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PSN Spring Fever extended: Mortal Kombat diskounts tomorrow
Sony's had such success with its PSN Spring Fever discount promotion the last few weeks that it's been extended an additional week. Joining the launch of Wheels of Destruction tomorrow are discounts across the board for all Mortal Kombat kontent.The Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection, which contains the original Mortal Kombat and sequels Mortal Kombat 2 and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, is on sale for $6.99, and $4.99 for PS Plus subscribers. In addition to that, all DLC content for Netherrealm's Mortal Kombat reboot is on sale, either as individual fighter downloads for $3.49 each ($2.44 if you're a PS Plus subscriber) or all together in one bundle for $10.49; $7.47 if you're a PS Plus subscriber.Finally, you can download Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe at a reduced cost of $13.49, but you may want to read a few reviews before pulling the trigger on that one. Just saying!
Mortal Kombat hits Vita May 1
The Vita version of Mortal Kombat, complete with 150 new Vita-centric Challenge Tower missions, touchscreen fatalities and the console version's DLC characters, will be available in North American on May 1.Seeing as Mortal Kombat is part of the official EVO 2012 tournament selection, this may be a good way to squeeze in every possible second of combo practice during your daily routine. It's also a much cleaner, less illegal way to murder people while on crowded public transportation.
New Mortal Kombat trailer shows off Vita-centric gameplay
Mortal Kombat is a fairly tried and true formula by fighting game standards, but what happens when you introduce the Vita's massive array of sensors into the mix? As this latest trailer shows, the results can get positively wacky.Fear not though, fighting purists. Most of the truly outrageous stuff, like tilting the Vita to balance Skarlett over a pit of spikes while skulls are thrown at her, is relegated to the Vita-specific Challenge Tower, which introduces 150 new trials and tribulations designed specifically for Sony's handheld.
Mortal Kombat Komplete Edition trailer looks back on Rain
Fans really wanted Rain to return in Mortal Kombat, designer Brian Lebaron says, and it was a task more difficult than developer Netherrealm Studios expected.
Mortal Kombat: Arcade Kollection for PC is a real thing, on Steam now
It's official: The Mortal Kombat: Arcade Kollection does exist on PC, despite vehement, confusing statements from series creator Ed Boon to the contrary. Mortal Kombat: Arcade Kollection is available now on Steam, currently at 15 percent off, or $8.49.The Kollection includes arcade classics Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2 and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, with all the conveniences of modern PC gaming, which unfortunately means it comes without the kabinets.
Ed Boon wants NetherRealm Studios to branch out in 2012
Right now, most of us are thinking about the next Mortal Kombat -- and no, we don't mean the Vita version. It's gotta happen, right? We're sure it will, but according to MK creator and NetherRealm Studios head honcho, Ed Boon, his team is more than just a Mortal Kombat studio."I would be surprised if Warner Bros. and us never released another Mortal Kombat game again. We don't have a title to announce, but if this last one sold over 3 million and counting, there's a certain amount of assumption that we'd consider doing another Mortal Kombat game," Boon told GameSpot. "But at the same time, we want our studio to do more than just make Mortal Kombat games. We love making them but we also want to do different types of games. Different genres, different IPs."It's hardly telling of the future for NetherRealm Studios, but Boon did mention the studio's Arkham City tie-in for iOS as an indication for his studios' plans to branch out. "The Batman iOS game was kind of like us dipping our foot into that whole different types of games to do. We're going to continue in that direction, but I would be surprised if we never did another Mortal Kombat game again." Finally, when asked whether 2012 would be a year of diversification for NetherRealm, Boon responded, "Oh yes, without a doubt."
First details on Mortal Kombat for Vita: 60FPS, touchscreen fatalities and more
Having a scorpion in your pocket isn't usually the kind of experience people rush out and pay for, but Mortal Kombat progenitor and NetherRealm Studios creative director Ed Boon doesn't seem too worried about that. In fact, the Vita port of Mortal Kombat is starting to sound pretty legit: The title will include all of the characters and modes from the PS3 version, run at 60 frames per second and support both local and online 1-on-1 multiplayer via wifi, according to an interview with PlayStation Blog. The handheld homage to hemorrhaging also includes a second, brand-new Challenge Tower that takes advantage of the Vita's touchscreen and accelerometer in 150 new challenges. While unable to speak specifically on how the Vita's tech has been implemented in these challenges, Boon teased being able to tilt your Vita in order to change gravity's orientation during a hypothetical mission. The touchscreen will also be used for activating X-Ray attacks and swiping direction inputs to initiate fatalities, but beyond that no Ultimate MvC3-esque touch controls have been implemented. "We goofed around with ideas like that," said Boon. "It was an interesting novelty at first, but literally everybody who tried it said 'Oh, that's cute,' and then went right back to the normal control scheme." Mortal Kombat for the Vita is set to tear out tiny, adorable spines sometime this spring.
