Mortal Kombat Message Board older than one year ago

#mortalkombat Mortal Kombat made a bloody and triumphant return to consoles last year, giving gamers updated versions of classic Kombatants like Sub-Zero and Johnny Cage and an all-new engine that offered more depth than ever before. The game also mined the fighting franchise's long history to offer a drip-feed of DLC that rolled out skins and characters every couple of weeks. More »

Freddy Kruger has been tearing up the Mortal Kombat arena for a while now, and we've rarely had more fun with a DLC character. It's doubly sad, then, that we've seen no further DLC for Mortal Kombat since his debut and series director Ed Boon has said that there's none in the works, either. It ...

#speakuponkotaku Video game developers take great care in creating rules and restrictions that define the gameplay of their virtual worlds, but sometimes those rules aren't good enough. In today's rule-breaking edition of Speak Up on Kotaku, commenter Pibbles explores the joy of playing under your own self-imposed strictures. More »

The U.K.'s classification authority granted an 18-rating for a "Mortal Kombat Komplete Edition" on Friday, hinting that the title is due for a re-release that would, customarily, include previously released DLC. More »

#speakuponkotaku Twice has Best Buy lured commenter I.Q.1 to its door with exclusive preorder goodness, and twice has he been denied. A cautionary tale, courtesy of Speak Up on Kotaku. More »

#mortalkombat Looks like director Kevin Tancharoen's actually going to get to make that Mortal Kombat movie he pitched to Warner Bros. The director of Mortal Kombat Rebirth and the web series it spawned, Mortal Kombat Legacy, is getting his very own stab at a feature film. More »

Go to any screening of The Room, Tommy Wiseau's tour-de-force depiction of one man's personal relationship hell in a dystopian, near future fantasy world where humans have been robbed of all identifiable human emotions apart from abject spite, random bursts of maudlin rage, and occasional laughter associated with tossing a football around for some reason, and the conversation inevitably devolves into a bout of is he/isn't he discussion over the veracity of Wiseau's persona. Is he an elaborate fraud? A sort of Kaufman-esque character designed to troll greater humanity until his last, dying breath? Or is he really the exiled European royal eccentric who actually thinks his movies are awesome that many purport him to be?

What more need be said?

Whether or not he was once batshit crazy in his own earnest way, any remaining trace of earnestness from the man's pocked, droopy-eyed visage appears to be long gone. Much as humanity's fate was sealed for the worse when Skynet became self-aware, any chance of us genuinely loving the kooky, indeterminately European filmmaker has pretty much gone thermonuclear, thanks to the new Machinima production, The Tommy Wi-Show.

For reasons defiant of reason itself, Machinima has apparently paid Wiseau actual money, which can be used to exchange for goods and/or services, to "star" in this "show" in which Wiseau plays video games assigned to him by a helpful, dickish alien, and then says things about them. In the first episode, after repeated complaints that the space station set in which he sits is not his house, Tommy plays Mortal Kombat, while making such wondrous observations as these:

"Oh wooooow..."

"Yeah, kick him! One more time!"

"I don't have a blade. That's not faaaaiiiir."

"Dammit! You Mexican...or whatever you are..."

While there is something slightly mad genius about taking a man who would typically be the subject of a RiffTrax episode and turning him into the commentator--imagine if Ed Wood had sat in on an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000--The Tommy Wi-Show appears to have little interest anything beyond using Tommy's reputation as a purveyor of terrible everything in the laziest way possible. In fact, I think this show was ultimately summed up best by MST3K alum and current RiffTrax man Michael J. Nelson on his twitter feed today:

The Tommy Wi-Show: prepare to sigh deeply & say, "Why the hell did I just watch that?

Indeed. Feel free to ask yourself that very question as you watch the first three minutes of the embedded YouTube video below. If you can make it any further than that, your tolerance for overly self-aware bullshit is officially higher than mine.

As we've discussed before, fighting games make use of a language unique to the genre: Terms like "OTG" and "yomi" are common across the pantheon of games that populate the modern fighting scene. Within that universal language, however, are several distinct and established dialects, each centered around a different title or series. For instance, in Mortal Kombat's vernacular, there is no word more offensive or infuriating than "desynchronization."
The desynchronization error, a plague upon both systems that was eventually quarantined to Xbox Live, caused matches to disconnect after selecting specific DLC costumes, alternate costumes, and default costumes. Thankfully though, the latest patch pushed by NetherRealm Studios seems to have finally cured the pandemic: we tested Scorpion's Klassic Kostume DLC and encountered zero errors, which is a massive improvement over the one-hundred percent guaranteed desynch rate associated with the costume previously.

