I've already writen about the one credit runs I did of that game on both the snes and arcade, and have videos to prove it, but what I just did makes those videos look like an amateur was playing in them. I got bored and I started playing mortal kombat II on the snes, and jacked up the difficulty to its highest (very hard), figuring I'd last about five fights before failing a one-credit run. Well I'll be damned, I thoroughly DESTROYED everyone who got in my way, and only lost one round in the entire run (which was because my hands got confused and started thinking they were playing super street fighter 2. no, hands, baraka does not throw hadokens.). When fighing Jax, I had Jade show up and tease me about how to fighter her (single player, low kicks in first round when at the fight before the question mark on the opponents ladder, bla bla) which in hindsight was foreshadowing, because I triggered her fight out of sheer luck (I didn't know that jump kicks and leg sweeps using the low kick button still counted as low kick hits), which made me say "well that was fun! time to get made her bitch." Ok, I didn't say it this way, but you know what happened then (or else I wouldn't be writing this): I beat her! I was briefly bummed because since you get thrown back at the character selection screen after winning a fight against her, I assumed the wins counter'd reset back to 0 but when the fight against shang tsung started, I saw it was at 12. yay! Story short, I trounced shang tsung, kintaro and shao kahn. end of story! OR IS IT? Let's recap: I finished Mortal Kombat 2 at Very Hard difficulty without losing a single credit. Out of the 31 rounds it took me to finish the game, I lost only 1 of them. I got not 14, but 15 wins in total because... I got to fight and win against Jade. And I didn't screw up any of my fatalities against regular characters (can't get gory with bosses and secret characters). In a nutshell, I'm happy, proud, excited, and all of the aforementioned at the same time over the skills I've progressively gained in a game I've been playing so much since the late 90s. The only black cloud in this happy story is that I didn't get to record it. boo. Oh well, I know I'll get to show the whole internet that I can completely defeat a game nobody really cares about. Now it's time to go stop sucking at street fighter games. ---------------------- I'd like to give you guys a few tips of my own in case you play this game alone on the snes or at the arcade and want to get better at it: 1) Mileena has the worst ai in fighting game history Mileena's ai can be summed up as follows: jump toward her. she jumps backward and throws her sais in mid-air. don't kick right away, witness as you jump over her sais, and land a kick in her stupid shark teeth. lather, rince and repeat. She's the anti-umk3 jade. 2) The cpu knows if you're pressing buttons before a fight starts Anyone who's played a mk game (especially mk3/umk3) knows the cpu is a blatant cheater, and one way it cheats is by reading your controller's input during fights. Well, it does so before it starts too. As a rule of thumb, only do anything after the "fight!" prompt has disappeared and before you and the cpu can move, because until then the cpu prepares its move according to which buttons you're pressing or if you're not doing anything, and if it sees you don't press anything, it'll assume you're not paying attention and will almost always start the fight with a special move to try and get a free hit on you, depending on whose characters you're fighting: Liu kang will either throw a high fireball, or do a flying kick or bicycle kick (jump over his fireball to kick him; block and counter accordingly if flying/bicycle kick) Johnny Cage will almost always do a shadow kick (duck under and wait for his shadow kick to slow to a halt. free uppercut!) Kung Lao will throw his hat at you or teleport behind you (jump over his thrown hat and jumpkick; duck and uppercut if he teleports) Reptile will either spit acid at you, do a slide, fire one of those pulsating balls things of his or get invisible (jump over his acid/ball or when he is getting invisible and jumpkick; just jump over the slide if you don't have a good special move to counter it. often he'll slide again right after, giving you a chance to jump backward and kick him out of his slide) Kitana will throw her fans at you, and will often do her fancy flying punch attack (jump over her fan, jumpkick; don't jump, and uppercut/roundhouse kick her as she lands) Jax will either pound the ground, jumpkick toward you or throw a fireball (jump toward him (over his fireball if there's any) and jumpkick; duck and uppercut as he is falling down toward you or simply do a roundhouse kick) Mileena will either roll at you, do a teleport kick or throw her sais (jump over her roll or block the hit and counter; jump over her sai and jumpkick; block and counter or jump backwards to evade it) Sub-Zero will either try to freeze you or slide toward you (jump over his ice ball, jumpkick; jump over his slide if you don't have any special move to efficiently counter it. like reptile, he'll often follow up his slide with another, giving you an opening for a free backward jump kick.) Shang tsung will throw a fireball at you (jump over it and jumpkick) or morph into another character Baraka will jumpkick toward you or launch a blade spark at you (uppercut or roundhouse