This may be a somewhat shorter Mortal Monday. In all honesty, there wasn't going to be one this week at all mainly because I'd run out of material that way. But I wanted to comment on Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 for the Xbox Live Arcade because I had purchased it over the weekend and gave it a whirl.

For a cool, crisp 800 Microsoft points, you can get the feel of the original UMK3 arcade cabinet on your Xbox 360 anytime you want. Though ten bucks may be a little steep to ask, diehard MK fans won't have a problem with dropping the cash. The thing I can stress the most is that this game does not disappoint.

I checked for everything I could think of. I looked for framerate issues, Vs screen codes issues, horrible lag online, tweaks in CPU diffulity – any problem at all. I experienced zero. The game felt like a trip back to the good ol' arcade days the moment I fired it up.

Although technically an emulation, everything about the characters is intact. Each character has their fatalities, babalities, special moves, and combos. The hidden characters(Mileena, Classic Sub-Zero, and Ermac) are also intact and are unlockable by beating the game with the original required characters or the Ultimate Kombat Kode. Noob Saibot is still in as a hidden boss, and Human Smoke can be played by pressing the same buttons as in the arcade mode. I don't really see anything difference in this emulation at all.

The main reason why it's called an emulation and not a port is because very little has been changed aside from a few injections of awesome. The thing that will get the nerdpoints crowd happy is the achievements. These achievements are honestly extremely easy to get – possibly the hardest is winning 100 matches on Xbox Live. I was able to unlock four by complete accident while playing through Arcade mode and thinking nothing of achievements at all.

For those who always enjoyed marking their territory in the local arcades back in the day, this version of UMK3 does track your total points and gives you the option to upload this score with your initials via Xbox Live. I haven't looked at my own score yet, but I assume that I'd be in the thousands and sucking.

The coolest part about this version is that it recreates the feel of an arcade for you in the way of hopping on Xbox Live and playing against someone any time of the day. Just put on the headset, grab the controller, and noob the pwns. People can even get in line and wait for your match to end against your current opponent if they want a piece of you badly enough – just like in the old days.

So let's get this straight. There's no slow down, the music and animations from the original arcade version are all intact along with the characters. All of the characters' moves, fatalities, babalities, and combos are correct along wit the hidden characters and their movesets. You can leave your score and initials as if to dare someone to knock you off of your MK throne while you play against some guy, talk a bit of trash, and muse as the line of people who want a piece of you continues to grow? Yeah, this sounds exactly like the arcade feel of UMK3 in a nutshell. And I love it.

Collectors will want this version of the game rather than the other ports mainly because the Genesis and SNES versions left a lot to be desired. Sure, the SNES version of the game gave you Noob Saibot and Rain, but they didn't even have their own fatalities. The Sega Saturn port was okay, but it doesn't have the ability to save game status when the hidden characters become unlocked. Noob Saibot is also based off of a shadowed Kano again. But hey, Shang Tsung has a morph for the robot Smoke.

The Genesis version of this game gets its own paragraph because I'm going to talk about how much it plain sucks. Do not get this version, collectors. It suffers from horrid graphics, horrid audio, and several stages are missing. This makes the killer layers combat a thing of the past. The announcer no longer announces the characters' names, and both Noob Saibot and Rain are reduced to having brutalities only. The only good thing about this version is the fact that every hidden character, including human Smoke, are playable from the main menu. Even Shao Kahn and Motaro are playable from the beginning. Unfortunately, I feel that this obvious attempt to make up for a horrible port doesn't cut it.

Take it from your pal, Debaser. The version of UMK3 on Xbox Live Arcade is the version that you want. The others simply don't cut it. If you want to find me, I'll be getting my ass kicked over and over on Xbox Live and loving every second of it.

Next up is Mortal Kombat Screwattack. What the hell am I talking about? You'll have to wait until next time to find out.