The patch also provides some desperately needed mechanical tweaks and balancing adjustments, and while many of those changes are undocumented, you can peep a list of the important stuff after the break. Fight!

#peripherals The kids at Hit Box got in touch over the weekend to show us this video of their custom fight stick in action. And as someone who sucks at fighting games, I am interested. More »

About 20 years ago, Midway was at the cutting edge of arcade game development using a unique method of creating very realistic images. By digitizing live actors, shot in front of a green screen, a number of games were developed that had a photorealistic look not found in any other games. Games like Narc, Smash TV, NBA Jam and Terminator 2: Arcade all used this technology. This approach was applied to a number of game categories including sports, gun games, and shooters. One genre, however, had not yet been attempted – the fighting game. In 1991, a small team of four decided to try making a fighting game using digitized graphics. The goal was to make something bold, shocking, and as realistic looking as possible. The game would eventually become Mortal Kombat, the first in a series that have sold over 30 million games.

Mortal Kombat was the “bad boy” of fighting games. It unapologetically depicted blood and had a much more hard-edge presentation than its tamer competition. Mortal Kombat’s bold presentation wasn’t without its controversy, but that only fueled the game’s unstoppable popularity. In addition, Mortal Kombat introduced a deep story and unique characters that also set it apart from other fighting games.

My name is Ed Boon, I was part of that original design team of four and now am the creative director at NetherRealm studios where our team of over 100 has recently shipped the 2011 version of Mortal Kombat. As we approach Mortal Kombat’s 20-year anniversary it’s hard not to think back to where it all started. The first three Mortal Kombat games used the digitized method to create their photo realistic images and truly set the stage for our most recent Mortal Kombat game which retells their stories.

As a celebration of the games that started it all, we are very excited to be offering The Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection, which contains all three classic games (Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3) available for download from PSN tomorrow, August 30th. Each game has its own unique look, style and gameplay “feel” that’s nothing like the other two. Mortal Kombat II is the preferred game of many players, but Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 is my personal favorite. All three games are complete versions of their original and can now be played online as well.

It’s hard to believe we are coming up on 20 years since the original Mortal Kombat was released in the arcade. Everyone seems to have their own story of when they first saw Mortal Kombat or one of the game’s fatalities. The Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection is great way to relive those memories and we really hope you enjoy it!

I’m really happy to see the upcoming release of the Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection, which hits PSN next Tuesday, August 30th. The MKAK is a great way to relive the classic Mortal Kombat arcade games right in your own living room, but I’m also excited that players who enjoyed this year’s new Mortal Kombat will soon have the opportunity to play the first three games that set the foundation for the entire fighting-game franchise.

I was introduced to Mortal Kombat on April 20th, 1992. I was fresh out of art school and starting my career at Williams/Bally/Midway. I remembered being overwhelmed that I was actually walking into the building where some of my favorite games were created: Narc, Robotron, Defender, and Smash TV just to name a few. Mortal Kombat was yet to be released. However there were a few Mortal Kombat prototypes lining the halls of Midway that we could test out. I remember being just blown away by my first experiences with Mortal Kombat. What first struck me was the size of the digitized characters on the screen. They were huge! I remember selecting Kano as my first character: I was a big Terminator fan at the time, so the choice was obvious. I also remember how in awe I was working (and playing) along side of the guys that created the game. A few days after that, I met the actors that were filmed for the game. John Tobias and Ed Boon brought the whole cast of characters back in to capture the video bio sequences that happened during the attract mode. It was funny how low-budget the whole thing was. It was actually just filmed in the hallway where we tested the games with a low-end video camera, a few lights, and a piece of black cloth as the backdrop. It was a very garage-band scenario but I recall just being blown away that I was witnessing the creation of something big, never really knowing how big Mortal Kombat would actually become.

In this video clip, Mortal Kombat’s longtime Lead Sound Designer Dan Forden discusses the origins of “Toasty!” — one of the most celebrated Easter Eggs in the history of gaming.

