Made in VBA 1.7.2 re-recording v21-interim
- contains speed/entertainment tradeoffs
- heavy glitch abuse (?)
- uses hardest difficulty
Intro
Inspired by all the Mortal Kombat TASes I saw recently, I wanted to try one of my own. Mortal Kombat II for GB is probably the best regarded of all the GB Mortal Kombats. It has challenge, good visuals and a responsive gameplay. The game doesn't suffer from lag, and while it's stripped down compared to the other MKII ports, it has a few surprises of its own...
I play using the best character for doing a playaround, Shang Tsung. The focus of this movie is mainly on portraying odd fighting situations or showing off glitches. Big combos are occasionally featured, but this game simply isn't big on big combos. I didn't find many of them while testing.
Fight!
Spoilers and selected highlighs for the vid follows.
Round 1 - vs. Scorpion
- Make sure to catch sight of the glitched grab which Scorpion eludes.
- The common air punch looks so feeble that it's always humiliating to knock someone out with it.
Round 2 - vs. Scorpion
- Mirror match!
- Freezing Scorpion as he throws you.
- Finisher: the dreaded Dry Shatter. The power of shattering his enemies to small pieces was inside Sub-Zero all the time... he never even needed the ice powers to do it.
- Target: Deceased.
Round 1 - vs. Mileena
- Mirror match! Why already in round 1? Answer: I can't use B in the next round, which is a button used in the morphing sequence, or else the finisher won't work.
- Just flying about and shooting sais. An action sequence.
Round 2 - vs. Mileena
- No comments.
- Finisher: The, uh... Phoenix Kick? You kick her, then all these flames fly out, and... y' know..
- Target: Baby.
Round 1 - vs. Jax
- I hated playing invisible. Mainly used for a small surprise effect here.
- Synchronized jumping.
Round 2 - vs. Jax
- Mirror match!
- Kitana is needed for doing the glitched finisher.
- Finisher: Quantum Backbreaker Headcrush. Time to show Jax how to crush heads in style.
- Target: Deceased.
Round 1 - vs. Kitana
- teleport punch shenanigans.
Round 2 - vs. Kitana
- Mirror match!
- A.I. is not having a good day...
- Finisher: The Spikes of High Heaven. You'll see.
- Target: Deceased.
Round 1 - vs. Liu Kang
- Mirror match (eventually)! An intense firefight between the Kangs.
- A cheap tackle ends the match.
Round 2 - vs. Liu Kang
- Something strange happens, and Liu Kang is pulled into the void...
- Target: Unknown.
(I originally wondered whether it was be better to go to Smoke from here, or win the round and do a fatality which would make it seem that Liu Kang's head exploded all by itself from the sheer amazement. But since Liu is a good guy and people would probably nag about skipping the secret fight, I decided to go meet Smoke.)
Round 1 - vs. Smoke
- Meeting a guest of honor at Goro's Lair.
- After he is beaten, his smoking stops. I think it's a bit sad, somehow.
Round 2 - vs. Smoke
- I decided there wasn't enough invisibility in this run yet, so I improved the situation.
- For some potentially glitchy reason, Shang Tsung won't revert after the fight but instead celebrates as Reptile.
- Finisher: no such thing for transdimensional guests. Think of the foreign relations!
- Target: merely Beat Up.
Round 1 - vs. Reptile
- Time to show an infinite combo. Poor Reptile...
Round 2 - vs. Reptile
- At one point, Ground Pound cancels the normal kick after it hit, with very damaging results.
- Finisher: just a commonday head smash... Crikey! This croc's getting a bit stroppy!
- Target: Deceased.
Round 1 - vs. Sub-Zero
- Mirror match! And more Liu Kang!
Round 2 - vs. Sub-Zero
- Finisher: the hideous Dragon Dance. Unfortunately, this bloody ritual demands an innocent victim (outside camera) before Liu Kang can completely return to his human form again.
- Target: Deceased.
(yes, skipped Jade. This was primarily because it seemed I was running out of possibilities to do fatalities, and I still had a few cool tricks up my sleeve. Like the Dragon Dance here.)
Round 1 - vs. Shang Tsung
- Omg, a mirror match!
Round 2 - vs. Shang Tsung
- This is more like it. A deservingly epic match between the two sorcerers... who just spend most of the time being something else than their actual form.
- I remembered that I missed the chance to have a mirror match between two Reptiles, so I arranged one to happen here.
- A glitched dual ground-freeze.
- Finisher: the sweat-inducing... well, there's really no name for it. After morphing back, there isn't much you can do but glitch the graphics up a bit. There was a chance to create a friendly outcome for this fight as well, with cool poses and all, but I decided to go for the more comically brutal outcome.
Target: Beat Up. Good thing too that he wasn't killed, otherwise we would've had a time paradox on our hands. Or something.
Round 1 - vs. Shao Kahn
- Jax unleashes his oriental heart massaging skills, which Shao Kahn obviously finds uncomfortable. It's actually a glitch in the Gotcha Grab.
Round 2 - vs. Shao Kahn
- The final challenge!
- I can just imagine Shao Kahn saying "Huh?" as he starts smoking dangerously.
- Target: Deceased (until the sequel).
Data
Amounts of times different morphs are used (quantitively, then alphabetically sorted):
Liu Kang - 7
Jax - 6
Scorpion - 6
Sub-Zero - 5
Kitana - 4
Reptile - 4
Mileena - 3
_
About the glitches of this vid (more spoilers):
Attacks done by keeping a button held down (like bicycle kick) often cancel out other attacks as you release them. This is used to create interesting situations throughout the run. Scorpion's teleport punch in air also cancels out your current attack.
It's often impossible to hit your enemy after they are hit by special attacks. This is seen against Smoke, for example, when Liu Kang passes right through him after he was hit by a fireball.
Fatality prompts can be given while jumping or doing attacks, allowing many glitches to occur. Also, fatalities done to enemies who are in air at the time may also glitch up. Also, of one particular interest is Jax's fatality, which, if released in the middle of Gotcha Grab, causes the opponent to unleash his fatality at the same time as well for no reason (used against Reptile).
Mileena's teleport kick can land you out of bounds. Don't ask me how. By using scorpion's spear attack on your foe there and then, you pull him into the void with you. Fatalities while one or both fighters are out of bounds fail or work out with the characters invisible/displaced.
Slide attacks do no damage or even push the enemy around the playing field sometimes. Other specials can also have small hijinks in them... there still may exist glitches unknown to players.
Thanks go to
- Portable MK's and SStarmie's FAQs on this game. I learnt many of the used glitches (a few fatality glitches, Jax's gotcha grab failure on Shao Kahn...) from there.
- TASvideos.
- Luck.
- Time.
GabCM: Added YouTube module.
Flygon: Reorganized YouTube modules.
Nach: This TAS had its moments, providing a fair amount of entertainment which would be quite hard to achieve without tool assistance. Accepting. Although I think this movie should be obsoleted by one which is a bit more entertaining with more variety, even if that movie is a bit longer.