I don't know about Kitana and Mileena, but Raiden and Kung Lao are pretty good at exploiting the AI.

With Raiden just spam his b,b,f special move. Keep jumping backwards and soon the AI will start jumping towards you. Use the flying thunder god move in the air to take the opponent down.

With Kung Lao do the same thing. Keep jumping backwards until the AI follows you. When they're in the air use his Dive Kick in the air. When they land on the ground take one step forward and then immediately begin jumping backwards again when they get up. Use the Dive Kick again. Rinse and repeat.

These exploits will likely get you to Shang Tsung. They won't work on Shang though, he's to smart for that. imo, Shang is the toughest opponent in MK2's arcade ladder. Use sweep kicks and pray to God you win.

Kintaro is actually pretty easy. Use Sub-Zero and Freeze him. Jump kick, and then immediately Freeze him again. Rinse and repeat. This won't work when you get him in the corner, but when he's in the corner you can try to HP glitch. I've never done it, but I hear you can trap Kintaro in a corner and hit him with towards, HP and he won't be able to do anything to counter. Look it up on Youtube if you want more info.

Kahn is a piece of cake. Pick anyone with a damaging projectile (Kitana and Mileena work here.) Go to the corner. Crouch and block. He will do the shoulder ram. You will take some damage but recover faster. Uppercut him while he's still in the Shoulder Charge animation. Then throw out a projectile. He'll usually block it, but that sliver of damage insures that you're dealing more damage to him than he is to you.

You should be MK2 champ in no time

Thanks. I finally have the TV to myself. So I'm going to try it out now.

With Kitana, play defensive--jumping backward throwing air fans and setting up for fan lifts. When you get a fan lift, Jump Kick, immediately throw an Air Fan, and once you land do the Square Wave Punch. This combo will definitely help you get through the ladder.

So how'd it work out?

Still haven't beaten it yet, but I'm getting there. I'm having trouble with Liu Kang. Every time I jump, he does the fireball in the air. And he blocks most of my attacks.

Sub-Zero Tactics In Mortal Kombat 2 - Designed For Arcade Mode (Done on Very Hard - Yes, Arcade Version Has Five Levels of Difficulty)

Sub-Zero is my best character in every MK game, especially the 3D games and each iteration of MK3 except he's a bit difficult to use against MK2's AI, especially the Arcade version. After taking some advice from jbthrash, I experimented with getting the AI to follow me after backflipping and seeing what I could do from there.

From there, I found out this nice little baiting maneuver with Sub-Zero after playing for a few hours. Basically, get walk right up into the AI's face, when you're right there, jump backwards and they'll try to follow you.

They won't always jump directly into, but most of the time you'll be able to roundhouse them, and follow it up with a slide, and if possible, a set of sweeps, a ground freeze, then a move of your choice.

This helped me run through the ladder using only Sub-Zero.

Another way of dealing with aggressive AIs is to thrown down a ground freeze, and they should back up, you can try landing a drop kick and some sweeps, but the distance is very specific and sometimes the AI might land a kick or roundhouse on you. What I usually do in this situation is walk towards the AI, attempt a sweep combo, or set them up for another bait n' drop.

Characters That Were A Joke When Using This:
Reptile
Raiden
Kitana
Liu Kang
Shang Tsung
Baraka
Johnny Cage

Characters Who Were Still Somewhat Challenging:

Kung Lao - Kung Lao is just a versatile character, especially when controlled by the AI, although the AI doesn't use his kick or spin move, take advantage of that.

Jax - Another versatile character due to projectile, try sliding under his projectiles or jumping over and drop kicking him.

Mileena - It's a bit harder to set up a combo with Mileena since she can throw projectiles at you, so approach with caution.

Sub-Zero - He can get you with his slide or freeze almost without notice, so watch out and black if he's putting on the pressure.

Characters Who Were Still A Pain In The Ass:

Scorpion - His damn spear is hard to predict, he usually throws it at you when you're walking toward, the best way to counter this is to block it, slide, and then sweep him a couple times, jump back, and procede to set up your combo from there.

With that, I'm gonna go experiment a bit more with this tactic, seeing as how MK2 is the only MK game where the AI surprises me constantly.

And PS, SubMan, sorry for making another thread about MK2's AI.