Back in high school, I worked at a grocery store and during one of my shifts, found three GBA games on the ground outside, probably dropped by some kid. One of the games was Mortal Kombat Advance and I was super hype for it being a big fan of the franchise. When I got home, I excitedly put the cartridge in and powered it on. I played it less than five minutes before I was so irritated at that broken mess that despite finding the game on the ground, I felt I should still get a refund. But I also got The Pinball of the Dead, so I guess there was a silver lining.
I have a similar story except it isn't MK related. I found a copy of Sonic Genesis for GBA on the ground. Even though I couldn't pinpoint it at the time even as a kid I still knew that terrible port very felt off. I was at least glad I didn't end up finding out the hard way by actually buying it.
The sad thing is that you can't even blame this on limitations of hardware. GBA was in fact perfectly capable of handling fighting games, and had solid ports of SF2, SFA3 and GGX. These all had better presentation and gameplay than MKA, and were far more feature complete. It feels like Midway and Virtucraft didn't quite grasp what GBA was capable of and specced the game like it's made for a slightly souped up GBC.
"It's better than 0.0." I remember Electronic Gaming Monthly reviewed this game. They DID give it a 0.0. the first bolded sentence was "No, that score is not a mistake. Yes, this game is that bad."
Wait! In that review didn't Shoe make a Comic Book Guy reference with something like"I can say without hyperbole that this is a million times worse than anything I ever played..."? XD
@@LanceRedRichard He also said he could be locked in jail cell, watching Mortal Kombat Annihilation on a TV while gargling cat piss and would probably have a better experience than he had playing MK Advance.
Because you have to spam moves the whole time to have a chance to win, so there is no gameplay at all! 0.0 points from a magazine is absolute correct for an unplayable game!
Yeah no real reason they couldn't have made a decent port of the Snes Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 at a reduced resolution, IF they were given all the right resources, and time. Especially as UMK3 had no special chips.
I played the GGX port a while back and we couldn't believe how good it was. It was just a stream of random GBA games and suddenly this beast showed up and we stuck with it for an hour. Almost every single feature of the console version was intact.
The funny thing about Virtucraft's last game, the Samurai Jack one you mention at 19:50, is that it was probably their best and most ambitious game, and a very competent Metroidvania at that.
I remember receiving this game for Christmas in 2001. I had played Mortal Kombat Trilogy on my older brother's PS1 and always craved more, so I was happy to play Mortal Kombat on my GBA. But oooh boy, was this a steaming pile of crap
Believe it or not, THIS is NOT the worst MK port on a portable system. That honor goes to the MK 4 port on the Game Boy Color. Are ya listening, Matt McMuscles? :)
While he didn't say that GB MK4 plays better he responded to a different comment he thinks MKA is worse because MKA doesn't make use of the hardware and is worse than other fighting games on the GBA. MK4 is on a portable console that predates the original arcade game by 3 years. It and almost all GB fighting games are doomed to be bad. (MK4 is not a true GBC game like SF Alpha was, for example)
As someone who owns all the original MK gameboy games, including the MK1/MK2 Double Pack, I can concur that MK4 on the Game Boy Color is the worst. In my opinion, MK1 is medicore. MK2 was awesome when it was released but it's aged terribly since. MK3 is bad, but it's playable. Granted I was never a fan of MK3. Ultimate MK3 and MK Trilogy make MK3 irrelevant. MK4 however oof. There's nothing redeeming about the GBC port. If MKA is on the same level as Criticom according to Matt, then MK4 on the GBC should easily be in the Grandmaster Tier. It's not the worst ever fighting game though. Would probably be in my personal top 5 at least.
I would have to agree. MK4 for GBC only had 3 music tracks... or 2... but it was BAD. That comboed in with the gameplay... i cant believe i rented that game as a kid lol
Woof! Yes I tried Mk4 for Gameboy color and it's even worse than the original Gameboy mortal Kombat and street fighter 2 for Gameboy combined. (Yes they made Street fighter 2 for the original Gameboy and might as well ran at 2 frames per second)
I vaguely recall reading a review for this in a gaming magazine way back in the day, and the reviewer describing the gameplay using the phrase "drunken spaceman physics"
The game should’ve been a lot better than it turned out. The GBA was more than capable of a good rendition. Even SSF2 Turbo was better than what came out here.
SSF2 Turbo on GBA is a very playable game with good graphics, sound and gameplay, you can't compare it with the worst MK of all times - Mortal Kombat Advance. Ist even worse than the old Game Boy version of MK1, and this slow game really sucks!
Especially since the console was advertised as a 32-bit console and was capable of doing much more. They got a Crash Bandicoot game to run on it and the fact that they were able to pump out a beautiful game like Guilty Gear onto the system is quite an accomplishment.
