I've been thinking about this for a long while. I remember a few years ago before Midway Arcade Treasures 2 was released, ]{0MBAT made a thread about possible changes to Mortal Kombat 2, such as Reptile bleeding green as he does in later titles. I liked the idea, and unfortunately even now Midway has never made any changes to the games. I figured it might be a good time to bring up a new topic similar to that.

Quite a few people cite Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 as their favorite arcade game, and when I say that I prefer Mortal Kombat 3, they ask me why. I always respond that I felt Mortal Kombat 3 was a far more polished game by design, with everything (for the most part) consistent in design decisions.

When Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 came along, I noticed some rushed aspects to the game design. One thing that I was never very clear on was why the Animalities for the new characters did not have a colored aura around their animal counterparts. It made the new characters feel incomplete to their MK3 comrades. Even to this day, this has not been corrected, although we are all aware that Midway still has access to the source codes of these games.

I have also wondered why Midway has never reinstated The Bank as a stage in modern UMK3 ports, since space is no longer an issue. On the same note, the endings of MK3 could be reimplemented with the endings from Mortal Kombat Trilogy inserted into UMK3 for the new characters introduced. New endings could be made for Classic Sub-Zero, Ermac, and Mileena.

There are also quite a few "lolwut" decisions such as Scorpion's Animality being a penguin, when it would've made far more logical sense to simply swap Sheeva's Animality for him and give Sheeva something new. Such a change wouldn't be new to UMK3, as Sonya Blade had an entirely new Friendship in UMK3.

Moving back to older games, in particular the first Mortal Kombat, the game could use some balance tweaking. Modern ports still appear to be plagued by the uppercut corner trap, when in sequel games the user would slide backwards to allow the opponent to rise back up. The sound effects to the game could also be redone, since their low quality is noticeable. The most likely and cost-efficient method would be by reusing sound effects from Mortal Kombat 2 and Mortal Kombat 3, or even a few from the PlayStation 2 titles.

So, I ask, should Midway consider upgrading and tweaking the old 2D games? Even today they're still very popular and still making money, but Midway has made no strides to change or "complete" anything in the games.