Mortal Kombat 1's recent launch on Nintendo Switch will undoubtedly go down as one of the most abysmal that the games industry has ever seen. Downgrades were expected due to the system's inferior hardware, but the port is filled with bugs, horrendous texture issues, and is nowhere near the quality you'd expect from a game being sold for $70. It looks remarkably worse than it did in the game's pre-release trailers, and it turns out there might be a good reason for that.

Earlier this week, an official launch trailer for the Nintendo Switch version of Mortal Kombat 1 was uploaded to the platform holder's official YouTube channel. It looked a little worse than the PS5 and Xbox Series x versions of the game, but nowhere near as glitchy and muddy as the final product. That's because this particular trailer appears to be using PC game footage rather than game footage from the Switch, and we know this because the trailer actually contains a Steam pop-up at around the half way mark (thanks Kotaku).

Related: Mortal Kombat 1's $70 Nintendo Switch Price Tag Is Unacceptable

You can find a screenshot of the pop-up down below, which occurs whilst Sub-Zero is taking on one of Invasions mode's mini-games. The title of the pop-up is simply "Achievement 38", along with the words "Description 38" underneath, suggesting that this footage was taken on a pre-release PC build of the game. It could be that it's just this section of the trailer using PC footage, though the graphical quality of the rest of trailer looks pretty similar.

Using a PC to advertise console versions of third-party games is nothing new, as it's something a lot of developers do to get the best possible trailer quality footage. It's a lot easier to capture good-looking gameplay on PC than it is on PS5 and Xbox Series X, but it's particularly agregious in this case considering how radically different the quality of the trailer and final Nintendo Switch version actually is.

Thankfully, series creator Ed Boon recently addressed the issues surrounding the Nintendo Switch version of the game and has promised fixes. You could argue that NetherRealm shouldn't have even launched the game in the first place if it new how badly it was going to perfrom on the system, though it's possible there could be some red tape behind the scenes that forced a dame day release alongside other consoles. Either way, it's not a good look for NetherRealm when other versions of the game are getting widely praised.

Speaking of which, if you'd like to know what we think about Mortal Kombat 1 before you dive in to pull off a few Fatalities of your own, you can read our review by Lead News Editor George Foster here. Just maybe stay away from the Nintendo Switch version for now though.

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