@@spongeman3090 or Tomb Raider, Doom and Doom 2 for example, they are pretty good and complete Ports with a good framerate. It's just the developers lazyness when a game went shitty like MK Advance.
SSF2 Turbo is a decent port but it does have a lot of bug problems including the infamous Akuma bug which corrupts your saved records. The king of portable Street Fighter is Alpha 3 on GBA.
mk advance was such a letdown, even street fighter and tekken got it right though not perfect . i traded a game for this crap being the huge mk fanboy i am . why are the jump sound effects the girls? endless loop music and terrible controls and sound
Mortal Kombat DS was so much better, it was an arcade perfect port of Ultimate 3 with Puzzle Kombat included (Oh you included it, it's my favorite port of UMK3)
HELL YEAH, I LOVE THIS GAME! It's so bad that is the only way i can be decent in a fighting game! No, but really, I just find it somehow charming how shitty this game is.
To go along the trend of "Terrible fighting game on the GBA", I would love an episode on Dragon Ball Z: Taiketsu! Even as a kid, who was obsessed with Dragon Ball, it was obvious to me how bad it was. Grotesquely bad visuals, terrible game feel, and some of the "special moves" characters can do are hilarious. There's a pretty infamous Vegeta special that's pretty hilarous!
I remember getting that game for Christmas in 2003 as a 13 year old and was stoked to play it. I remember playing it for maybe 10 minutes, turning it off, and traded it in not long after.
@@thatoneguy4941 See normally if you go 1 on 1 in another game, you got a 50/50 chance of liking it! But MK Advance is a Genetic Freak! And it's not normal! So you got a 25% AT BEST! At like it! Then you add Virtucraft to the mix?!
That's like how younger me would try to beat MKII by just spamming the uppercut. XD It worked until the opponent was Reptile and I couldn't see where he was.
Everytime I watch one of these, or when Matt plays crappy games in general, I admire that there's going to be someone in the comments who say they either owned game when they were young and/or they liked the game. It doesn't matter how bad or obscure the game is. This is the law.
I had super street fighter 2 turbo for my Gameboy advance back when the game was new. Time flies. I loved how they crammed in extra modes and of course they ran out of ideas so they threw akuma in there. Akuma in street fighter games is like including Mario bros (not super) in every Mario game, it's a cheesy freebie but not as cool as it was. I mean you can't select akuma by default on the arcade versions of super street fighter 2 turbo or X-Men children of the atom without a code but I could never get those to work lol. If someone would hack those arcade games specifically to include akuma from the get go, I would be happy. 🙂
Don't forget that it had nearly no random number generator. Almost every game would be identical the order you would fight opponents each time you started a new game after booting the Gameboy up.
@@Rountree1985 My bad. One their owns, Jame and James is easy to differentiate. Once you're going into possessives, it gets harder to notice when you're wrong.
I had this shit in my childhood even then I knew it was awful. Could never beat it even on easiest. I thought I'd gotten rid of it only to find last year it'd been lurking in the depths of my cupboards the whole time. So I finally did what child me couldn't do and beat the game all the way through once by spamming special moves. It wasn't satisfying at all but at least the nightmare is over. Stay where you belong MK Advance. In my memories.
Because it's on the PS4 and Switch I'm expecting it to be a $2 shovelware title. I don't know how the Xbox Store has better quality control than the stores of both of these systems.
@@spongeman3090 it's a 10 bucks shovelware, I managed to pick for 2.49 in a sale and it was 2.49 too much. From the same devs of the now infamous Popeye game
Yeap but then it's missing Rain, Noob Saibot, the bosses, and the Brutality. With the server already shutdown, it's now missing online play as well. What's even worst is that the two modes (4 Players: 2-on-2 and Tournament Mode) from the arcade version you couldn't even access and it's missing Galaga from the console and arcade game.
I love this show. You know what would be nice? A similar show but ranking poverty fighting games, unknown games that are quite good, there are a lot of hidden gems out there
The word "Portable" and the term "Fighting Game" usually don't mix very well, I think that even nowadays making a good fighting game in a portable console is an achievement by itself.
Me and my good friend both owned this game and at the time we were buzzing that we had MK on the go. I remember many years later we dusted off the old nugget and didnt realise how frickin bad it was 🤣 Nostalgia is a hell of a drug
The GBA is stronger than the 16-bit consoles so it should've been perfectly capable of handling UMK3. Too bad the Midway higher ups got an incompetent studio to develop that disastrous GBA port.
Interesting video. Looking at some of those early ports then comparing them to something like Mortal Kombat 11 on Switch shows just how far technology's come. For a bad fighting game, I'd suggest The Simpsons Wrestling.
When I was like 6 my mom’s friend gave this game to me, I was absolutely stoked to have mortal kombat at such a young age. Slowly I realized this game was absolute bullshit, so insanely frustrating even on easy difficulties. The amount of combo spamming the AI would do almost drove me to tears, quickly became my least favorite game to play on the game boy. God watching this video is triggering all those negative memories with the pile of doodoo.
