Mortal Kombat 1+2+3

MK1 for DOS is possibly the best home port of the game that was released (until many years later when the arcade version bundled with an arcade emulator was released). It is fast and fun, the visuals and sound are good, it's just a very fun game. MK2 for DOS has very good graphics for the time of its release. Its a major step down from the arcade but that's because the characters were gigantic and extremely high quality in the arcade. The gameplay in this has been tweaked from the arcade and, in my opinion, this is faster and more fun for casual matches. I don't know if competitively it holds up well. But I love that characters don't have to take complete steps when you tap a direction. Little things like that make it feel more responsive. The music, as many have noted, is not good. Its MIDI with no higher quality present. No idea why they did this. The arcade had gorgeous music. MK3 for DOS is something special. It's a version built just for DOS as far as I can tell. It has LAN play built in, which was impressive for a fighting game at the time of its release. And GOG has done a great job pre-configuring DOSBox to support LAN Play over the internet via DOSBox. GOG's config for the game makes it trivial to get this running. It adds a significant feature that the original release didn't have. I would also note that MK3 for DOS, in my opinion, is a much better game to have than MK3 for Windows. The Windows version appears to be a port of the PlayStation version. It is a step down in terms of graphics and even the gameplay feels rougher.

MK1 joystick setup: -ingame press f10 >>define use keyboard player 1 -ingame press Ctrl + F1 >> in dosbox confic>>define joystick axes and button use as keyboard keys(use other than arrow keys)

Besides being a real pain to get to control properly (with a controller), it looks meh and sounds imperfect. You'd be better off getting a different version in one of the many different places you can. I'd probably even pick last year's mini Genesis emulation over this. Or spend 20 minutes getting MAME to work. I love that GOG puts efforts into getting the DOS wrapper to work with this, but it's just not a good port.

I have these in full screen working in Steam via bottles!! First create a bottle it should be using soda experimental 8. Name your Bottle DosBox_Full_Screen. Now if you're like me and got MK1 - MK3, you need to install them into the bottle in reverse order. Open: "/home/username/.var/app/com.usebottles.bottles/data/bottles/bottles/Mortal-Kombat/drive_c/users/username/AppData/Local/DOSBox/". If you don't have that DOSBox folder create it. Then create "dosbox-0.74.conf" file. (Usually this gets created by installing MK1 but not if you install all 3 games.) So another alternative is to create an mk1 bottle and install then copy that file and paste it into your DosBox_Full_Screen bottle. Edit the file under "[sdl]" : fullscreen=true fulldouble=true fullresolution=original windowresolution=2560x1440 output=opengl Next navigate into the folder with all 3 games into the "DOSBOX" folder and create a file named "DOSBox.conf". (in all 3 game folders) Edit it in all 3 folders [ipx] # ipx: Enable ipx over UDP/IP emulation. ipx=false [sdl] fullscreen=true fulldouble=true fullresolution=original windowresolution=2560x1440 output=opengl autolock=true [autoexec] # Lines in this section will be run at startup. # You can put your MOUNT lines here. @echo off mount C ".." c: cd mk1 MK1.EXE -fs ****For mk2**** cd mk2 mk2.exe -fs ****For mk3**** cd mk3 MK3.EXE -fs SAVE THE FILES!! Per game edit these files dosboxMortalKombat.conf dosboxMortalKombat2.conf dosboxMortalKomba3t.conf fullscreen=true fulldouble=true fullresolution=1366x768 windowresolution=1366x768 output=opengl Now add shortcuts for DOSBOX.EXE name it according to the game DOXBOX(MK1) DOXBOX(MK2) DOXBOX(MK3) Right click each and add to steam. You can sgdboop the non steam game files and give them full cover art etc. Love ya GOG!! These were among my favorite games and not available on steam. Joystick config does need work!!

While it's truly great this classic series is on GOG, be warned that the lack of controller support out of the box could prove quite irksome for many gamers. The GOG Preservation Program is amazing and very important to maintaining classic games and I'm fully on board with the program. The GOG team itself states of the program, and quoted directly, "The GOG Preservation Program ensures classic games remain playable on modern systems, even after their developers stopped supporting them." GOG also states elsewhere, "Since 2008 we enhance good old games ourselves, to guarantee convenience and compatibility with modern systems." This is not convenience and compatibility with modern systems. MK is hardly playable, that is unless you download and configure 3rd party software such as AntiMicroX. You can get the gamepad working in MK3, but it's absolutely archaic and cumbersome and does not work in a seemless way one would expect from a game marketed as being playable on modern systems. MK2 has issues with registering input at all. No doubt, I could have tinkered with it, but why should we have to considering what is stated with respect to GOG's mission? Without the controller issues, I would have maxed this review out at 5 stars quicker than a wink, but with these issues, especially since the series is part of the preservation program, I simply cannot do that in good faith. Not easy since I hate writing bad reviews! If you are fine using other software to map your controller for a solid experience go ahead and buy this, otherwise I'd recommend that you shy away... for now. I say "for now" because I trust that GOG's folks will fix this.