having these mechanics meant the issue was basically removed automatically they were said to be a little bit buggy and not similar to traditional optimum K characters the competitive scene would often turn off the aggressive bar when playing in tournaments I know I said this earlier on but it really applies here you could do this in the options menu so the damage boost after being aggressive for a bit just doesn't apply this turns the game into more traditional mortal combat with the only changes to the game being stuff that you couldn't avoid and would be trilogy specific that said there were talks of a pretty groundbreaking bug on the ps1 version of the game some things by speed said to me was certainly significant enough that it made the entire scene jump ship on to the n64 full time I have to say that not everybody I've spoken to knew of this glitch but there is video evidence and it was certainly enough to convince this community to make the console change permanently when turning off the aggressor bar for some reason there was an extremely rare chance that one of the two players in the match would have a permanent damage boost almost as if aggressor is on all the time but only for one player when this would happen in tournament settings the match had to be forfeited the console restarted all the options reset and having to do this every single time because of an alleged bug was just frustrating more than anything and reports seem to show that the n64 version is completely rid of this issue to begin with this community spans over a fair few territories some players compete online using the arcade emulation others play offline in their local communities using various consoles and there are even some players in South America that still play ps1 trilogy it's just mostly n64 for the reasons I've mentioned if you want to go into specific territories the Dominican Republic almost exclusively plays trilogy argentina almost exclusively plays um k3 Chile played a mix of um k3 and n64 trilogy and then we have Brazil that plays pretty much everything it truly is a mixed bag of classic action they've even had some really sizable tournaments and exhibition events if anyone is interested I suggest checking out by speed's youtube channel of which i'll link for you in the description it's fascinating stuff and the level of play is ridiculously high and for another time there goes another episode of the MK Mehta I want to thank everybody that helped me make this video possible because as always this video can't exist without the fine folks answered my questions all the way through during my research period trilogy was a really special game for me because of the character variety and close to arcade experience at such a young age I know a lot of people feel really nostalgic about this one so I wanted to do this video justice and cover the necessary communities let's still compete in it to this day it's not just the UM k3 clone that some players believe it to be trilogy offers so much more than that if you liked this video please like and subscribe share it with your buddies if they love MK or fighting games in general and don't forget to check out my other MK Mehta episodes that are on the channel too this is episode 5 at this point which is crazy there's still so many more MK games to come thank you so much for watching and I'll see you next time [Music] [Music]

Channel: PNDK&M

Views: 405,319

Keywords: ketchup and mustard, ''gaming'', fighting games, mktrilogy, trilogy, mortal, kombat, the, mk meta, meta, ketchup, mustard, pnd, K&M, education, educational, video, essay, tournament, grand, finals, byspeed, canal, canal byspeed, kabal, human smoke, nightwolf, tier, list, UMK3, ultimate, combo, combos, guide, tutorial, history, lesson, teach, competitive, metas, strategy, ps1, playstation, n64, nintendo, saturn, pc, markie music, pixelflare, intro, intros, outro, blue

Id: It2w5vCsy3k

Length: 46min 53sec (2813 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 13 2019