#1192

A playthrough of the hidden boss Smoke in the Gameboy port of Mortal Kombat 3.

Smoke’s moves (thanks to PortableMK on Gamefaqs for these):
• Teleport Punch – F, f+K
• Invisibility – Up, Up+P
• Fatality – Up, Up, F, Down
• Babality – Down, Down, b, b, K

So yeah, they kept in Smoke despite the fact that they removed so many other characters, including Motaro. Presumably, that’s just because it was easier to do yet another ninja than to try anything else, but still, it’s neat that they at least tried to keep a hidden aspect here. But yeah, no Noob Saibot, no Motaro, and the most basic tower only has four regular opponents, lol. And nowadays people can play the modern MK games portably on their Switches and Steam Decks. Kinda crazy to think about, huh?

So yeah, Smoke is both a hidden boss and playable character here, which is neat. How is he? Pretty crap, unfortunately. For a start, he doesn’t have his spear, which is just sacrilegious. Two, one of the attacks he has is turning invisible, which I assume is out of pure laziness because it’s of no benefit to the player whatsoever. He can however spam the input for his teleport punch, which sort of allows him to chain it, but that’s really the only interest thing about him. Special moves too do hilariously little damage, however, they’re generally a lot safer than other attacks, making them a little better as a result. Smoke’s main strategy here then, unsurprisingly, is just to smoke the teleport punch input as it’s the most consistent way to hit the opponent, with even Shao Kahn being somehow duped by it and taken out pretty easily (it was especially satisfying to counter him when he was trying to throw his projectile at him, as you can imagine). One compliment I will give though is that the special move and fatality inputs are surprisingly responsive and easy to pull off, so that was a nice change compared to some of the other MK ports I’ve played.

Also, yeah, this playthrough glitched a little for some reason, I think because I used a code to force me to play as Smoke rather than the usual code to just unlock him on the select screen. Ah well; made for some slightly goofy glitches at least.

Up next, things somehow get worse as we look at the GB port of MK4