At first I thought this was talking about one of the 3D gba MK's as it was my first MK games. Soon as I saw the presentation I was like "oh what in sweet hell"
I remember a cousin of mines had MK Tournament Edition on the GBA and it blew my mind how good it looked and played - - few years later picked up MK for the DS and it was great playing online over the McDonald's Wifi! Good times! And when I got tired of that I pulled out the other MK (mario kart for DS) nostalgia that's 15yrs ago easily!
Ketchup guest starring on this episode was a treat. Having two of my favorite people that talk about fighting games together in the same video is awesome
Looking at the list at 2:53, I recognized one game: The Powerpuff Girls: Bad Mojo Jojo. Was it a bad game? Well, 12 year-old me liked it (which isn’t saying much). I remember the final boss being Mojo Jojo, and he had about three phases. The subway level was the hardest for me since you had to traverse your way back to the entrance before the subway collapsed. That was pretty cool imo. Bad Mojo Jojo was the Blossom version. There was a Bubbles and a Buttercup version of the games. Buttercup had the Gangrene Gang as the final boss, and Bubbles had Fuzzy Lumpkin (I think). Each version had different collectible cards which encouraged players to trade with friends or buy the different versions. Also, you could enter a secret password to fight a Rowdy Ruff Boy.
It absolutely baffles me to no end that they were able to make TWO decent ports of MK5 to the GBA, but somehow messed up a UMK3 port. How is that even possible?
I pretty much just posted the same thing but then saw your comment, I completely agree that for a GBA Port it was fantastic. As an adult I now own two copies just so I can mess around with it multiplayer with my friends sometimes. Even on the GBA player it's still fun.
Hey now, I'll defend Mortal Kombat II on Game Boy 'til the end. It was FAR from arcade perfect, but it actually wasn't awful. If only they had used that same engine for MK1 and MK3 for the portable versions... Also... I would choose MK Advance over the GB version of MK1 anyday.
I believe The Angry Video Game Nerd said it, best around 12:23-12:27. I said the same thing after a friend of mine let me borrow his copy of this game when it first came out & I still stand by that statement...
Off topic, I really like your fighting game look on your sona. Curious, if you had to choose what kind of fighting style what would it be? Like Ryu?, like Ken? Etc?
Speaking of MK, I'd posit either MK Mobile or Injustice Mobile (The phone ports that you find in arcades) for the worst fighting game. The gameplay is an unmitigated tap-athon and they're filled to the brim with anti-consumer microtransactions. Concessions have to be made for mobile games, but they both feel like soulless cash grabs and barely even hit the minimum requirements for a fighting game
@@MattMcMuscles I mean you have the core ideas - character selection, healthbars, blocking and frame advantage, etc. It's just a perversion of those ideas
This was rushed and lazy programmed because the GBA is technically very capable to run a game like MK3 just fine. Normally it should be good playable with good graphics, just like the 16bit versions on SNES and Megadrive are. Mortal Kombat Advance is probably the worst Mortal Kombat ever, unplayable garbage, even the awful (in every aspect) and slow Game Boy version of MK1 has better gameplay than this one.
I loved playing MKII on the original Gameboy. From my vague memories of it, it ran pretty smoothly, and had a decent amount of content for such limited hardware. When MK3 was released, I snapped it up, but that was complete night and day to its predecessor. IT just didn't "feel" right... (Just to note, I didn't get a SNES until many years later, after the N64's release, so I didn't have much choice when it came to fighting games)
When I was 10 I got very sick and had to go to stay at a hospital for about 2 weeks and my dad got me a brand new gba and this game haha! I remember trying to learn to cheese the ai since it was the only game I had!
I remember buying this back on the day and writing a 2 page report about how much shitty it was to take back money from the guarantee. I just couldn't beleive that it was that much less better than the snes port of MK3. What a shitty game...
This game has some awful controls. I played it back in the day I had my gba and everything feels both delayed and non responsive. The specials never come out consistently. It kinda reminds me of street fighter 1
I dropped my phone under my bed though a tiny gap in the wall while watching this, so the entire time I was struggling to rescue it (I ended up having to move the entire bed to get to it) this video was playing. I think that’s about right in the whole experience.
This and Doom where some unfortunate ports I had the displeasure of being my first experience with both games. It wouldn't be another 14 years before I actually got to experience them as intended
To be fair to the idea of porting UMK3 and titling simply 'Advance', I will remind that Super Mario Advance was a decade old SNES port of Super Mario Bros 2/USA.
The comment about the sound just reminds me of how capable the GBA was, but a lot of that capability was not an inherent part of the hardware. Rather, it required a lot of specialized code to perform, which took up space and was overall slower. Still impressive that you could even get the thing to render full 3D.