Mortal Kombat goes portable on Vita in 'spring 2012'
The folks at Mortal Kombat dev studio Netherrealm have had their hands on a PlayStation Vita dev unit in some form since way back in September 2010, so it stands to reason that the upcoming port of last year's Mortal Kombat to Vita will be packed with bells and whistles. Said port will arrive sometime after the Vita's North American launch this February, with publisher Warner Bros. Interactive pinning a "spring 2012" launch window to the portable fighter. Studio head Ed Boon promises both "original game content" and "new features" will arrive in MK's Vita iteration, though the announcement PR only teases the inclusion of "several" additions to be "revealed in the coming months." But if Netherrealm follows its usual marketing plan, all of those details will be leaked much, much sooner. The Vita iteration also include the PS3's exclusive character (God of War's main angry dude, Kratos) as well as all four DLC characters (one Mr. Freddy Krueger, Kenshi, Rain, Skarlet are all pictured on the box above). So it's kinda like that "Komplete Edition," just shrunken down.
Joystiq Top 10 of 2011: Mortal Kombat
Fighting games are pretty serious business. The community that supports the arcade and tournament scene is composed of roughly the same people it was fifteen years ago, and as a result this particular corner of the gaming kingdom has a longer lasting, more detailed memory than most of its non-competitive contemporaries. This makes fighting game players hard to impress, especially when their opinion of your legacy titles is less than stellar. Mortal Kombat had a heavy coating of nostalgia working for it prior to its launch, but it also had to contend with the series' long and storied history of brokenness and balance problems: Nearly every character in Mortal Kombat Trilogy had an infinite combo, for instance, which serves as a perfect example of what competitive fighting game players remembered about the franchise. Not to say that the old Mortal Kombat games weren't fun, because they were, they just weren't "tournament ready." So, when April finally rolled around and Mortal Kombat landed in disc trays around the world, that's what everyone expected: The fun, over-the-top, painfully broken hodgepodge of violence and pseudo-Asian mythology we've all come to know and love over the last twenty-odd years. Little did we realize that what we were actually getting was not only the best fighting game of 2011, but one of the ten best games to come out all year.
Mortal Kombat creator talks about adapting Batman for iOS
I got to meet up with Mortal Kombat creator Ed Boon on the red carpet at last weekend's VGAs, and rather than talking about the popular console fighting series, we instead talked about an iOS title: Batman: Arkham City Lockdown, which Boon's Netherrealm Studios developed in conjunction with Warner Brothers and the developer behind the console Batman: Arkham City, Rocksteady Studios. Boon says the game's release snuck up on him just as much as it did iOS customers. "It's one of our first iOS games," he says, "so we were doing it, and the whole process of iOS games, they don't promote them leading up to the launch, it's just boom, and you hear about it going out. But we've been working on it for quite a while." Netherrealm has shared assets with Rocksteady before, and the iOS game makes use of models from the console game (both are rendered with Unreal Engine 3), "so yeah," says Boon, "we're really proud of it." He does admit that the game borrows some ideas from the Infinity Blade series, but there are some cool progression features (not to mention that it uses the Batman license pretty well) that make Lockdown stand out. Boon says iOS development is a little easier than full console development, but it's getting harder. "It's not quite as big of a thing, but certainly the presentation is getting on par with the current generation of consoles and whatnot. It's definitely a more condensed project schedule, but a lot of the same assets." And this isn't the last we'll see of Netherrealm Studios on Apple's mobile platforms, according to Boon. "Oh, yeah," he told me, "we have a number of things in the works. But nothing we can say just yet.
