Play Ultimate Mortal Kombat Online

Ultimate Mortal Kombat came out for the Nintendo DS in 2007, a time when the handheld was full of ambitious ports. Midway Games was the developer, and they tried to fit a lot of the arcade experience onto the small screen. It was interesting to see a fighting game of that scale on a portable system, sitting alongside all the puzzle games and RPGs.

You control a fighter from the Mortal Kombat roster, moving them through a series of one-on-one battles against the CPU or another player. The main objective is to defeat your opponent in each match, depleting their health bar with a combination of basic attacks, special moves, and gruesome Fatalities. Two signature mechanics make use of the DS hardware; the touch screen is used for performing certain special attacks and Fatalities, and there is a puzzle mode that borrows from the Puzzle Kombat spin-off. The pacing is fast, and the difficulty can be sharp, especially when you are learning the timing for the more complex combos. It feels immediate and physical, a direct translation of the arcade's intensity into your hands.