Trust me, the DS version of the same game (Ultimate Mortal Kombat) happens to be way better than the port on GBA here, since in that case the DS version is a near perfect conversion of the arcade game that makes Ermac, Mileena, and Classic Sub Zero permanently playable once they are unlocked, not to mention it even adds Puzzle Kombat from Deception to make it worth buying
19:23 Holy crap, my headphones are actually so good that I heard a phone go off under him talking the music. Money well spent, unlike MK:A at the pawn shop down the street, which is good target practice at best.
I remember playing this and booting it up thinking "It can't be worse than MK1 on Gameboy," and then I started actually playing it and I was like "Yeah, this is worse. A lot worse."
I got the GBA when it first came out, and as someone who really loved MK1, MK2, MK3, UMK3, I saw MKA and thought: That sounds stupid. Doesn't even have enough buttons for this. I skipped it and got WWF Road to WrestleMania later. Dodged one bullet, and got devastated by another.
Want more Kombat? Check out the What Happened on failed MK remakes! - th-cam.com/video/29pNd-i4ykM/w-d-xo.html
Asked for more worst fighting games and you delivered, becoming one of my faveorite utube channels ♥
Do Arm Joe, it's (probably) going to be fun.
The quality of these recent games have drastic gone down!
Please, do "Pit-Fighter"
MK4 on the GBC is so awful. If you haven't checked it out I recommend it.
THANKS I HATED IT
Tihi
I'm thankful you suffered for our enjoyment.
I mean it could’ve been worse
Time to make an MK Meta video about this, eh?
Now play Mortal Kombat 4 on the Gameboy Color, you coward.
Back in high school, I worked at a grocery store and during one of my shifts, found three GBA games on the ground outside, probably dropped by some kid. One of the games was Mortal Kombat Advance and I was super hype for it being a big fan of the franchise. When I got home, I excitedly put the cartridge in and powered it on. I played it less than five minutes before I was so irritated at that broken mess that despite finding the game on the ground, I felt I should still get a refund. But I also got The Pinball of the Dead, so I guess there was a silver lining.
I have a similar story except it isn't MK related. I found a copy of Sonic Genesis for GBA on the ground. Even though I couldn't pinpoint it at the time even as a kid I still knew that terrible port very felt off. I was at least glad I didn't end up finding out the hard way by actually buying it.
Man, that's how I got Pokémon red
what was the 3rd one
@@tsvtsvtsv A fighting game called Dual Blades.
I had mortal Kombat for the original game boy lol. I know your pain bruh
The sad thing is that you can't even blame this on limitations of hardware. GBA was in fact perfectly capable of handling fighting games, and had solid ports of SF2, SFA3 and GGX. These all had better presentation and gameplay than MKA, and were far more feature complete.
It feels like Midway and Virtucraft didn't quite grasp what GBA was capable of and specced the game like it's made for a slightly souped up GBC.
Definitely a rush job. I mean, Midway is by no means faultless, but wow...
No japanese fighting game looks or plays better than any MK title so stfu
@@eternal327 Low IQ troll, wrong opinion too.
@@eternal327 I have never seen something so absolutely wrong in my entire life.
And I don't even like Japanese fighting games.
@@eternal327 wow… that opinion is just factually incorrect, you are totally entitled to said opinion, however… it’s wrong
"It's better than 0.0." I remember Electronic Gaming Monthly reviewed this game. They DID give it a 0.0. the first bolded sentence was "No, that score is not a mistake. Yes, this game is that bad."
And it was also the first 0 score in the magazine's history.
Wait! In that review didn't Shoe make a Comic Book Guy reference with something like"I can say without hyperbole that this is a million times worse than anything I ever played..."? XD
That was such a legendary moment in EGM that month. I'll never forget it!
@@LanceRedRichard He also said he could be locked in jail cell, watching Mortal Kombat Annihilation on a TV while gargling cat piss and would probably have a better experience than he had playing MK Advance.
Because you have to spam moves the whole time to have a chance to win, so there is no gameplay at all! 0.0 points from a magazine is absolute correct for an unplayable game!
I've only ever read urban legends, but this abomination is real!
The sad part is how GBA was more than capable of making this a great port.
Yeah no real reason they couldn't have made a decent port of the Snes Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 at a reduced resolution, IF they were given all the right resources, and time. Especially as UMK3 had no special chips.
The GBA got a great port of Strert Fighter Alpha 3 . Yet it couldn't handle MK3
@@JoeyJ0J0 I'm positive it could've handled it, just lazy devs and maybe time restraints probably got in the way
@@JoeyJ0J0 The GBA port of Guilty Gear X was also really good. This MKA shit looks like it runs on the Game Gear.
