Any way to experience the MK 1-3 games with a nerfed A.I.?

[Nickolaidas]

The unavoidable 2023 announcement of MK12 has me hyped and I recently started downloading the old MK games on my PC to have a complete collection and occasionally play those games without wanting to tear my face off.

And that's hard to do when the A.I. in MK1-3 (especially 2 and UMK3) is a cheap fuck who does impossible cancels via throw/grab attacks or vertical jumps which intended to make you lose over and over and fork quarters in the arcade cabinet. And no, I don't want solutions like, 'pick Smoke and teleport the second CPU does X' or 'see the 1 flaw the A.I. has and exploit it'.

I want to play against the A.I. with 90% of my moveset being effective at combating him and him not cancelling my attacks in a way that a human cannot cancel them.

So. Is there a version of those games which has been remastered via MUGEN or something that has more or less 90% of the gameplay mechanics of each of those games, does not have a cheap A.I. and more or less has the arcade ladder endings each of those games had?

 

[Nickolaidas]

I read somewhere that there are MAME versions of those games where the A.I. has been nerfed. Any truth to that?

 

[Art Lean]

I had actually wondered this myself many times too. For all the different official (and currently unavailble) "arcade perfect" (take that with a grain of salt of course) reissues of the original trilogy, did no one behind the scenes ever say "Er why would we want it to be arcade perfect for the home market? The arcade AI was an asbolute cheating bastard designed to rob money from children."

I too want an arcade-quality version of the games I can easily play, but have been deliberately redesigned for the home market so as to be enjoyably playable yet challenging in a fair way in single player ladders.

 

[Nickolaidas]

I had actually wondered this myself many times too. For all the different official (and currently unavailble) "arcade perfect" (take that with a grain of salt of course) reissues of the original trilogy, did no one behind the scenes ever say "Er why would we want it to be arcade perfect for the home market? The arcade AI was an asbolute cheating bastard designed to rob money from children."

I too want an arcade-quality version of the games I can easily play, but have been deliberately redesigned for the home market so as to be enjoyably playable yet challenging in a fair way in single player ladders.

I think I found a version of UMK3 which is actually on MAME and probably has had its A.I. tempered with to be more forgiving. It's UMK3 rev.2.1, I think. I played four matches with Cyrax (mostly dicking around) and with a couple of continues I was on match #5.

MK1 is more or less playable, but MK2 is brutal and unforgiving. Without A.I. tempering, single play is just a cheese chore and not fun at all.

There's an A.I. nerf hack, but it's for the Genesis version, which sounds like shit due to the console's audio abilities.

 

[Juxtapose]

I would imagine the home ports of the day with difficulty options would be the best way.

The only legal way to play the original trilogy in modern times is the versions on Gog, which are the original PC ports from the '90's.

You can get Mortal Kombat (1992), Mortal Kombat II, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat Trilogy there all quite cheaply.

 

[Nickolaidas]

I would imagine the home ports of the day with difficulty options would be the best way.

The only legal way to play the original trilogy in modern times is the versions on Gog, which are the original PC ports from the '90's.

You can get Mortal Kombat (1992), Mortal Kombat II, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat Trilogy there all quite cheaply.

Based on the comments I read on GOG forums, they are as cheap as they were in the arcade. I've actually played MK2 a LOT on PC, back in the 90s, and I remember that the game A.I. was cheap, unless you played on Very Easy. At Very Easy it becomes brain dead, with the exception of Kintaro and Shao Kahn, who are almost impossible to beat even on Very Easy.

I think I've beaten the game ONCE as Baraka. And the fucking ending passed in like, 5 seconds, I barely had the time to read it.

 

[Art Lean]

Based on the comments I read on GOG forums, they are as cheap as they were in the arcade. I've actually played MK2 a LOT on PC, back in the 90s, and I remember that the game A.I. was cheap, unless you played on Very Easy. At Very Easy it becomes brain dead, with the exception of Kintaro and Shao Kahn, who are almost impossible to beat even on Very Easy.

I think I've beaten the game ONCE as Baraka. And the fucking ending passed in like, 5 seconds, I barely had the time to read it.

Yeah I was a SNES gamer back in the day, the AI was still cheap as hell even on Very Easy, I used to have to use that cheat code that made the opponents' health drain 75% more than usual in order to beat the bosses. And even then they were occasionally still a challenge in order to see all the endings.

 

[ded]

A.I. is easier if you are using Player 2 in MKII. Most noticeably, it does almost nothing against regular jumps (with no attacks). There is also MAME cheat, that disables A.I. to throw you.

 

[Nickolaidas]

A.I. is easier if you are using Player 2 in MKII. Most noticeably, it does almost nothing against regular jumps (with no attacks). There is also MAME cheat, that disables A.I. to throw you.

Holy shit, any link for that MAME cheat?

 

[ded]

Pugsy's Cheats

Updated XML Cheat files for MAME - cheat at Arcade games!

cheat.retrogames.com

 

[Nickolaidas]

Thanks a billion!

 

[Nickolaidas]

Okay, I've downloaded the most recent one, and the no throw cheat is nowhere to be seen!
Which version has those cheats?! I didn't see the Kintaro kick option as well.

 

[craftycheese]

Can't you adjust the difficulty in the test menu or the EJB menu? I haven't used mame in years but I thought you could get into the test menu pretty easy but if you can't, you can enter the code to get into the EJB menu and adjust the difficulty there.

 

[Nickolaidas]

Can't you adjust the difficulty in the test menu or the EJB menu? I haven't used mame in years but I thought you could get into the test menu pretty easy but if you can't, you can enter the code to get into the EJB menu and adjust the difficulty there.

EJB? You mean the dip switches? I adjust the difficulty, but it doesn't really change anything, other than make the CPU impossible from match #4 instead of #2.

 

[craftycheese]

No, there are test menus that you can access. On a real cabinet you'd flip a switch behind the coin door to access them and you could adjust the difficulty and other stuff for the game there. The EJB menu is essentially another test menu, with some extra features, that was fairly recently discovered where you have to enter a series of button presses to access.

But you've already done this through the dip switches so there's no real point going this route.

 

[OutWorldAleMerchant]

I grew up playing MK2 on the SNES and I learned how to goof the AI into defeating itself. Winning against the cheating AI involves big brained strats, such as baiting them into walking or jumping into Barakas blade chopper move, and then doing it again and again until victory. Fun for awhile I guess but I totally agree, a fair AI would make the games much better.

 

[ded]

Okay, I've downloaded the most recent one, and the no throw cheat is nowhere to be seen!
Which version has those cheats?! I didn't see the Kintaro kick option as well.

Here it is uploaded:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1svurCWHIImZdmgI96M_25HgXq1dU4VyA/view?usp=share_link

I use MAMEUI64 0.220. Remember, that you must enable the "Cheats" in the game's INI file as well.

 

[Nickolaidas]

Don't see it.

I'm starting to think this is a problem of the emulator, not the cheat rar file. I have a customized MAME emulator which does upscaling to HQ3x. It's probably an older version and some cheats do not appear on that.

 

[Nickolaidas]

Nope. Downloaded the newest MAME emulator and the no block cheat is nowhere to be seen. I see most of the cheats, but that one is missing.

 

[ded]

Which MKII revision you are playing? Those are for L3.1

 

[Nickolaidas]

MK2.rev L9.1

 

[Nickolaidas]

Okay, I downloaded the version you said, and it worked! And holy shit, a GREAT improvement. Sure, the CPU still cheats in other ways, but the throw being disabled gives you a lot more options this time around.

Thanks, @ded !