kick the jumpkick, jump over the spark and jumpkick. be careful, if you take your time to kick him, he will often have enough time to counter with his up-and-down blades swipes move) Raiden will either throw himself at you, launch an electric bolt or teleport behind you (block and counter or avoid his own self; jump over the bolt and jumpkick; jump away as he teleports behind you. unlikes with kung lao, raiden technically doesn't leave the ground and as such will have all the time he wants to counter your kicks and uppercuts) Scorpion will almost always throw a spear at you (jump over it, jumpkick). often, he'll do a teleport punch instead (if you're quick enough, jump away. otherwise, block and counter.) Kintaro will jump toward you, spit a fireball, or try to stomp you (jumpkick if he jumps toward you; jump over the fireball and then jumpkick; jump away and do the back-forward-jumpkick dance) Shao Kahn will either throw a spear, walk toward you or try to hit you with his shoulder dash (jump over spear and jumpkick; jumpkick toward him even if he blocks it (more on that later); jump away from his dash unless you've got something to counter it and you're quick enough) 3) All the male ninjas share the same patterns Scorpion, Sub-Zero, Reptile, Smoke and Noob Saibot all have the same patterns. For exemple, jump toward them and they'll either try to roundhouse kick you too fast (most of the time) or they'll jumpkick toward you. If your character jumps high enough, you can trick them into doing a jumpkick AND THEN counter with a jumpkick of your own, and just like Mileena, they never learn so they might end up doing this for the rest of the round. 4) All characters have different patterns As you've noticed in the aforementioned tips, all the fighters have their own patterns. For exemple, never jump toward liu kang or kitana at all unless you're countering a move of theirs or they're already incapacipated (falling to the ground, being frozen, etc) or else you'll get a mid-air fireball in the face from liu kang or you'll be fan-lifted helplessly by kitana (if she doesn't pull a fancy flying punch of her own). With some practice, you'll learn to exploit those patterns (jump toward johnny cage at the right distance, and his fireballs will harmlessly go under you every single time), which brings me to the next two tips: 5) Kintaro gets confused by a little dancing and 6) Shao Kahn blocks everything and never counters jumpkicks right away one step backward, one step forward, jumpkick with a little timing. That's literally all it takes to defeat Kintaro. After the fight has begun, do this, and he'll do one of the following: 1) spit a fireball at you; 2) jump toward you; 3) try to uppercut you; 4) try to teleport-stomp you; 5) block the hit and throw you to the ground; 5) block the hit and do nothing. In the first three cases, you'll always hit him granted you're waiting till the last moment to kick him, otherwise he'll block the hit and will easily counter the kick with a throw (if his uppercut hasn't sent you in the airs first because your timing was wrong). If he tries to teleport-stomp you, often your jumpkick will connect before he leaves the screen and it'll send him falling down on his back, after which he'll then teleport-stomp again, either getting kicked once more or succeeding in leaving the screen, which is meaningless since you've already jumped away from his stomping zone. In any case, if he initiates a teleport stomp, move away and do the little dance as he lands regardless if he roars or not. If he starts blocking your hits and even throws/uppercut you, don't try to hit him again. just walk and jump backward to try to lure him into spitting a fireball at you. you can then jump over the fireball and kick his stupid feline face in the face. With a little practice (and rhythm), you'll beat him like he's mileena, and you'll often even get a double flawless out of it! As for shao kahn, if you jumpkick him and he blocks the hit, there'll always be a slight delay before he counters it, meaning that if you jumpkick right as you leave the ground, he'll block the hit and either do nothing during that delay, taunt you or try to punch you (in both cases giving you free kicks on him), and since in MK games blocking hits still takes away a bit of your health, you'll end up beating him soon or later. Just like with kintaro, rhythm is important (even more so than with kintaro) because if your jump kick goes over him, he'll either shoulder you or punch you away as you land, so you really need to connect your kick just as you get off the ground. 7) There are three ways to input fatalities There is the normal way, which everyone knows, but there's two other ways to input fatalities too. If you block, you can still input your fatality. You just need to let go of the block button as you hit the last button in the sequence (in fact, some fatalities requires you to block so that you don't end up jumping up and down like a retard and failing to do any fatality 99 times out of 100), and finally you can input fatalities while in mid-air, so that you can jump toward your opponent and at the same time input the buttons sequence, leaving the last button press for when your feet touches the ground. you still gotta take into account the distance you need to be at for the fatality to trigger, though. 