Reviewing the Genesis version, a "Next Generation" critic remarked that the game actually looks better on a last-generation console, where it finds company with other 2D games and is better-looking than most of them, than it did in the arcade, where it seemed outdated against the increasingly prevalent polygon-based games. He complimented the game for delivering on the elements most important to the "Mortal Kombat" fanbase, but added as a final note that "as a whole, the "MK" series is getting stale and in dire need of some major reworking." In their review, "GamePro" similarly said that "Mortal Kombat 3" is "just not original enough (like "Tekken") or deep enough (like "Street Fighter") to warrant space on the casual Genesis gamer's shelf." They also criticized the Genesis version as being a weak approximation of the arcade version, particularly the character sprites and sound effects. They assessed the PlayStation version as a much more accurate conversion aside from the lag during Shang Tsung's morphing, but concluded it to be "An awesome home version of a game that wasn't so great to begin with." "Next Generation" similarly felt the arcade-perfect quality of the PlayStation version was overshadowed by the game's lack of innovation: "There is little, outside of a few new, conspicuously uninspired characters, a run feature, and a new combo system, which simply mirrors its competition, to differentiate "MK3" from its predecessors." "Maximum" praised the PlayStation version's wealth of customization options and "eerie combat music tracks", but remarked that the game was outdated with "Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3" already out in arcades and slated for release on the Saturn. They also took strong issue with the lack of PAL optimization, saying that as a result "The characters move very slowly as if wading through treacle, and this detracts from the overall feel of the game as well as changing the timing for the special moves and combos."