Mortal Kombat II was fun in that I had the opportunity to witness the team create the game from the ground up. I was working on another game team at the time, but I was slowly becoming friends with Tobias, Ed, and Tony Goskie. Tony is an amazing artist that bases his talent in surrealism; Mortal Kombat II’s introduction to Outworld was a perfect match for Tony. Luckily my office was directly across from Tony’s so I had the opportunity to see him create some of the most iconic environments in the game. I remember Tony’s disappointment when he had to remove the crucified four-armed Shokan from the Wastelands. We thought it was an interesting element in the background, but the company thought it may be perceived as sacrilegious. One of the best memories I had from the Mortal Kombat II days was when I was asked to be the floating monk in the Tower background. You can’t really tell it’s me in the shrouded robe, but at the time I dorked out hard telling everyone I knew that I was in the latest Mortal Kombat!

In this video clip, Creative Director and co-creator Ed Boon talks about the creation of Mortal Kombat’s iconic dragon medallion logo.

Mortal Kombat 3 is special to me because that was the first Mortal Kombat I was on as an artist. I was honored that John and Ed asked me to join the team. I basically worked alongside John, cleaning up characters, building costumes, and creating special FX. Making Mortal Kombat 3 was a really great time. We busted our asses. We worked crazy hours and stayed overnight quite a bit. Building the character costumes was probably the most fun. Now we build everything in 3D, but back then we had to rely on sporting goods stores, army surplus stores, Halloween shops, and a lot of duct tape. It was a blast getting the cyborg costumes together: it was a mix of BMX motocross gear, hockey protection, duct tape, and rubber tubing. For being really thrown together I am really happy with the way Sektor and Cyrax turned out. By the way, before they were known as Sektor and Cyrax, John Vogel named them Ketchup and Mustard.

In this video clip, Mortal Kombat artist, animator, and motion-capture performer Carlos Pesina recalls how his mother reacted to his career choice.

I am honored to still be working on the Mortal Kombat franchise. I love the Mortal Kombat universe and all the talented people I get to work with every day. In addition to that, I feel we have the best fans in video games. They are extremely devoted and our team deeply appreciates their devotion over the past (almost) 20 years. Thank you all sincerely.

#mortalkombat When Syco Collectibles showed off their line of Mortal Kombat statues the other day, sadly one of the main attractions, a Raiden piece, wasn't done. He is now! More »

When Midway bit the bullet and liquidated all of its assets during the first half of last year, the future of one of gaming's most ubiquitous and legendary franchises, Mortal Kombat, was completely up in the air. People didn't know whether or not MK's new baby-daddy at Warner Bros. Interactive would continue the series' proud tradition of increasingly ludicrous violence, or if it would continue the stagnating series period.

Fast-forward a bit, and thankfully it seems to have worked out for history's favorite murderers, with Warner's first entry in the franchise garnering critical acclaim and millions of dollars. According to WB Interactive President Martin Tremblay, Mortal Kombat has already paid for all of the assets acquired from Midway by selling "close to" 3 million units worldwide.

To put that number in perspective, as of June 30, 2011 Super Street Fighter 4 has sold 1.6 million units, and Marvel vs. Capcom 3 has sold 2 million, both of which have been on the market for a significantly longer amount of time. Considering the sorry state of affairs that Mortal Kombat was left in as little as two years ago, we can't help but be a little surprised by the modern-day, gore-soaked Cinderella story this saga has become.

The fourth DLC fighter for Mortal Kombat is none other than the dream-stalker himself: Freddy Krueger. The star of Nightmare on Elm Street has a beef with Shao Kahn for stealing all those dream world souls he was torturing, and so he's in the mortal world to take matters into his own claws...

Tonight truly is the final fight, as warriors from around the globe prepare to punch-or-be-punched in the EVO 2011 Championship Series finals! Mortal Kombat, Marvel VS. Capcom 3, and Super Street Fighter 4: Arcade Edition finals comprise tonight's action, with special exhibition matches adding flavor to this already delicious knuckle-sandwich.

Check out the schedule after the break, and let us know how you feel about competitive-gaming coverage on Joystiq, either in the poll or the comments!

Mortal Kombat's newest kombatant certainly came as a surprise to the seasoned MK vets here at Joystiq; we were expecting Tanya, or maybe even Meat, but Krueger? Dude wasn't even on our radar, let alone our fantasy character selection screens. As out-of-left-field as his inclusion seems to us, series co-founder Ed Boon says that slasher villains have always been on the table as potential new characters.

"Over the years, we've certainly had a number of conversations about guest characters," said Boon during an interview with PlayStation Blog. "A number of names were run by us: Jason, Michael Meyers [sic] and all those guys. Freddy Kreuger, we felt, was the most instantly recognizable and he fits in with Mortal Kombat with his claws." We think they made the right choice; why would anyone put the guy from So I Married An Axe Murderer in a Mortal Kombat game?

