Mortal Kombat Advance brings the classic arcade brutality to the handheld Game Boy Advance. While the scaled-down visuals and simplified controls reflect its portable nature, it admirably captures the essence of the series. Fans will relish the roster of familiar fighters and gory fatalities, but the experience is hampered by choppy animation and occasional input lag. Despite its limitations, Mortal Kombat Advance remains a nostalgic and entertaining, albeit flawed, translation of the iconic fighting franchise.

This game exists in a weird purgatory of simple mediocrity. I'm not a fan of Mortal Kombat, so it was a given that playing a video game which biggest accomplishment is it functions at a base level was going to be just as enjoyable as the time I drank bong water for $50.

Mortal Kombat Advance lacks everything that gives fighting gives an identity. There are total of zero fluid combat strings you can pull off amongst the entire cast of pallet swapped sprites that have voice lines from characters that don't appear its roster. It's gameplay loop is so exploitable that it makes me pulling off Sol Badguy's infinite in Guilty Gear: The Missing Link look just as jawdropping as Daigo vs Justin's set in Evo 2004. The "soundtrack" makes my nephew slamming his saliva caked hands on his Fisher Price keyboard sound just as introspective as Simon and Garfunkel's "The Sound of Silence." I go could go on for hours, but there's no point.

I don't think it is right to even refer to Mortal Kombat Advance as a "video game," not even because of its design, but because it is just a sad reminder of what corporate greed looks like. It was a quick port of a pretty alright game with cult following made so kids could throw tantrums in Target until their Mom's bought them it. "Life is like Monopoly; You are not old, you are obsolete" as Justin Trosper once said.

I think that the only positive takeaway from this game is that some epitome of Reddit told me this game was better than Guilty Gear -Strive- because posting nonsensical bait on Twitter dot come makes you George Carlin, I guess. Remember kids, if you ever feel like you're a disappoint, just look up handles of gamers like LoliLover59 or some other made up username on Twitter and remember that it could always be worse

Rating: Z
Genre(s): 2D fighter, novelty game