This is the part where Mortal Kombat falls down

Editor’s note: This content originally appeared in 3Q2015. It has been edited for spelling, grammar and clarity.

There’s always a side of the family tree that you hold your head in shame over when you think of them and their antics. You can’t very well cut them off when they go to jail over something stupid and avoidable, and you can’t say “I’m finished with you” because they’re blood. But, you can remark quietly to your mother that they are a waste and wish they’d get their act together.

You see, that’s how I feel about the Super NES version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Ultimate MK3, for starters, is that cousin that never quite does what they’re supposed to do and is always late to family functions like barbecues. They’re the ones responsible for bringing the drinks and ice, and without them you wouldn’t dare start eating, but you’d wish they’d gotten up just a little bit earlier that day and done what they needed to do. In other words, they’re necessary to the plan but they should have been a little quicker in their step.

Ultimate was so very necessary to the plan that was Mortal Kombat the franchise. You can’t very play the original version of MK3 seriously for all of the crazy glitches and Sub-Zero/Cyrax domination that occurred in those days of heady killing. It’s just not possible and you will get frustrated trying. Thus, a major revision of the game was created, and characters that should have been included in the first go-round are added back to the mix for good measure.

But the thing about Ultimate MK3 that bothers me the most is the millions of versions floating around that were created right before MK Trilogy hit the scene, rendering the game superfluous. With two versions of basically the same game mechanics-wise crowding for space in the buyer’s market that was fighting games, Mortal Kombat was rendered irrelevant from this point forward. Wait, that sounds a lot like when you unlock a character. How charming.

What’s not charming is the insolent and unnecessary version that graced the Super NES in 1996. In every sense of the word, the SNES version of Ultimate MK3 is obnoxious. It’s so obviously a cash grab that it doesn’t require playing to notice that none of the MK charm and grace is infused into the soul of the game. As a matter of fact, I’d venture to say there is no soul in the game. It’s just Ultimate MK3 stripped like the soulless machines that are the robotic ninjas of MK3 fame.

The game doesn’t play well and is full of glitches and other game-breaking problems, the music is so far removed from the original version of the game that it’s nigh unrecognizable, the hidden characters are tacked on and then there’s the addition of Rain and Noob Saibot. Rain didn’t even need to come into being and Noob Saibot, by this point, had grown into the joke that never ends. Later, for some reason, someone legitimized him, but that’s beside the point. Here, he’s standing next to a clown car just waiting to join up with the other palette-swapped wretches (Rain included) to wreak havoc upon the MK universe.

The MK universe was unused to hearing me say no until Ultimate MK3 forced itself onto my SNES in one last desperate attempt to remain relevant. And why my SNES had to suffer the indignity of fading into its sunset with that stain upon its bib, we’ll probably never know. This is the part of the family tree that we don’t speak about. We don’t call them, and they don’t call us. If I saw them on the street, I’d pretend they were strangers. Not in this house, I’d say.

Lyndsey Beatty is editor-in-chief of Gaming Insurrection. She can be reached by email at lyndseyb@gaminginsurrection.com