8) Don't get cornered That's a given when fighting against a human opponent in any fighting game, but it's just as important when you're playing solo because unless you're good at countering, you'll get pummeled into submission by the cpu, and in mk it'll do upward jump kicks/punches if you try to jump over them unless you've incapacipated your opponent or they somehow decide to block for no reason. 9) Don't corner the cpu While cornering a human opponent in any fighting game means a guaranteed win most of the time, cornering the cpu in mk games will mean a whole world or hurt for you, because when they are cornered and you move toward them, their patterns completely change. For exemple, mileena will roll away or kick you if you jump toward her, and shao kahn will punch you across the arena if you jump kick him. The key is to know where the fighting areas end so that you know when to backtrack and let the cpu follow you so that you can resume your pattern exploiting with ease. 10) Learn to block That's a given in ANY fighting game, period. Learn to know when you'll have to block and you'll leave your opponent, artificial or not, open for a counter. 11) Focus on getting better with one character I've been playing as baraka for over a decade and it shows. At first I went with sub-zero, but I couldn't put his moves to good use. I started focusing on baraka when I noticed his moves felt more natural to me. There's absolutely nothing wrong with playing with different characters, but if you're gonna get good at a fighting game, be it mortal kombat or street fighter or blazblue, you'll have to focus on one or two specific characters. Experiment! I actually went from Sub-Zero to Johnny Cage and Kung Lao before I settled on Baraka. 12) If a move gets countered, don't try it again right away If the cpu blocks and counters a move, don't try it right away. step back and try to lure them into doing something first, or try another move altogether if you can. Otherwise, they'll always counter the same move over and over. 13) The cpu cheats a whole lot That's self-explanatory, really. Early-on, you can throw the cpu around, but after a while they'll read your input and detect when you're trying to throw them, and they'll be the ones to throw you before you can EVERY SINGLE TIME. In general, uppercutting your opponent as they walk toward you stops working after the first fight, where they'll either duck and sweep you, or step forward faster than normal and straight-up throw you away. the latter also happens with leg sweeps of your own. 14) There are juggling combos in MK2 There's no actual combo system per se, but you can still pull them off. The keyword is: timing. As with every other fighting games that have combo systems in, you also need to do the right moves. For exemple, Baraka kneecaps his opponent when he's right against it, but pressing the high kick button twice means a kneecap to the belly AND a second kick, to the face, which then sends the opponent in the airs. That's not the combo yet. the combo is following the second kick with either a jump kick (easiest), roundhouse kick (less easy), or a blade swipe (hard) before the opponent hits the ground. Somehow, combos are more satisfying to pull off in mk2 than in mk3/umk3. For trivia's sake, you can also pull off juggling combos in the first game (exemple: johnny cage following a jumpkick with a shadow kick before the opponent hits the ground). 15) Until you've become very good, don't bother trying to fight the secret characters. The secret characters in MK2 are Jade, Smoke and Noob Saibot. You fight Jade by fighting the last opponent in the tournament ladder just before the question mark sign by winning the first round with only low kicks (apparently, jump kicks and leg sweeps also count as long as they're done with the low kick button); you fight smoke by pressing down and start when dan forden goes TOASTY! in the portal area, and you fight noob saibot by winning 50 fights in a row without losing (meaning it can only be done in two-player mode because the most wins you can get in single player, counting jade and smoke, is 16 wins). Here's their quirks: 1) Most special moves have no effect on them 2) They block almost everything 3) They move much faster (smoke even sprint toward you at random times, making him move even faster than the other secret characters). So unless you've become really good and you know your character well, don't bother. You'll just end up having your face used to wipe the floor in Goro's Lair and you'll ruin your one-credit run if you were aiming for a successful one.
man i have forgot so much thank you for reminding me how awesome of a game MK2 was... I hated mk3 that stopped playing mk
mk3/umk3 is a good two-player game, but it's ridiculous how unfair the cpu is in single player. Right now I'm checking what other juggling combos I can pull off with other characters :3
MK2 is my favorite of the 2d MKs. MK3 and later, with the preprogrammed combos and the run button drastically changed the gameplay and wasn't nearly as fun to me anymore. I had the PC DOS version which gave you 4 or 5 credits to get through the tournament. I only ever beat Kintaro once, with Baraka, as doing his blade slice and dice move would catch Kintaro out of the air when he stomped. Everyone else - Kintaro would grab me out of the air, or my kicks wouldn't push him back far enough to let me recover before he punched me or grabbed me and drained my energy bar.