I played the GGX port a while back and we couldn't believe how good it was. It was just a stream of random GBA games and suddenly this beast showed up and we stuck with it for an hour. Almost every single feature of the console version was intact.
I didn't expect Pikamee, that took me completely by surprise.
She cameos in a surprising amount of these.
I would be surprised too if i stopped reading comments right after clicking the video, my bad habit
Ultima edited this video - he definitely likes to sneak in a couple of Pikamee clips here and there 😁
Time stamp
5:13
The funny thing about Virtucraft's last game, the Samurai Jack one you mention at 19:50, is that it was probably their best and most ambitious game, and a very competent Metroidvania at that.
He mentioned it at 19:35
Metriodvania, you say?
I remember receiving this game for Christmas in 2001. I had played Mortal Kombat Trilogy on my older brother's PS1 and always craved more, so I was happy to play Mortal Kombat on my GBA. But oooh boy, was this a steaming pile of crap
Believe it or not, THIS is NOT the worst MK port on a portable system.
That honor goes to the MK 4 port on the Game Boy Color.
Are ya listening, Matt McMuscles? :)
While he didn't say that GB MK4 plays better he responded to a different comment he thinks MKA is worse because MKA doesn't make use of the hardware and is worse than other fighting games on the GBA. MK4 is on a portable console that predates the original arcade game by 3 years. It and almost all GB fighting games are doomed to be bad. (MK4 is not a true GBC game like SF Alpha was, for example)
As someone who owns all the original MK gameboy games, including the MK1/MK2 Double Pack, I can concur that MK4 on the Game Boy Color is the worst.
In my opinion, MK1 is medicore. MK2 was awesome when it was released but it's aged terribly since. MK3 is bad, but it's playable. Granted I was never a fan of MK3. Ultimate MK3 and MK Trilogy make MK3 irrelevant.
MK4 however oof. There's nothing redeeming about the GBC port. If MKA is on the same level as Criticom according to Matt, then MK4 on the GBC should easily be in the Grandmaster Tier.
It's not the worst ever fighting game though. Would probably be in my personal top 5 at least.
I would have to agree. MK4 for GBC only had 3 music tracks... or 2... but it was BAD. That comboed in with the gameplay... i cant believe i rented that game as a kid lol
MK4 and MKA are both unplayable if you try to play them correctly, so I have to say MKA is worse for the simple fact that it should've been better.
Woof! Yes I tried Mk4 for Gameboy color and it's even worse than the original Gameboy mortal Kombat and street fighter 2 for Gameboy combined. (Yes they made Street fighter 2 for the original Gameboy and might as well ran at 2 frames per second)
I always laugh at how Nightwolf can neutral jump up and completely drain a health bar with a kick in this version.
"Finish him!"
- Shao Khan, commanding Matt to perform a fatality on MK Advance.
I vaguely recall reading a review for this in a gaming magazine way back in the day, and the reviewer describing the gameplay using the phrase "drunken spaceman physics"
The game should’ve been a lot better than it turned out. The GBA was more than capable of a good rendition. Even SSF2 Turbo was better than what came out here.
Exactly
SSF2 Turbo on GBA is a very playable game with good graphics, sound and gameplay, you can't compare it with the worst MK of all times - Mortal Kombat Advance. Ist even worse than the old Game Boy version of MK1, and this slow game really sucks!
Especially since the console was advertised as a 32-bit console and was capable of doing much more. They got a Crash Bandicoot game to run on it and the fact that they were able to pump out a beautiful game like Guilty Gear onto the system is quite an accomplishment.
@@spongeman3090 or Tomb Raider, Doom and Doom 2 for example, they are pretty good and complete Ports with a good framerate. It's just the developers lazyness when a game went shitty like MK Advance.
SSF2 Turbo is a decent port but it does have a lot of bug problems including the infamous Akuma bug which corrupts your saved records. The king of portable Street Fighter is Alpha 3 on GBA.
mk advance was such a letdown, even street fighter and tekken got it right though not perfect . i traded a game for this crap being the huge mk fanboy i am . why are the jump sound effects the girls? endless loop music and terrible controls and sound
Mortal Kombat DS was so much better, it was an arcade perfect port of Ultimate 3 with Puzzle Kombat included
(Oh you included it, it's my favorite port of UMK3)
HELL YEAH, I LOVE THIS GAME!
It's so bad that is the only way i can be decent in a fighting game!
No, but really, I just find it somehow charming how shitty this game is.
I have the same feeling for Dragon Ball Z Taiketsu.
To go along the trend of "Terrible fighting game on the GBA", I would love an episode on Dragon Ball Z: Taiketsu! Even as a kid, who was obsessed with Dragon Ball, it was obvious to me how bad it was. Grotesquely bad visuals, terrible game feel, and some of the "special moves" characters can do are hilarious. There's a pretty infamous Vegeta special that's pretty hilarous!
