Mortal Kombat 3 - Windows 95 Edition

K

Kurgan

New member
Okay, many people probably will be like "why do you even care", but I have MK3 for the PC CD-ROM (win95).

Nowadays running it on my ATI All-in-Wonder 9600 (128 mb ddr) video card and Windows2000, the graphics display for this game is all screwed up (but otherwise it runs fine). The images are doubled and interleaved (scanlines through everything so you can't see what's going on). The image is generally shoved up into the upper portion of the screen too.

I searched the 'net but didn't find any info about patches or work arounds. I tried running it in "compatability mode" for win95, but it didn't fix the visual glitches.

Now you ask, why play this when you can play MATDE? Well, true, but MATDE you have the annoying pre-game loading thing.

And why not Mame? Well yes, but this version had CD audio which was awesome, and in my opinion, superior to what I hear in Mame.

Plus it was superior to the DOS version (also included on the same cd) because even though it lacked the tournament mode, it had nice full screen anti-aliasing (I wish I could duplicate that effect in windows to get rid of the jaggies in Mortal Kombat Trilogy pc!). It was probably the best port of an MK game I ever played prior to these emulations.

So any help is appreciated! It worked when I had win98se and my old video card (GeForce2).
 
I feel you. I was able to get a hold of this game because ded_ is just the f'ing man. And, I wanted it to run despite having tons of other ways to play MK3. I just wanted to see what it was like.

I run win2k with a GEForce video card and I get the same thing you did, not sure why. I think the game throws a fit when it tries to access the vid card to use hardware rendering to smooth the screen. I booted up a virtual machine running win2k (in VMware) and it runs in that. I can't get it to resize, I had to lower the resolution of virtual windows to make it appear bigger. This kind of supports the idea that it just can't access the vid card correctly through win2k.
 
Ah interesting, so it's probably taking the video from the DOS version and putting it through some filtering system, and that rendering engine is just unable to be read with modern video cards.

I wonder if some enterprising individual has tried to fix this with an unofficial patch/hack?

If not, though ought to, this version kicked butt.
 
MK3 Win probably wants to use the video card if you have one and freaks out in Win2k because it can't actually use it. Then, in VMware, there's no actual video card to deal with, it all gets handled with software anyway. So it works, just without the functions provided by a vid card like smooth scaling.

I still prefer the DOS version because its more arcade faithful, even if it doesn't have the same video smoothing capabilities. Plus the DOS version runs extremely nicely in DosBox, which allows for easy netplay using DosBox's built in IPX-to-TCP/IP functions.
 
Interesting. So it's NOT the same game after all... what is this "more faithful" stuff? I'm curious. I guess I'm just not the expert with attention to detail that you are (I'm genuinely impressed).

But like what was different about the two versions vs. the arcade?

I use DOSBox, but sadly my lcd monitor doesn't support fullscreen resolution with it, so I am forced to play in a window, which I hate doing.

Pixelated games and forced to play in a window (of a game originally meant for full screen) are two gaming pet peeves of mine.. ;P

The other thing was the CD music, I don't think I ever got it to play for me in the DOS version, so it was always "silent combat" (sound fx only). So you can see what version I preferred...

PS: That's cool about the online play. I wonder how it compares to kaillera through mame ports (sadly kaillera is notoriously buggy, but it's being worked on unofficially)?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top