Accompanied by a massive promotional campaign (given the world record for the "largest promotional campaign for a fighting video game" in the 2011 "Guinness World Records Gamer's Edition"), "Mortal Kombat 3" was originally released to the North American arcades on April 15, 1995. The game was soon ported to three home consoles, namely the Genesis, Super NES, and PlayStation, the latter which is identical to the arcade original. As part of a deal with Midway, Sony Computer Entertainment gained exclusive worldwide rights for the 32-bit version of the game up through the end of the first quarter of 1996 (hence why the Sega Saturn, 3DO Interactive Multiplayer, and Atari Jaguar versions were all slated for release in the second quarter of 1996). According to a Sega spokesperson, Sony paid Midway $12 million for these timed exclusive rights. Continuing a tradition of simultaneous home version releases from the first two games in the series, it was announced that the Genesis, Super NES, Game Boy, and Game Gear versions would all be released on "Mortal Friday", October 13, 1995. However, not all of the versions made the planned date, and the Game Gear version was never released in North America at all. The publishing for the 16-bit console ports and portable versions in North America was handled by Williams Entertainment, rather than Acclaim Entertainment (who handled the console ports of the previous titles), although Acclaim still handled the publishing for "Mortal Kombat 3" in Europe.