I remember getting that game for Christmas in 2003 as a 13 year old and was stoked to play it. I remember playing it for maybe 10 minutes, turning it off, and traded it in not long after.
Oh yeah that was bad. Krillin did a moon walk you pushed back.
the graphics look like clay-mation
I almost bought this instead of deadly alliance. I dodged the equivalent of a bullet.
"The ways to finish off your opponent HAVE DRASTIC GONE DOWN"
Heh, I understood that reference.
I got a 141 and 2/3 chance of disliking this game. 😋
@@thatoneguy4941 See normally if you go 1 on 1 in another game, you got a 50/50 chance of liking it! But MK Advance is a Genetic Freak! And it's not normal! So you got a 25% AT BEST! At like it! Then you add Virtucraft to the mix?!
I remember my "favorite" technique with this game. Hold the run button, push the AI to the corner, then punch them to death. Worked every time. Lol
That's like how younger me would try to beat MKII by just spamming the uppercut. XD It worked until the opponent was Reptile and I couldn't see where he was.
"It's better than 0.0."
Hope the poor guy didnt see the score EGM gave it.
Everytime I watch one of these, or when Matt plays crappy games in general, I admire that there's going to be someone in the comments who say they either owned game when they were young and/or they liked the game. It doesn't matter how bad or obscure the game is. This is the law.
It's indeed the law online; no matter how bad a piece of media is, there's still going to be one person that loved it growing up.
Freddy dragging ketchup to hell to play mk advance was great.
The only fighting game I ever actually loved on GBA was Tekken Advance.
SSF2 turbo revival was pretty good imo.
@@evildork6805 Yeah. It was my first ever fighting game and, according to my memory, the first game I ever played.
I had super street fighter 2 turbo for my Gameboy advance back when the game was new. Time flies.
I loved how they crammed in extra modes and of course they ran out of ideas so they threw akuma in there.
Akuma in street fighter games is like including Mario bros (not super) in every Mario game, it's a cheesy freebie but not as cool as it was.
I mean you can't select akuma by default on the arcade versions of super street fighter 2 turbo or X-Men children of the atom without a code but I could never get those to work lol.
If someone would hack those arcade games specifically to include akuma from the get go, I would be happy. 🙂
Don't forget that it had nearly no random number generator. Almost every game would be identical the order you would fight opponents each time you started a new game after booting the Gameboy up.
One day I hope MrGstar returns to play MK Advance.
I can already tell that would be an absolute channel highlight.
I swear that man is legendary, hopefully he could come back
glad people still remember him it’s been way too long and i always go back to his videos
'Drastic go down'
Holla, I hear ya.
Where the hell is Shadow: War of Succession not on here yet? Oh, right, cause it's a 3DO exclusive.
Just borrow Jame's 3DO and copy of the game.
James’ not Jame’s. Holy fuck, imagine typing that and thinking it looks right.
@@Rountree1985 My bad. One their owns, Jame and James is easy to differentiate. Once you're going into possessives, it gets harder to notice when you're wrong.
I recommend Legends of Success Joe for this series. It's absolutely the worst Neo Geo game
I had this shit in my childhood even then I knew it was awful. Could never beat it even on easiest. I thought I'd gotten rid of it only to find last year it'd been lurking in the depths of my cupboards the whole time.
So I finally did what child me couldn't do and beat the game all the way through once by spamming special moves. It wasn't satisfying at all but at least the nightmare is over.
Stay where you belong MK Advance. In my memories.
So glad this series is continuing.
Freaking love this series. I usually put it on the moment I see it. Hope to see Pit Fighter from the SNES get judged soon
Wish granted lol
My hope is to see "Fight!", an infamous PS4/Switch fighting game, because is probably the worst PS4 fighting game I ever played.
Oof, yeah.
Because it's on the PS4 and Switch I'm expecting it to be a $2 shovelware title. I don't know how the Xbox Store has better quality control than the stores of both of these systems.
@@spongeman3090 it's a 10 bucks shovelware, I managed to pick for 2.49 in a sale and it was 2.49 too much. From the same devs of the now infamous Popeye game
I wonder if we'll ever get around to Simpson's Wrestling? It would be a crossover of two McMuscles series'!
And then came Ultimate Mortal Kombat on the DS where they were finally successful on porting the Arcade version of UMK3.
Yeap but then it's missing Rain, Noob Saibot, the bosses, and the Brutality. With the server already shutdown, it's now missing online play as well. What's even worst is that the two modes (4 Players: 2-on-2 and Tournament Mode) from the arcade version you couldn't even access and it's missing Galaga from the console and arcade game.
I love this show. You know what would be nice? A similar show but ranking poverty fighting games, unknown games that are quite good, there are a lot of hidden gems out there
The word "Portable" and the term "Fighting Game" usually don't mix very well, I think that even nowadays making a good fighting game in a portable console is an achievement by itself.
