So there I was last Saturday, rummaging through a box of N64 games that’s been sitting in my spare room for God knows how long. You know how it is – you tell yourself you’ll organize everything properly someday, then someday never comes. Anyway, I’m digging through loose cartridges when my fingers hit this familiar grey cart and boom – instant flashback to 1996.
Mortal Kombat Trilogy. Man, just holding that cartridge brought back memories I didn’t even know I still had stored up there.
Now, I came to retro gaming backwards, right? Didn’t grow up with these systems. But when my daughter got me into this stuff back in 2010, Mortal Kombat Trilogy was one of the first games she insisted I had to experience. “Dad, you don’t understand,” she kept saying, “this isn’t just some fighting game. This is THE fighting game.” She was maybe twenty at the time, all excited about this collection she was building, and I’m thinking… it’s just people punching each other, how special can it be?
Well, turns out she knew exactly what she was talking about.
See, by the time I actually sat down with Trilogy, I’d already tried a bunch of other fighting games. Street Fighter II, King of Fighters, some of the earlier Mortal Kombat entries. They were fine, I guess, but I couldn’t really see what all the fuss was about. Then I loaded up Trilogy and… Jesus. Thirty-six characters. Thirty-six! Coming from construction work where you’re always trying to figure out how to fit everything into the available space, I was genuinely impressed they managed to cram that many fighters onto a single cartridge.
The character select screen alone was like Christmas morning. You’ve got your obvious picks – Sub-Zero, Scorpion, Liu Kang – but then there’s all these weird deep cuts I’d never heard of. Chameleon, who apparently just cycles through different ninja colors and steals everyone else’s moves. Noob Saibot, which I only later found out was “Tobias Boon” spelled backwards (the creators’ names, in case you’re wondering). Rain, who looked cool but had this projectile attack that seemed impossible to land consistently.
I spent probably an hour just scrolling through characters, trying to figure out who looked interesting. My daughter’s watching me, getting increasingly amused that I’m treating the character selection like it’s some kind of research project. “Just pick someone and fight, Dad.” But that’s not how my brain works, you know? I need to understand what I’m dealing with first.
Started with Sub-Zero because, honestly, ice powers seemed straightforward enough. Big mistake. Turns out there are two Sub-Zeros in this game – the older brother and the younger brother – and they play completely differently. One’s got this ice clone move, the other has different freezing attacks, and I’m sitting there trying to figure out why my inputs aren’t doing what I expect. My daughter finally takes pity on me and explains the whole Mortal Kombat lore about the Lin Kuei clan and the family drama. Gaming history is complicated, turns out.
But once I started getting the hang of the controls… man, this game clicked for me in ways I wasn’t expecting. The N64 controller, which looks ridiculous by today’s standards with that weird three-pronged design, actually worked perfectly for this. You could hold it normally and use the D-pad for precise inputs, or grip it differently for the analog stick (though you didn’t really need that for 2D fighting). The shoulder buttons were positioned just right for blocking and running.
And running – that was the thing that made Trilogy feel different from other fighting games I’d tried. Most fighters, you’re kind of locked into this back-and-forth dance across the screen. But Trilogy had this run button that let you close distance fast, really change the pace of a fight. Suddenly you could play aggressively, pressure your opponent, make things happen instead of just reacting. Coming from someone who spends his day managing construction crews – where being proactive usually beats being reactive – that appealed to me.
The fatalities were obviously the big draw. I remember my daughter showing me her notebook where she’d written down all these input combinations. Pages and pages of them, like some kind of martial arts manual. “Down, forward, back, high punch, but only from sweep distance.” “Hold block for three seconds, then up, up, back, high kick.” Some of these combos were absurdly complex, requiring perfect timing and positioning.
I started keeping my own notes, because there’s no way you’re memorizing thirty-six characters worth of finishing moves without writing them down. Had this little spiral notebook next to the TV, pages covered in my terrible handwriting trying to decode which direction was “toward” versus “away” from your opponent. Felt like learning a new language, honestly.
But here’s what surprised me about Trilogy – underneath all the gore and the “FINISH HIM!” drama, this was actually a really well-designed fighting game. The combo system made sense once you understood it. Button mashing could get you through the easier fights, but if you wanted to tackle the higher difficulty levels or play against someone who knew what they were doing, you had to learn proper techniques.
I got obsessed with practice mode. Would spend entire evenings just working on one character’s moveset, trying to nail the timing for specific combos. Liu Kang’s bicycle kick combo became my white whale for about two weeks. Looks simple enough when you see it – just this flurry of kicks that juggles your opponent – but getting the input timing right was brutal. When I finally landed it consistently… probably felt better than finishing some construction projects I’ve worked on.
The variety between characters was genuinely impressive too. Goro, the four-armed monster, felt like trying to maneuver heavy machinery – slow but devastating when you connected. Kitana was all about speed and these fan attacks that required precise timing. Jax had these ground pound moves that could hit opponents anywhere on screen. Each fighter had their own personality, their own strategy.
What really got me though was realizing this game was basically a greatest hits collection. Characters and stages pulled from multiple Mortal Kombat games, all balanced to work together in one system. As someone discovering this stuff for the first time, it was like getting a crash course in fighting game history. My daughter would point out which characters came from which game, explain the storylines, give me the background on why certain rivalries mattered.
The stages were fantastic too. Each one had its own music, its own atmosphere. The Pit, with that bridge over a canyon of spikes. Goro’s Lair, all dark and menacing. The Courtyard, which had this theme that’s still stuck in my head fifteen years later. Environmental storytelling before that was really a thing, you know? Just looking at a stage told you something about the world these fights were happening in.
Playing it now on my original N64 – yeah, I’ve still got it hooked up, runs through an upscaler that probably cost more than the console did originally – Trilogy holds up remarkably well. The graphics are obviously dated, all chunky polygons and compressed textures, but the gameplay is still solid. The character balance feels right, the controls are responsive, the variety keeps things interesting.
I think what made Trilogy feel special, even coming to it years later without any nostalgia attached, was that it delivered on every promise. Want a huge roster? Got it. Want every stage and every finishing move? Done. Want a fighting game that’s accessible enough for beginners but deep enough to reward serious study? Absolutely.
These days we’d call this a “complete edition” or “ultimate collection.” Back in ’96, it was just… everything, crammed onto one cartridge. No DLC, no patches, no online updates. Just thirty-six characters, dozens of stages, hundreds of special moves, and the understanding that what you bought was what you got.
Sometimes I think that approach worked better than what we have now, honestly. When developers knew they only had one shot to get everything right, they made sure everything was actually finished before it shipped.
0 Comments