The Game Boy Advance is home to a great number of ports and/or updates, which in my experience seems to frustrate a lot of gamers. It's fine by me though, provided the games are good and still worth playing. Why then did Midway bother to release this highly disappointing 'effort' (I say that in the lowest sense of the word)? Let's find out...

Mortal Kombat Advance is halfway between a port of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 and Mortal Kombat Trilogy, but somehow manages to pale in comparison to both. At first glance the game certainly looks the part, but if you bother to take the time and actually play it, you'll discover a wolf in sheep's clothing. Admittedly all 20+ characters seem to have all their animations intact, but at the price of being about a quarter of the screen's height in size. Compared to games such as Tekken and Street Fighter - both featuring huge fighters on screen - it's really not acceptable. The background levels also look fairly decent in screenshots, but when you see them in 'action', you'll find that they're pretty damn boring. There's no animation in them whatsoever, not even in the Chamber of Souls, a level featuring a face in the middle of the screen with souls waving around inside it. Not on GBA though; the souls don't actually move, resulting in a decidedly dodgy look and this really is not acceptable. The presentation overall is very well done, but the amount of laziness that becomes apparent when playing this game is appalling.

The sound is probably the game's best point. The fighters' screams, Shao Kahn's taunts and the bone crunches of being attacked have all managed to get across to the GBA without being butchered like most MK combatants! The music sounds great as well, although it does tend to get a little repetitive. Overall though, the sound is the only point of the game that was successfully implemented and shows evidence of significant effort on the part of the developers. The only criticism I have is that a lot of the male characters share the same annoying cries as Sheeva, a character who is absent from the game due to her low popularity.

The actual gameplay in Mortal Kombat Advance is quite scary, to be honest. My first thought upon playing was, "Where's Mortal Kombat and what have you done with it?!" This is definitely not the Mortal Kombat we (well, some of us) have come to know and love. The game moves along at a terribly slow pace and you'll be lucky if you can perform a special attack. Granted, that might be a little exaggerated, but performing normal attack moves shouldn't be as tough as it is in this game. Then again, a lot of fights can be won by simply walking up to your opponent and punching them repeatedly - the A.I. is pretty much non-existent. Computer opponents seem to follow either one of two attack patterns:

1) Stay as far away as possible and block for the entire match.
2) Attack you with everything they've got, stringing together moves and combos no human player could ever manage (unless they had six thumbs, and let's face it, there aren't many Goros out there who own GBAs!)

There are two link-up modes available; standard 1-on-1 Kombat and 2-on-2 Kombat. Sadly if you've got no friends you'll be stuck with just 1-on-1 against the computer. The last thing about the gameplay I want to bring to your attention are the glitches that somehow got by undetected by the six testers listed in the credits. These range from projectiles colliding with your opponent but having no effect, to performing fatalities then having the game crash. With six testers on board, that's pathetic - did they even play the game before its release?

Alas, Mortal Kombat Advance shares nothing in common with its console predecessors, aside from the graphics (when they're not moving) and the sound. What could have been so good (SNES Mortal Kombat II) has unfortunately turned out so bad (Game Boy Mortal Kombat 3). I suppose you could blame a lot of it on the fact that the game was rushed in time for release, but really there's no excuse. Hopefully Midway have taken into account all the criticism aimed at this game and done something about it for the next GBA release in the series, Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance.

Reviewed by Alistair Bloomer for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).