Me and my good friend both owned this game and at the time we were buzzing that we had MK on the go. I remember many years later we dusted off the old nugget and didnt realise how frickin bad it was 🤣 Nostalgia is a hell of a drug
Okay. You know what? This is an actual contender.
The GBA is stronger than the 16-bit consoles so it should've been perfectly capable of handling UMK3. Too bad the Midway higher ups got an incompetent studio to develop that disastrous GBA port.
5:21 nice cameo dayo
i think street fighter alpha 3 was the best gba fighting game
Interesting video. Looking at some of those early ports then comparing them to something like Mortal Kombat 11 on Switch shows just how far technology's come. For a bad fighting game, I'd suggest The Simpsons Wrestling.
When I was like 6 my mom’s friend gave this game to me, I was absolutely stoked to have mortal kombat at such a young age. Slowly I realized this game was absolute bullshit, so insanely frustrating even on easy difficulties. The amount of combo spamming the AI would do almost drove me to tears, quickly became my least favorite game to play on the game boy. God watching this video is triggering all those negative memories with the pile of doodoo.
I never have time to watch all your videos, but whenever I find time, there’s gotta be some damn Steiner reference 11:18 ! Love it!
I'm still waiting for an episode on Dragon Ball GT: Final Bout or Dragon Ball Z Taiketsu
I wonder how Mortal Kombat 9, X and 11 would look like if Midway was still around in this very day and age ?
At first I thought this was talking about one of the 3D gba MK's as it was my first MK games.
Soon as I saw the presentation I was like "oh what in sweet hell"
Would love to see an analysis of Sonic Fighters 👀
I remember a cousin of mines had MK Tournament Edition on the GBA and it blew my mind how good it looked and played - - few years later picked up MK for the DS and it was great playing online over the McDonald's Wifi! Good times! And when I got tired of that I pulled out the other MK (mario kart for DS) nostalgia that's 15yrs ago easily!
I don't remember which magazine it was, but I remember one of them reviewed it with "Pros: You can turn it off. Cons: You can turn it back on."
Ketchup guest starring on this episode was a treat. Having two of my favorite people that talk about fighting games together in the same video is awesome
I actually know someone who worked on this.
This was my first game boy advanced game I got for my first GBA SP for my 6th birthday. It was a rough time, but back then, we put up with ANYTHING! 🤣
Looking at the list at 2:53, I recognized one game: The Powerpuff Girls: Bad Mojo Jojo. Was it a bad game? Well, 12 year-old me liked it (which isn’t saying much). I remember the final boss being Mojo Jojo, and he had about three phases. The subway level was the hardest for me since you had to traverse your way back to the entrance before the subway collapsed. That was pretty cool imo. Bad Mojo Jojo was the Blossom version. There was a Bubbles and a Buttercup version of the games. Buttercup had the Gangrene Gang as the final boss, and Bubbles had Fuzzy Lumpkin (I think). Each version had different collectible cards which encouraged players to trade with friends or buy the different versions. Also, you could enter a secret password to fight a Rowdy Ruff Boy.
5:22 - as if we need more evidence that Matt is deep into the rabbit hole...
When back, back, punch doesn't throw a Scorpion spear and you've done it over a million times. You realize that you have a serious fucking problem.
It absolutely baffles me to no end that they were able to make TWO decent ports of MK5 to the GBA, but somehow messed up a UMK3 port. How is that even possible?
After some wha happun episodes making references to it, finally it's time for this beauty to shine.
Tekken Advance will always be the king of Gameboy fighting games for me. It's so damn good.
I pretty much just posted the same thing but then saw your comment, I completely agree that for a GBA Port it was fantastic. As an adult I now own two copies just so I can mess around with it multiplayer with my friends sometimes. Even on the GBA player it's still fun.
Hey now, I'll defend Mortal Kombat II on Game Boy 'til the end. It was FAR from arcade perfect, but it actually wasn't awful. If only they had used that same engine for MK1 and MK3 for the portable versions...
Also... I would choose MK Advance over the GB version of MK1 anyday.
Trilogy is the only definitive way to play MK3 if you ask me.
I believe The Angry Video Game Nerd said it, best around 12:23-12:27.
I said the same thing after a friend of mine let me borrow his copy of this game when it first came out & I still stand by that statement...
Off topic, I really like your fighting game look on your sona.
Curious, if you had to choose what kind of fighting style what would it be?
Like Ryu?, like Ken? Etc?
Speaking of MK, I'd posit either MK Mobile or Injustice Mobile (The phone ports that you find in arcades) for the worst fighting game. The gameplay is an unmitigated tap-athon and they're filled to the brim with anti-consumer microtransactions. Concessions have to be made for mobile games, but they both feel like soulless cash grabs and barely even hit the minimum requirements for a fighting game
Those aren't really fighting games at all.
