History YMMV / Mortalkombat3

** Downplayed for the Nintendo 64 version of Trilogy, but in any setting where Trilogy is played competitively it's become the standard for offering a unique experience with a different metagame, as well as the popularity of 3v3 mode. The lack of the Platform/PlayStation's LoadsAndLoadsOfLoading doesn't hurt.

** Downplayed for the Nintendo 64 version of Trilogy, but in any setting where Trilogy is played competitively it's become the standard for offering a unique experience with a different metagame, as well as the popularity of 3v3 mode. The lack of the PS1's LoadsAndLoadsOfLoading doesn't hurt.

** ''Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3'' gets a lot more tournament play nowadays (and was one of the first online-enabled XBOX Live Arcade games), and a lot of the characters that were hated back in the nineties are now returning fan favorites in ''VideoGame/MortalKombat9''.

** All the [[HighlyVisibleNinja colorful ninjas]] pouring off [[PaletteSwap an assembly line]], who were able to ride off of [[FirstInstallmentWins Scorpion and Sub-Zero's]] popularity, especially since the unexplained absence of Scorpion made them the best one could get until he returned for ''Ultimate''.

** The UsefulNotes/PlayStation / Saturn version contains every available character (a few with multiple iterations), but being on a disc, there's LoadsAndLoadsOfLoading involved (including an 8-second mid-match load for a Shang Tsung morph, bad enough that there's a toggle to disable his morphing), and the game is prone to locking up. While the music is arcade-quality Red Book audio, all of the stage themes lack proper transitions and endings due to the limitations of the audio format. Additionally all ''[=MK3=]'' songs were sampled incorrectly, so they are all slower and lower in pitch. The eccentricities of the disc wound up making it one of the few [=PS1=] discs incompatible with the [=PS3=].

* BaseBreakingCharacter: Motaro is an odd case. He was a cool design by fighting game standards, an interesting sub-boss indeed. But was cheap and broken as a character, and some felt that the idea of a centaur is too goofy even for MK standards. Can't blame the MK team not wanting to revisit him, as adapting a four-legged monster like him into the 3D era would be a difficult task (in fact, this is the entire reason why he was made bipedal in ''Armageddon'').

** Rain as a character. Many found annoyance with his status as an initially unplayable joke character and decried the origin of his name (A reference to the song ''Purple Rain'' by Music/{{Prince}}) as a lame pun, to the extent the character appeared on more than a few worst character lists for the series. But after being RescuedFromTheScrappyHeap in later games, many fans began to look back on the character more fondly, to the extent fans were angered he appeared as an unplayable character in ''VideoGame/MortalKombatX'' and rejoiced at his return in ''VideoGame/MortalKombat11'' as one of the final DLC characters. It also helps that after the death of Prince and the PosthumousPopularityPotential he received, many take less issue with the origin of his name and regard it as a neat bit of trivia.

** All the [[HighlyVisibleNinja colorful ninjas]] [[ConservationOfNinjutsu pouring off]] [[PaletteSwap an assembly line]], who were able to ride off of [[FirstInstallmentWins Scorpion and Sub-Zero's]] popularity, especially since the unexplained absence of Scorpion made them the best one could get until he returned for ''Ultimate''.

** Since the game takes place on Earthrealm, about half of the stages lack the interesting Asian-influenced mythological feel of the first two games and are rather mundane, such as "The Bridge", "The Waterfront" and the [[SarcasmMode ever-exciting]] "[[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Bank]]". The shattering of that theme also played in with the above, since with no overarching theme to the locations, it resulted in players realizing how ridiculous the characters looked - it's a little hard to take things seriously when you've got a cyborg ninja and a muscular woman with four arms beating each other up in a bog-standard subway station.

* AntiFrustrationFeatures: The disc based versions of Mortal Kombat Trilogy, possibly in anticipation of player frustration, included a wide selection of setting and options to help reduce the LoadsAndLoadsOfLoading including shutting off certain graphical flourishes in the Selection screens, restricting Shang Tsung to two morph options so that the game doesn't need to pause and load, disabling Versus screens so that the game can load directly into fights from Character Select, removing Buy-In screens so that the game can go straight back to Character Select without P2 having to re-join and a Match Recycle option that causes the game to simply replay the current match settings for a certain number of cycles before a Game Over, which can also come in handy for long gaming sessions and tournament settings.

** Stryker was a character that was near-universally considered [[TheScrappy the lamest kombatant yet at time of release]], with his whole gimmick as "normal cop" being considered tremendously bland and out-of-place among the classic "SupernaturalMartialArts tournament" aesthetic built from the first two games, and [[FranchiseOriginalSin a point where the creativity behind the series' ever-expanding rosters started going downhill]]. It took until ''VideoGame/MortalKombat9'' for him to finally see [[RescuedFromTheScrappyHeap an uptick in popularity]], where he received a surprisingly engaging [[ADayInTheLimelight dedicated chapter]] that emphasized him as an [[TheEveryman everyman]]-type badass [[BadassNormal who can put up a good fight]] against the OutsideContextProblem that is the rest of the series, making his out-of-place-ness a strength rather than a boon. Along with many other boundary-pushing characters in ''3'' being accepted as fan-favorites (such as the cyborg ninjas and Kabal), Stryker is now remembered with fondness as having earned his place in the franchise, with his interpretation in ''3'' often being seen as an ''[[NarmCharm endearing]]'' [[NarmCharm kind of "lame"]]. An additional factor tying into his character perception is the increasingly visible and controversial profile of PoliceBrutality in real life since the 90's, which has in many ways ''elevated'' the concept of Stryker -- a normal cop that participates in the ultraviolent spectacle that is imperative to the series' identity -- to being [[BlackComedy an unintentionally amusing]] window to [[ValuesDissonance a more innocent time]].