You’ve seen the video. Now read what compelled Mortal Kombat co-creator Ed Boon to bring 80s horror icon Freddy Kruger to Mortal Kombat as a downloadable guest character this August. In discussing the news with the PlayStation.Blog, Boon shed light on the long, sometimes tangled genesis of Mortal’s Kombat’s other DLC characters — namely Rain, Skarlet, and Kenshi. One began as a joke, one was an incorrect rumor, and one…well, you’ll see.

Look for Freddy to hit PSN on August 9th for $4.99, and read on for my full chat with Ed Boon.

PlayStation.Blog: So what is the inspiration for bringing Freddy Krueger to Mortal Kombat as a DLC character?
Ed Boon, Creative Director, Netherrealm Studios: It was a number of things. It’s kind of hard to choose a character who would fit well into the Mortal Kombat universe, with the blood and violence that’s so associated with it. Kratos from God of War is a brutal, bloody character, so he makes sense. When we had the discussions about the DLC characters, we knew that we wanted to add a returning character, a new character, but also a guest character. That was one of the goals right from the beginning. A number of names were run by us: Jason, Michael Meyers and all those guys. Freddy Kreuger, we felt, was the most instantly recognizable and he fits in with Mortal Kombat with his claws. It just seemed like the best fit.

PSB: Did you base Freddy off the 80s films or the reboot movie from a few years back?
Well…that’s a good question. We didn’t try to make him look like the actor Robert Englund, I don’t even know if we would be allowed to….Admittedly, I didn’t see the latest movie, the remake. But obviously the first few movies were huge — they left an undeniable mark on pop culture. When I look at him, I think of the original Freddy: he’s got the striped sweater and is instantly recognizable. He’s Freddy in general, we don’t really identify him as one version or another.

PSB: Freddy isn’t exactly a martial artist. How does he keep up with the kombatants?
[laughs] He doesn’t fight like a martial artist, either! We gave him two claws, which we explain in his character bio, so you can almost imagine a Baraka with shorter blades that are always out. He’s got lots of swipes, he can send his claws creepy-crawling on the ground or flying through the air. He can dig into the ground and the claws will come up under his opponent. He’s very claw-centric.

PSB: Will Freddy’s ability to invade his victims’ dreams play into his Mortal Kombat incarnation in any way?
Yeah, you’ll see some of that. His story ending really plays into that. In the middle of a fight, you won’t see him entering a guy’s head in a dream sequence or anything, but there is plenty of dream-related stuff in his introduction animation, his victory stance, his fatalities and so forth.

PSB: Ten, 15 years ago when Mortal Kombat was early in its lifespan, did you ever fantasize about getting Freddy Krueger into MK?
Yeah, yeah. Over the years, we’ve certainly had a number of conversations about guest characters. At one point, we had a conversation about having a group — imagine Freddy, Jason, Michael Meyers, Leatherface from Texas Chainsaw Massacre — of all these killers from the 80s and 90s flicks come in as a group of characters. We never got a grip on how we would do it, whether they’d be DLC characters or what. But yes, we’ve had lots of conversations over the years. We also wanted to introduce a character who was unexpected. This DLC thing opens the doors to realizing these ideas. Kratos was one we discussed as a DLC character a number of times, but luckily we could include him as the initial cast of characters [in the PS3 version]. With Freddy, we felt like the stars had aligned — it was time to do it.

PSB: What is your process for choosing DLC characters? Why did you begin with Kenshi, who was the only character from the Deadly Alliance games to make the jump?
I’ve personally always big a big fan of Kenshi, as were many of the guys on the MK team. So we gravitated to Kenshi. We always knew we’d add Rain right from the beginning. I was bombarded for weeks on Twitter with fans begging for Rain, so I had a little fun with it. Each DLC character, I believe, satisfies a certain group of our audience that we knew was clamoring for it.

PSB: Speaking of Rain, he was originally hinted at in Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. What was the genesis of Rain?
Rain was me being a jerk, basically. [laughs] When we were working on Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, I was thinking “what ninja color have we not done yet?” … and I’m a huge Prince fan, so I was thinking Purple Rain. I was probably still listening to the album. There was no time to actually make a character, because the game was done. So I hacked into the attract screen a quick little sequence of this purple ninja running at Shao Kahn. We didn’t even have the word “Rain” in the powerbar, so I manually built it using our font. So I included this quick glimpse just to drive people crazy. Once Mortal Kombat Trilogy came out, we gave Rain new moves and he finally became a real character. Later we brought him back for Mortal Kombat Armageddon. That’s one of the things about Mortal Kombat: many of the characters have these goofy development histories. Noob Saibot, Reptile…all of these odd origin stories.

