As 2006 comes to a close, the Mortal Kombat series makes yet another apperance in the form of a nominee for fighting game of the year. However, this time neither of the recently released MK games (Mortal Kombat: Armageddon and Mortal Kombat: Unchained) are up for the award. Instead, the classic fighter from the 1990's, Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 is, in the form of it's reapperance on the XBox 360 console's XBox Live Arcade. The potential award comes from gaming preview and review site, GameSpot and their Best Games and Worst Games of 2006 awards. UMK3, of course, makes its appearance in the Fighting genre.

Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 (X360)
Publisher: Midway Developer: Digital Eclipse

You can drop a Mortal Kombat machine on some dude's head from the other side of the planet. Does any more really need to be said? This is an excellent rendition of a true fighting classic.

The game will be up against other ports of older games from years gone by, such as Street Fighter Alpha 3 MAX and Tekken: Dark Resurrection along with newer games such as Dead Or Alive 4 and King Of Fighters 2006. To vote for your favourite game, click here and click the large vote button.

Thanks to forum member for informing us of this latest MK-related award nomination.

EDIT: It seems the results are now in, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 has won the award for the best fighting game of 2006!

After the subpar release of Street Fighter 2, we were worried about the future of arcade fighters on Xbox Live Arcade. Then Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 came along and did everything right, with essentially perfect emulation, entertaining achievements, and an underlying fighting game that may look a little long in the tooth but has proven its longevity with matches raging endlessly on Xbox Live. In fact, given Street Fighter 2's latency problems online, we were pleased to see just how well UMK3 works over the Internet. The game's AI may quickly wear a little thin, but when you've got an endless supply of willing, skilled challengers to play against, who cares?

Congratulations to the MK team, Midway and Digital Eclipse for this achievement!