Review
Mortal Kombat 3 is one of those rare games that was absolutely botched, but was still loyally followed. The game's biggest flaw is that it carries this 'we just didn't care,' atmosphere about itself. There is a severe lack of creativity in most, if not all the Fatalities, and even worse animations. Included in this complaint are characters who when cut in half, still have their hands floating in mid-air, attached to nothing.

There's also a lot of misplaced ideas. You have a robot who can have an entire compactor come out of his chest, but it's the human Jax that grows super tall? Why not just grow tall and step on Shao Khan? No need for a tournament! Of course, there's Smoke's fatality, where he blows up the entire planet...and then everyone comes back for the next fight. Do I even bother with the suicidal Cyrax one? Or that the button commands for all the -alities now make no sense, as opposed to the logical commands in MK2? Sigh.

Even worse were the Animalities. While some were obviously well-thought out ones, like Nightwolf's, I do not understand the landshark...or even worse, they let someone else become a scorpion, and not the main man himself. Seriously, who the heck was not quality checking these things?

On the positive side, MK3 did introduce a much needed secondary combo system, if slightly marred by the inability to start it from a jump (which would later be corrected in Ultimate MK3). There was also some love tossed at the stage fatalities, with subway trains and bell towers joining the standard pit fare.

Characters are minorly out-balanced, with anyone picking Kabal automatically having a huge edge over the other. I also like Shao Khan in this one; they made him a true force to reckoned with, while sadly sending Shang Tsung down the lost character design well of despair. Yellow tights?

And yet, with all these flaws, I still find myself picking it up to play everyone now and then. Perhaps because MK Trilogy is even more broken, or that I'm too lazy to hook up the 32x MKII. Sadly, the need to find this version has been reduced to collector's status only, since it's superior version can be found on the PS2 and Xbox version of Midway Arcade Treasures 2.

Greatest Hits
     This title was never released as a Greatest Hit.

• Variant, see below.
  
  
• There is a peculiar design flaw on the back of the long box packaging. They have the same screen shot twice. The jewel case variant fixed this.
  
  
• There are three famous quotes that randomly cycle through out the attract screen. The first one is the most 'rare' one, while the second is the most common. They are:
  • Imagination is More Important than Knowledge
  • There is No Knowledge that is Not Power
  • The Meek Shall Inherit the Earth
    
    
• There's this really odd issue with the background cycle program that can also be found more prominently in the Saturn MK Trilogy game. When the player knocks the other character through the ceiling in a two-stage level, if the match goes to the next round, the CPU thinks that the 2nd level is where you started from, and will begin the level cycling all over again. The Saturn version is so bad you could literally go through the entire game on only 3 backgrounds.
  
  
• There are 10 entries into the nonexistent High Score area of the game, used simply as goals set for the player. However, each set of initials refers to another Midway game. Right now the going theory on them are as follows:
  • MK4: Mortal Kombat 4
  • WWF: WWF Wrestlemania
  • NHL: NHL 2 on 2 Open Ice
  • MK3: Mortal Kombat 3
  • MK2: Mortal Kombat 2
  • MK1: Mortal Kombat 1
  • DOM: Doom (Midway / WIlliams did the home version)
  • CAR: Cruisin' USA
  • ROD: Hot Rod Rebels (canceled sequel to Rush 2049)
  • OFF: Off-Road Challenge
    
    
• Midway had a very cool magazine ad campaign for MK3. Roughly 9 variants of the same page image had a famous quote, along with a string of symbols sketched out along the side. If the symbols were input at the Versus Screen before the round happened, there would be some sort of change to the fight, be it random characters, no throws, etc.
  

Variations / Misprints
I don't toss around words like 'rare' and 'impossible to find' like most eBay users do, but right here, right now, I will tell you that you are looking at the rarest, most impossible-to-find known game variant in the US Retail PlayStation universe.

The jewel cased MK3 is your standard re-release, with the back insert having the corrected screen shot issue mentioned above. The problem is that I have only seen this variant 3 times. The first time some 10 years ago, and then the two separate eBay auctions that held pieces that made up the whole version as you see here. There's a possibility that there is one higher than this, but I can't remember if I really saw that one or it was just a figment of my imagination.

No change, or barely noticeable difference in load times. Game loaded fine with both options turned on.

PlayStation 2 Compatibility - Smooth
     With the smooth option on, the backgrounds go all crazy on anything multi-layered. Skies are split down the middle, decorations are split at the seems, and all chaos ensues. The characters are barely touched. Leave the Smooth option off.