A 32X question? Oh yes!

[Aleron Ives]

Well, I have an odd question for the Sega buffs here. I've gotten my hands on a few 32X games (Chaotix, Kolibri, Mortal Kombat II, Tempo, and Virtua Racing Deluxe, to be specific), and I've read something interesting regarding the 32X version of MKII: it apparently had two releases. The first was supposedly released on 4 December 1994, while a second version to fix some bugs was released in January of 1995, at least according to this Sega Retro page. The problem is, I can't find anyone anywhere who can actually list the differences between these two releases or how to tell them apart. The only potential difference I've been able to find is at the very end of this video review, where Mileena kills Johnny Cage with the stage Fatality on The Pit II. When Cage hits the floor, the camera immediately stops moving. On my cart, Cage hits the floor first, and then the camera keeps scrolling for a moment to catch up, which looks a bit weird. Mine also has lots of weird palette glitches with Shang Tsung, but I have no idea if that's one of the things Probe supposedly "fixed" in the re-release.

Do any of the folks here with lots of obscure Sega knowledge happen to know anything about what might have changed between these two releases and whether there is any way to know which one you're getting before you buy a specifc copy? I might be interested in the re-release if it has any interesting changes, but I don't particularly want to buy a dozen copies of the game trying to get lucky with one that happens to be the second version.

[Dreamcastgaga]

Can you not download an emulator to check for the differences yourself? I'm not a big enough Mortal Kombat fan to know the differences.

[Aleron Ives]

That's what I'm saying; I don't know if the rev2 copy even exists. I checked all the carts on eBay, and they all have the same T-8101B serial and 1994 copyright on them that my cart has. If a rev2 "bugfix" version exists, it's either super rare, or it isn't labelled any differently from the original version. I'm already using Fusion to play my copy, and at least one YouTuber has suggested that the camera bug is due to emulation and doesn't happen on a real 32X. I can't test on real hardware, since I don't own a 32X. It's quite possible that Sega Retro is just wrong, but I was hoping somebody might know for sure.

[dark]

I have some 32X rom files in a folder, one of them says "Mortal Kombat II (32X) (W) (Jan 1995) [!]" the other is the same filename with the date Dec 1994.

No idea what the observable differences are though.

[Aleron Ives]

Can you try running them to see if the license screens show different copyright dates or anything?

[dark]

It only gives a copyright date for the year, which is 1994 for both.
If these did come out in Dec and Jan, that's only a 4 week difference, I wouldn't imagine they could have done much except fix a few trivial bugs they didn't have time to fix/discover while under pressure to get the game out in time for xmas.