Mortal Kombat Trilogy introduces the "Aggressor" bar, which fills as the combatants fight (twice as much if the opponent is blocking).

Once the bar is filled, it grants the character fast movement and greater attack damage for a short period of time.

Some were simple edits of existing moves (such as Stryker throwing two grenades instead of one), while others were unused animations never implemented in their intended previous games.

[citation needed] Trilogy introduces the "Brutality" finishing move, which consists of repeatedly attacking the opponent until they explode.

Johnny Cage was also added to the roster, this time portrayed by Chris Alexander (replacing Daniel Pesina, Carlos' brother, who was legally at odds with Midway), making him the only character exclusive to this version of the game.

Most versions have Chameleon, a semi-transparent ninja who rapidly switches between all the other male ninjas (Classic Sub-Zero, Scorpion, Noob Saibot, Human Smoke, Rain, Reptile, and Ermac) during combat, portrayed by John Turk (who also portrayed unmasked Sub-Zero and Shang Tsung).

Actually we were busy working on the arcade games and our San Diego team was doing the ports and MK Trilogy.

[5][6][7] Actors Ho Sung Pak (Liu Kang), Philip Ahn (Shang Tsung), Elizabeth Malecki (Sonya Blade), Katalin Zamiar (Kitana/Mileena/Jade) and Dan Pesina (Johnny Cage and Scorpion/Sub-Zero/Reptile/Smoke) all left Midway prior to the production of the game due to royalty disputes, and so their respective roles were played by new actors.

Initially publisher Williams Entertainment stated that Johnny Cage would not be included in the game at all due to the dispute with Pesina.

[8] Carlos Pesina's original sprites were used for Raiden's gameplay, but Sal Divita's image was used for his versus screen picture.

When these particular songs were converted to MKT' Red Book CD-DA quality, they were downsampled without resampling them to maintain the original tempo and pitch in the PC, PlayStation, and Saturn versions.

[9] There are at least three public revisions of this game for the PlayStation; the final version is the North American Greatest Hits and European Platinum edition.

[4] Chameleon is replaced with the secret character Khameleon, a grey female ninja that randomly switches between Kitana, Mileena and Jade.

In development for the N64 game, both The Bank and Kahn's Arena backgrounds were included, seeming to be building on the UMK3 version made for the Saturn previously.

Additionally, at the conclusion of the battle, Kahn rises from his seat, something rumored to have been considered for inclusion in MK2 (either after defeating Kintaro or at the end of the match) but ultimately was not.

Due to hardware differences and inadequate code adapting, the porting process from the PlayStation had some technical changes, which included the replacement of almost all transparency effects with mesh patterns and the loss of certain voice samples, like most fighters' running yells and some alternative phrases used by characters like Raiden and Scorpion in their attacks.

There are at least two public revisions of the game, the latest of them characterized by the word "final" next to the version number in the about dialog box, and featuring gameplay identical to the Greatest Hits release on PlayStation.

[30] The four reviewers of Electronic Gaming Monthly all gave the Nintendo 64 version their recommendation, citing the impressive amount of content and absence of load times, though Dan Hsu and Crispin Boyer found the graphics disappointing given the capabilities of the console.

They complained that the game suffers from some slowdown and muted music, but concluded it "delivers with all the fighters, secrets, and carnage that made the series the phenomenon it is today.

[35] Reviewing the PlayStation version, GamePro criticized the overly difficult opponent AI and the unbalanced nature of the playable boss characters, and said the music tracks "sound like a 45 record played at 33 RPM."

They nonetheless concluded it to be "a must for any fighting gamer's library", due to the responsive controls and large amount of content.

[20][32][38] GamePro printed a warning to "think twice before purchasing this version of MK Trilogy" in a reader response section after they learned that Midway had deliberately omitted the animations for some fatalities in order to ship the game on time.

[40] According to a later IGN retrospective, Mortal Kombat Trilogy "offered something no fan could ignore: It brought every character from the series into the fold, along with most of the levels, making for one massive game that had enough to please everyone.