I remember the first I heard of MK3 was from my older cousin. He had a subscription to EGM and heard a lot of rumors.

- First he said that Shao Kahn won MK2 and had taken over Earth.
Thought that was bad ass. Really cool twist.

- Then he said Kahn tore Jax's arms off and now he had mteal arms.
Awesome. At the time I still kind of liked Jax so that sounded cool.

- No Scorpion. No Kitana. No Reptile.
.......what the fuck?!

- Sub-Zero was maskless. And three cyborgs were chasing after him.
Didn't see that coming. At first I was a little put off by cyborgs in MK, but I eventually got used to it.

- Liu Kang was coming back.
I remember being VERY disappointed by that, especially after hearing Scorpion was gone. By then I was sick to death of Liu Kang, I didn't buy him as the "hero" and I wanted him to go away.

- Sonya and Kano were coming back.
No reaction. Did not care at all. And I was still pissed there was no Scorpion.

- Shao Kahn's wife was in it.
Learing Kahn had a wife caught me off guard. Sounded kind of cool. Then I saw a pic of her and thought "She looks crazy."

- No Jade.
I honestly was disppointed there was no Jade. At the time I had it in my head that hidden characters were try-outs who would come in later. Like Reptile was hidden in MK1 then became playable in MK2. MK2 had Smoke and Jade (I didn't count Noob) so I was expecting them. Sort of got Smoke but no Jade. Weak.

- Johnny Cage was dead.
No reaction. I didn't like or hate Johnny Cage. My cousin was mad though. He liked Cage.

- Kerri Hoskins as Sonya.
Seeing a pic of her as Sonya was a pleasant surprise because I thought Sonya was ugly in MK1. So when I saw the pic of her VS. screen my reaction was "Hey, Sonya's hot now."

- Nightwolf and Stryker.
Upon seeing these guys for the first time my reaction was something like "Are you kidding me?"


That's the first stuff I remember finding out about. Not all of the info turned out to be accurate, but I was hyped for MK3, even though almost all of favorite characters of the time were gone.

Its sort of hard to remember but i remember after mk2 i was tired of mk games in general i played them to death.I remember hearing about it but i wasnt really excited then after reading about it i was getting intrested in it so i went to the mall to check it out.I remember seeing sindel and was like wtf but after awhile all the fighters started to grow on me espically the robots.I remember seeing a pic of cyrax animality in a magazine the jaws i thought it was the coolest thing.I had some good arcade times with it then got it for psx when i look back i remember 95 as the mk3 year good times.

I remember looking everywhere I could for stuff on MK3. DreemerNJ and myself had a woodshop class together that year in 8th grade and we came up with lots of ideas for characters, and he drew a version of Reptile that look not unlike the concept they came up with for MK4. I drew pictures back then of some of the traditional MK3 artwork and still have it. Then the game arrived at our local video store West Coast Video (RIP) and we played it, a lot.

Shao Kahn MK3

Buying EVERY magazine with MK3 coverage. Even just a snippet of coverage. I'd go to B Dalton's in the mall (bookstore), thumb through every game magazine just to see if there was new coverage or a new screen, and buy it if there was. I did the same for MK2. I was in 6th grade going on 7th when MK3 was surfacing. I met one of my best friends during the MK3 days. I remember playing him one night at the arcade and I was kicking his ass. He was a scrubby Cyrax player. Then just out of nowhere I asked him if he wanted to stay at my house. He said sure. I didn't know him. He didn't know me. But he was my age and we became best friends spawning from MK3.

When UMK3 news surfaced with Kitana and Scorpion on the cover of EGM, forget about it. We'd check the arcade every day to see if it was there.

I'm happy I get to finally play all these damn arcade MK's coming up this month when I buy a new computer. I'm sure I suck shit now but oh well. I'll try to get it all back. I can't believe it's already been more than a decade.

I was with my church youth group on a trip, and we were at this HUGE mall called the Carousel in Syracuse, NY. I had played MK2 to death in the arcades, but I really hadn't been keeping up with the magazines and stuff since then. So at the mall, some of us stopped in an EB Games and I saw that EGM with the little MK3 preview pic, the Kano/Sonya vs. screen. I thought, "whoa cool, MK3, I wonder how long it will take for that to come out?" It was April 1995 when I saw that magazine, and that pic was the first piece of info I received on the game. I just assumed the game wasn't coming out for a LONG time.

So after that we were walking around the mall some more and we made our usual stop in the arcade, I think it was called Aladdin's Castle or something like that. We get and I see this HUGE crowd of people that I can barely maneuver around, and I hear what appears to be MK-ish noises. Due to the crowd I couldn't even see the screen, so I was a bit confused. But then I looked up and saw the top of the arcade cabinet, with the MK3 logo on it, and my heart practically stopped... I was just thinking "no frigging WAY!"

I finally got through the crowd and just watched people play for like 45 minutes. I was in complete amazement... the running and the autocombos and the stages and characters just mesmerised me the whole time. Definitely one of my most shocking and favorite gaming moments ever.

When I first asw the prewiews I knew something was wrong. No oriental setting, no iconic characters, Sub-Zero without the mask, cyborgs instead of ninjas, spandex disco indian and animalities....OMG.

The music was good though, save for the urban stages.

I have to admit it, the controlls were decisively very good, but I lost interest in MK when I played it for two weeks. Then came UMK3 and MK Trilogy. The latter was dumb. It was simply a commercial product, the older clas-sic backgrounds weren't quite fitting the characters (not to mention that they weren't put on the backscreen properly, esp. the courtyard and the pit)
My greatest disappointment came when I saw the ninja onslaught. OMG, Ermac, Rain, what could possibly come next? BANG! Chameleon and Khameleon.

Less characters would have been better, but the greatest crime was that the ninjas looked like they were wearing plastic power ranger suits. The facial masks didn't look like they had breathing openings, and the other parts looked like rubbers. Not to mention some of the illogical new specials, like Kung Laos torpedo. -before I forget, the MK1/MK2 characters didn't had running animations, and they took out Kanos headbutt close HP move from MK1.

MK started to come to it's senses with MKDA. Sadly, I think Vogel was sent on vacation when they were designing the plotline for MKD. New ones for me, save for MK1 and MK2.

That last post must have accidentally went through some kind of quantum rift from a different reality.

Nice drawing of Shao Kahn MK2Kung. I used to doodle in class as well. I don't have any of those drawings but I used to like to draw Shang Tsung defeating Liu Kang. Finally got my wish I guess.

Anyways, we had a miniture golf place by our home that always stayed current with the MK games regardless of how much business was done there. I rememeber the sign outside of the place had a big sign that said "Mortal Kombat 3 HERE" which I thought was really cool because later, they would put "UMK3 here". It attracted business from the get go but it later just leveled out so thats where I hung out for the MK games. Definitely fun to play. Its just when that person comes along that can kick your butt, it gets really fun and competitive. Love having people come over and watch you play.

Wow, ten years later......the game still rocks!