Home versions of Mortal Kombat II

Since 1994, Midway Games' 1993 arcade fighting game Mortal Kombat II has been released for a variety of home systems, including the 8-bit (Game Boy, Master System and Sega Game Gear), 16-bit (SNES and Sega Genesis) and 32-bit (Sega 32X, PlayStation and Sega Saturn) consoles, Amiga and PC computers, and the PlayStation Network. The early ports were published by Acclaim Entertainment. The game was also featured in several compilation releases, including as part of Midway Arcade Treasures 2 for GameCube, PlayStation 2 and Xbox consoles and Midway Arcade Treasures: Extended Play for the PlayStation Portable.
Console ports
Sega Genesis
Developed by Probe Entertainment, the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive port retains all of the blood and Fatalities without a special code having to be entered, unlike the original Mortal Kombat for the system. The game is actually faster than the original arcade version but the visuals are not as brightly colored due to the system's limited color palette. All of the characters' shadows are rendered as an oval instead of the normal silhouette and, due to memory limitations, some voice recordings were left out. The music is more upbeat and the arrangement is markedly different in this game as opposed to the arcade version because the music is synthesized by the console's synthesizer (some of the background music is no longer played with its intended stages). The game requires a six-button joypad for proper input, although, only the low punch is absent on the original three-button controller. Goro's Lair, the secret characters' arena, was removed and replaced with a blue palette swap of the Portal stage. Some of the other arenas are also noticeably missing details. The ending screen showing the credits and all of the characters have all been removed; instead, the ending text scrolls over the winner character doing his/her victory stance. The port contains several exclusive Easter eggs and features some different character animations for victory poses and a support for the motion controller device Sega Activator.
Super Nintendo Entertainment System
The Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) port was developed by Sculptured Software. This particular port has a secret intro (in which a scene between Shao Kahn and Kintaro will take place during the Acclaim logo) and a hidden special team mode. Also in this port is the use of the Super Nintendo's Mode 7, a graphics mode that allows the scaling and rotation of a single background on a scanline-by-scanline basis, during the overhead fall on the Pit II's ., while others were also simplified to use common animations.
Sega 32X
Developed by Probe Entertainment, the Sega 32X port contains improved graphics over the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive counterpart, with added background details and a bigger color palette to help the visuals come even closer to the arcade version. The Japanese version of the port was retitled , the subtitle being for the Fatality moves.
PlayStation
The PlayStation port was only released in Japan, also under the Mortal Kombat II: Kyuukyoku Shinken title. While the graphics remain close to the original arcade game, the sound quality does not: instead of converting the soundtrack into CD audio tracks, the developers opted to use the PlayStation's own SPU internal sound chip to play the music. Additionally, some voice effects are missing. In stark contrast to the ROM cartridge-based versions, loading times occur when performing certain actions (such as Shang Tsung's morph ability), with gameplay ceasing and the Mortal Kombat II symbol being displayed for 1-2 seconds.
Sega Saturn
The Sega Saturn port features synthesized music as substitution for the original soundtrack and is missing some sound effects. It allows players to preload certain morphs for Shang Tsung, reducing loading lag time but causing a glitch allowing the player to morph between the palette-swap ninja characters. The game lags any time a special move is pulled off for the first time in a match (the move is loaded into the system RAM). Unlike the arcade version, the characters' shadow sprites are present in the Goro's Lair stage, while Jade has white skin (in the arcade original she has tanned skin).
A compilation pack containing the first two Mortal Kombat games, MK 1&2 Duo, was announced by Acclaim in August 1996, but never released.
Home computer ports
Amiga
The Amiga port of Mortal Kombat II was released at the very beginning of 1995, developed by Probe Entertainment. This is the first and only Amiga title directly published by Acclaim, as their others games were previously published by Virgin Games, including the first Mortal Kombat. As the Amiga market was reputed slowly dying at this time, this version was unenexpected, even by the Amiga's press. The Amiga version has sprite sizes and gameplay nearly identical to the Genesis/Mega Drive version, but lacks multi-layered scrolling and animated backgrounds and uses only a single or two-button joysticks for controls (a two-button joystick option does not work on the Amiga 1200). The game suffers from long loading times and requires a frequent disk-swapping in the machines with less than 1.5 MB RAM. It can be only installed to a hard disk drive through unofficially released installer programs. The sounds effect are improved over the Mega Drive/ Genesis version, adding sounds effects lifted directly from the arcade board. The attract mode's demonstration matches always show Johnny Cage and Liu Kang. In this version, Shang Tsung can only morph in his direct opponent.
MS-DOS
Probe Entertainment was responsible for converting the game to the PC MS-DOS in 1995. The PC version was considered the best of the early ports and the only problem was it only supported up to four buttons on joypads. An arcade-perfect compilation release Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection, consisting of Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat II and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was released as a downloadable title for the PlayStation 3 via PlayStation Network and the Xbox 360 via Xbox Live Arcade on August 31, 2011. The Windows version was released on Steam on February 2, 2012.

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