I resorted to a cheap trick: spamming Rain's water orb. Orb hits, lift Kintaro to upper corner of screen, push buttons for orb the moment he lands, rinse and repeat

Hmm.. but would that work, only ask cause in theory if you manage to hit him with a projectile the second time you go for it he will Tele-Stomp you, If your theory would be correct then you should be able to do a Sub-Zero freeze rinse & repeat the same way but unfortunately it doesn't work unless your playing rev.1.4. Do you think jump in High punch into combos would work?

My cheap trick actually worked for me. I shoot the orb at the exact moment he gets up and become hittable. Timing is very necessary. He couldn't escape. Except when my finger slipped and I fell into a world of pain.

When I try just jumping at him--BAM! Mid-air tele-stomp

But this was back in the PSX era. I don't have the re-released versions

I think you might have misunderstood what I was asking. But let's test it out, do you know what an IA in a game is?

I remember resorting to continual jump kicks and praying Kintaro won't grab me out of the air and pound me to the ground. If I'm Subzero, I will also occasionally freeze him. Kintaro was a very tough sub boss to beat!

I think people misread the Question so I'll explain the question.

Let's say your able to pick your favorite Mortal Kombat Trilogy character with all the gameplay mechanics that were available to you in that game (Run Button, Combos, Aggressore Meter etc) now after you pick you favorite character you are then put up against Kintaro playing like he did in Mortal Kombat 2 not MKT. In other words your going up against the HARD Kintaro who countered everything you tried to do in MK2, Not the easy one in MKT. Now the question is would it be easier to beat MK2 Kintaro (Not MKT) using your favorite MKT character with the MKT gameplay mechanics available to you or would you still have to resort to using a gimmick to beat him still?

I hope people now understand what I'm trying to ask.

I'm going to go with N64 Sub-Zero, especially since that's the version of MKT that I own. I would mainly combine his Freeze with Ice Clones then go in for a combo attack. But if you're just talking about the other version, I'd probably go with Noob Saibot, because he's also a broken ass character.

Subzero: iceball, uppercut pattern