PSB: What about Skarlet? She was a rumored secret character from MKII, right?
She was a completely rumored character. She never existed, she was born out of a rumor. It got such legs that a name actually came out of it; there was never a glitch that turned Kitana red, that never existed. That was just an urban legend like Animalities and Ermac — a rumor that we eventually wanted to make true.

WB Games unveils the latest DLC for Mortal Kombat!

#mortalkombat The next downloadable character for Mortal Kombat is Freddy Krueger, the dude with the knives on his fingers from A Nightmare on Elm Street. Where's Jason? More »

#toys Collectible company Syco have picked up a license to release Mortal Kombat statues, so release some Mortal Kombat statues they shall. More »

Spoilers! Kombos, fatalities and more in this gameplay from Mortal Kombat's Rain DLC!

The desynch error message feels a lot like this.

Look, it sucks when the games we buy don't work as intended. It's almost worse when a game that used to work just fine actually becomes broken for one reason or another. That's been the case with Mortal Kombat lately, which was working just fine online for awhile, but now that there's DLC and "klassic" skins packs out there to purchase, things have gone way, way sideways.

The problem, apparently, lies in the classic skins that came as part of various retailer-specific pre-order packages. If you downloaded these back in April and have them on your system, every game you attempt to join will, if my experience is any indication, totally fail to stay connected. According to a post on the game's official forums, a patch is in the works to fix this issue once and for all. However, you can do your part today by simply deleting and redownloading any of those individual skins that you might have on your Xbox 360. The PlayStation 3 was also suffering from this issue, but it looks like a patch is already available there that fixes this. I assume you could also just delete the skins if you've purchased that skins pack that came out awhile back, but I haven't tried that.

I'm mostly posting this information because getting it from the official site is something of a nightmare. Even a direct link to the thread would just throw the site's age gate in your face, following by a redirect to the homepage. Super annoying! This seems like the sort of info that they'd want to blast out onto the homepage of the site and the in-game Message of the Day, since it's an issue that effectively makes the game unplayable online, and both players in a match need to have performed this fix to make it work.

So, do your part. Go redownload those skins, and while you're at it, download all of the compatibility packs for the DLC characters. Because the other incredibly frustrating part of the process is that those are optional downloads, so if the person you're playing with hasn't grabbed those packs or purchased the three available downloadable characters, you can't use the characters you've paid for! Insane, right? This one can't be laid at the feet of the developers, though. This one's an issue with Microsoft's rules regarding maximum patch sizes, I believe. Stuff like this is what makes me want the next generation of consoles to come sooner rather than later. Hopefully they'll be able to guarantee hard drives in all machines next time and force multiplayer patches down to all players to keep everyone running the same stuff at the same time.

Oh, also, Rain is available today. He's pretty crazy, I bet the combo videos will be nuts.

Mortal Kombat's newest warrior enters the arena today ready to dampen the spirit and crush the body of any opponent who challenges him! Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and NetherRealm Studios announce that Rain is now available for download on PlayStation Network and Microsoft Xbox Live. Joi...

#mortalkombat The story of Rain, the latest fighter coming to Mortal Kombat is a story of revenge. Furious that he would be denied the rank he felt he deserved, Rain joined the faction that orphaned him. More »

Introducing the latest DLC warrior, Rain, a power-hungry fighter who will stop at nothing to get what he wants.

Preview kombatant Rain, who will be available July 19th.

#video The purple one, Rain, is the latest addition to Mortal Kombat's cast of characters. The god of inclement weather joins the excessively bloody Skarlet and blind swordsman Kenshi as the third downloadable add-on for NetherRealm's ultra gory fighter. More »

Rain, former denizen of Edenia and walking Prince reference, will be joining the twenty-first century July 19 as Mortal Kombat's third DLC character.

Half god, half severe weather alert, Rain originally debuted in Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, and it looks like he's retained all of his old tricks, including his lightning bolt, water levitate, and magical-compulsory-teleportation feet. Rain will be available for 400 MS Points ($5), or as part of the Season Pass.

Do you want to make it Rain on your Mortal Kombat opponents? Okay, that was a terrible joke. Point is, Gamespot has a trailer up featuring the next downloadable character, Rain, so take a look...

The blind swordsman enters the fray. X-rays, fatalities, and a babality ensue!