Breaking News: New Mortal Kombat Will Prioritize Online Play

Share on Facebook posted 08-11-09 by Angelo D'Argenio

Fans everywhere have been on the edge of their blood spattered seats in anticipation of seeing what Warner Bros. is going to do with their swanky new Midway properties. Turns out that they are doing what Midway should have done a long time ago. Many people say that games simply cannot survive without an online component these days, and Mortal Kombat, a classic fighting franchise and perhaps Midway’s best known property is a little late to the game as it still hasn’t had any game that featured online capabilities. Well not anymore! According to 1up.com, WB Games Chicago is looking to make the next Mortal Kombat the “industry standard” for online interaction. Fighting games themselves have always suffered from latency problems in the online arena, but with the success of fighting games that feature prominent online modes such as Street Fighter 4 and BlazBlue we are getting closer and closer to making online gameplay instantly reactive. WB Games Chicago believes they can take it to the next level and with good reason too. Though often understated in the annals of gaming history, Mortal Kombat has been breaking ground since day one.

Mortal Kombat 2 – The Censorship Scandal

When Mortal Kombat 2 came out, parents everywhere flipped shit! One of the many loved “fatalities” of the game involved fan favorite Sub-Zero ripping his opponent’s head off, and holding it while the spine dangled from its neck. When little Johnny brought this home to his mother, she immediately called up the local news and people everywhere were in a huff. This game caused the game rating system to be created! More importantly though, once we got past all this rating malarkey, this game taught us to get a life and stop caring about violence in our media. Now games are ten times as gruesome with plenty of blood and guts to go around, and its all because Mortal Kombat 2 started it all.

Mortal Kombat Trilogy – The First Full Lineup

Before Mortal Kombat Trilogy fighting games had a particular formula they always abided by. Every new roster would ditch the least popular characters and add new ones. This was because large rosters were simply too much for early gaming technology to handle. However, once the Playstation arrived on the scene, Midway seized the opportunity to make a Mortal Kombat including every character they had designed so far. It wasn’t long after that we saw games like Street Fighter Alpha 3 which also sported a “every character ever made” roster.

Mortal Kombat 4 – Fast 3-D Fighting

When the first 3-D fighting game was created, the characters moved pretty slow, and there was a noticeable delay between button input and character response. No one particularly cared, however, because 3-D polygonal fighters of the time all attempted to feel similar to “real” martial arts. So while a punch in say the original Street Fighter may have been a quick 2 frames of animation that ended in less than a second, punches in the Tekkens and Virtua Fighters of the time took time to start up, execute, and cool down, much like any one of us throwing a punch in real life. Mortal Kombat 4, though a horrible game in other regards, was not content with this model of fighting. Instead of trying to model 3-D characters after real human movement, it modeled 3-D characters after their 2-D predecessors. The result was a game that felt exactly like the 2-D fighters of the past, only in three dimensions. This caused the game to be criticized heavily back when it first came out. Most reviewers thought it was stuck in the past, and was using an antiquated fighting system no one really cared to toy with. Now, however, several games use 3-D graphics on a 2-D plane using 2-D speeds. Just look at Tatsunoko Versus Capcom, or Street Fighter 4. In fact, one of the only game franchises that isn’t profiting off these new 2-D/3-D hybrid games is Mortal Kombat, who decided to go full 3-D some time ago. If only we knew then what we know now.