Hello, arkhaic fan here (est. 1992, countless 20ps fed to the original MK kabinet in the foyer at the great Warrington Westbrook UCI cinema [now a standard Odeon, boo], England), with a bit of a long shot as the title says:

Does anyone have the Mortal Kombat 3 Arcade Secrets book from 1995? I only ask because I need to know if this is the MK3 arcade guide I had as a kid, now lost to time.

If someone's an absolute hero in here and has a kopy, could you either confim whether the character bio parts use the actual sprites from the arcade, or just some illustrations? Some pics would be very much appreciated, but not necessary if it's too much hassle.

Bit of backstory for anyone arsed: went on an amazing holiday in Orlando as a kid with my mum in 1995, loads of great memories but one that really sticks out is my utter amazement at the local McDonalds there having a proper full new MK3 arcade machine slap bang in the centre of the place. So obviously, most mornings before we went and did typical Florida holiday stuff, I used to go on a long lazy stroll down the road/boulevard(?) from our modest little hotel to Maccies, get my breakfast there and basically help prop up Ronald's evil empire by slipping way too many holiday-spends dollar bills into that MK3, before getting prised away from it to go and visit Mickey & co.

Before we left the USA, in honour of these beautiful, strange, halcyon days (sigh) I went and bought an official MK3 guide book, pored over it on the plane, a 12-hour or so flight reduced to minutes in my tiny carefree eggshell mind.

Brought the book home to the UK, took it to a mate's house in Liverpool, and was feeling generous for some stupid unforgivable reason, so I gave him that book as a present from my trip to the states. Fast forward nearly a quarter of a century later, new Mortal Kombat out looking pretty astounding for the most part and with Kabal being ace once again, plus loads of loving little nods to MK3... I suddenly remember and get powerful nostalgia pangs for that guide book. But it's now all very hazy, with only certain images and pages seared into my memory.

All friends being nobheads as usual, the mate I gave it to obviously "mislaid" it a long time ago, and barely even remembers me bestowing it upon him as a sacred gift (life lesson: never give anyone any gift without signing a contract prior, legally obliging them to take good care of it). So I kind of wanted to see if I could find the exact one I had, and thumb through it again just for old times' sake.

So I thought I'd finally found the one I had back then when vaguely searching online, this 'Mortal Kombat 3 Arcade Secrets'... but the back cover has me doubting again, because they have these fairly tacky looking hand drawn illustrations of some of the characters, instead of big arse glorious sprites straight out of the arcade game, which is what I distinctly remember.

I might well have just had another official MK3 arcade guide book that wasn't sold so widely - I recall it being a very well made & good-looking book, not cheap and flimsy, with lots of pixelly graphics and mainly dark/black backgrounds, and the cover was mainly dark/black, with the Klassic Dragon symbol prominent; quite a simple klassy, unkluttered design, not just a load of gormless looking comic-book-ish figures splashed all over the front cover. Can anyone help a MK brother out?