While some will always bemoan the Mortal Kombat series as a poor man's street fighter-albeit with buckets of blood- MK2 is arguably, the strongest entry in the Mortal Kombat arcade series; but MK2 didn't innovate the franchise so much as it refined a popular formula: namely, blood, fatalities and well designed characters distinguished by special moves rather than fighting style.

The original Mortal Kombat was an unexpected success developed in less than a years time on a shoestring budget: though MK1 brought graphical innovation to the fighting genre by introducing fatalities to the mix Pit-Fighter beat it to market in terms of digitized FMV sprites.

Every Character has two fatalities in this iteration of the series and their fighting styles are expressed in a surprisingly deep juggle combo system quite atypical of the Killer Instinct inspired "dial a combo" system employed in every MK since.