@@MattMcMuscles I mean you have the core ideas - character selection, healthbars, blocking and frame advantage, etc. It's just a perversion of those ideas
The GBA received amazing ports of DOOM 1 and 2. This was sad to see MK like this.
This was rushed and lazy programmed because the GBA is technically very capable to run a game like MK3 just fine. Normally it should be good playable with good graphics, just like the 16bit versions on SNES and Megadrive are. Mortal Kombat Advance is probably the worst Mortal Kombat ever, unplayable garbage, even the awful (in every aspect) and slow Game Boy version of MK1 has better gameplay than this one.
So many P's...
"It's called alliteration, and it's art."
If you're looking for a good fighting game to play, can I interest you in some Slam Masters 2 RING OF DESTRUCTION?
Is that the one with art design from the creator of Fist of the North Star?
@@BullseyeRey why yes, yes it is
11:13 Gotta love the Scott Steiner reference 🤣
I actually Heard of virtucraft because i had Samurai Jack.....and MK advance.....
5:10 God this was just like a year ago or something, how did Pikamee sound so DIFFERENT back then lol
I loved playing MKII on the original Gameboy. From my vague memories of it, it ran pretty smoothly, and had a decent amount of content for such limited hardware. When MK3 was released, I snapped it up, but that was complete night and day to its predecessor. IT just didn't "feel" right... (Just to note, I didn't get a SNES until many years later, after the N64's release, so I didn't have much choice when it came to fighting games)
I love your new persona drawings! Especially the one with the Ryu bandana!
The DS version of UMK3 on the other hand was ridiculously well done
This was a pretty awful seeming game. I look forward to Star Wars: Masters of Teras Kasixs episode, ad I felt that game was pretty terrible.
When I was 10 I got very sick and had to go to stay at a hospital for about 2 weeks and my dad got me a brand new gba and this game haha! I remember trying to learn to cheese the ai since it was the only game I had!
I remember buying this back on the day and writing a 2 page report about how much shitty it was to take back money from the guarantee. I just couldn't beleive that it was that much less better than the snes port of MK3. What a shitty game...
Matt, thanks for playing these so we don't have to!
Mattel Hyperscan x-men ... it's one of The Worst Fighting Game you search for.
This game has some awful controls. I played it back in the day I had my gba and everything feels both delayed and non responsive. The specials never come out consistently. It kinda reminds me of street fighter 1
yet again the Vita proves why it was a master class handheld. it took mk9 made it on par with its ps3 counter part.
random pikamee
I dropped my phone under my bed though a tiny gap in the wall while watching this, so the entire time I was struggling to rescue it (I ended up having to move the entire bed to get to it) this video was playing. I think that’s about right in the whole experience.
This and Doom where some unfortunate ports I had the displeasure of being my first experience with both games. It wouldn't be another 14 years before I actually got to experience them as intended
To be fair to the idea of porting UMK3 and titling simply 'Advance', I will remind that Super Mario Advance was a decade old SNES port of Super Mario Bros 2/USA.
And yet Tekken Advance absolutely kicks ass.
The comment about the sound just reminds me of how capable the GBA was, but a lot of that capability was not an inherent part of the hardware. Rather, it required a lot of specialized code to perform, which took up space and was overall slower. Still impressive that you could even get the thing to render full 3D.
Ketchup's acting here was really good. Sounded so genuine.
I caught that Steiner reference.
Was that a Steiner Math quote out of nowhere?
"Ya know Shang, the numbers dont lie. And they spell diaster for you at Amraggedon!"- Johnny or something idk i tried
Trust me, the DS version of the same game (Ultimate Mortal Kombat) happens to be way better than the port on GBA here, since in that case the DS version is a near perfect conversion of the arcade game that makes Ermac, Mileena, and Classic Sub Zero permanently playable once they are unlocked, not to mention it even adds Puzzle Kombat from Deception to make it worth buying
I love this series thank you Mr. McMuscles :>
19:23 Holy crap, my headphones are actually so good that I heard a phone go off under him talking the music. Money well spent, unlike MK:A at the pawn shop down the street, which is good target practice at best.
I see Pikamee and immediately know who edited this
I remember playing this and booting it up thinking "It can't be worse than MK1 on Gameboy," and then I started actually playing it and I was like "Yeah, this is worse. A lot worse."
pushin 🅿️
I got the GBA when it first came out, and as someone who really loved MK1, MK2, MK3, UMK3, I saw MKA and thought: That sounds stupid. Doesn't even have enough buttons for this. I skipped it and got WWF Road to WrestleMania later. Dodged one bullet, and got devastated by another.
Not only do we get a Pikamee cameo, but we get some respect put on Manfred's name!...I mean, I don't know who he is, but he deserves it.