NetherRealm brings Batman Arkham City Lockdown to iOS
New Zealand's iOS App Store, which serves the dual functions of selling apps to New Zealanders and giving us advance warning of upcoming releases in the rest of the world, is home to a new Batman: Arkham City spinoff for iPhone and iPad. Batman Arkham City Lockdown is a one-on-one fighter developed by Mortal Kombat's NetherRealm Studios, in which Batman beats up the Joker, Two-Face, Solomon Grundy, Deathstroke, and other villains who appeared in the main game. You'll be able to upgrade Batman's abilities, and dress him in different skins. IGN speculates it's an Infinity Blade-style fighter, though a screenshot on the App Store promises "unique gameplay in every boss fight." With the game out now in New Zealand (for NZ $8.29, about US $6.45) we'll likely see it tonight or tomorrow in the rest of the world.
Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection (PC) exists, depending on who you ask [update]
The PC version of Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection may be the world's first quantum video game. As we all know, quantum superposition tells us that any physical system (like an electron) exists in all possible states until observed or measured by an outside force. Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection seems to follow the same set of rules -- the only problem is that the game's observable state is different depending on who's looking. According to life-long Mortal Kombat shepherd Ed Boon, a PC version of MKAK never existed. This directly contradicts the fighter's original press release, which announced the title for "PlayStation®Network, Xbox LIVE® Arcade for the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft and Windows PC." Additionally, a statement made to DSOGaming claims that the port has not been canceled, though no release date has been given. It's a lot like Schrödinger's cat. We have no idea whether the project is dead or alive. We have reached out to Warner Bros. for comment. Update: So when Ed Boon said that MKAK never existed, it turns out he actually meant that it totally exists, albeit with no announced release date.
Mortal Kombat Komplete Edition outed by BBFC
It would seem Warner Bros. is looking to re-release Mortal Kombat, perhaps bundled with all of the DLC characters released. At least, that's what we gleaned from a recent rating that popped up on the BBFC, the British Board of Film Classifications. They also rate video games. February 17 is the listed launch date for this potential re-release. But right now, outside of the date and our own speculation, there isn't much else to go on. We expect that will change soon enough.
Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection tops Sept. PSN sales charts
Those of you with fragile, tenuous grips on reality should cover your eyes for the rest of this article. Covered? Okay good, because according to Sony's PSN sales charts for September, we live in a world where 19-year-old Mortal Kombat games outsell Resident Evil, Street Fighter, Castlevania and Final Fantasy games. We know, we're suddenly very worried about 2012 as well. Head on past the break for the complete sales rundown, and if you're one of the many folks who purchased Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection during the month of September, know that they're working on it.
Mortal Kombat's latest patch solves desynchronization errors, makes balance changes
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!
Hit Box stickless fight stick makes for malicious Mortal Kombat mayhem
Run of the mill controllers work just fine for hanging out with a group of scrubs friends and frantically beating the hell out of each other, but serious, tournament-ready fighters have to either invest the coin in a well constructed stick, or build one themselves. If your fighter of choice is Mortal Kombat, however, Hit Box says you're better off with no stick at all. As we discovered last year, Hit Box manufactures custom controllers for fighting game enthusiasts which eschew traditional joysticks for more buttons. Thanks to Mortal Kombat's relatively simplistic input philosophy (all directions, no circle movements), the Hit Box is capable of some blindingly fast and accurate maneuvers. Be sure to teleport past the break for a second video showcasing the Hit Box's capabilities as a destroyer of worlds.
Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection trailer takes us back to the arcade
Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection hits PSN tomorrow and XBLA the day after, but you can revisit your youthful arcade years right this very second by watching the latest trailer showcasing NetherRealm's retro-fitted fighter(s). Infinite combos, sticky floors and unbeatable eighth-graders not shown.
Mortal Kombat sells 'close to' 3 million worldwide, has paid for itself
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.
Mortal Kombat dreams up Freddy Krueger trailer, TV spot
One, two, Freddy's coming for you. Three, four, better learn to handle gore. Five, six, add uppercuts to the mix. Seven, eight, better keep practicing fatalities late. Nine, ten, never sleep again.
Ono: Mortal Kombat vs. Street Fighter 'easier said than done'
Speaking with Street Fighter head honcho Yoshinori Ono, PlayStation Blog inquired about the highly sought after, and totally theoretical, fighting game crossover between Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter. As hopeful as fans may be, it's not likely to happen until some significant issues are solved (and until Street Fighter x Tekken is complete). "I understand why people want it, but it's easier said than done," Ono said. "Having Chun Li getting her spine ripped out, or Ryu's head bouncing off the floor ... it doesn't necessarily match." We'd like to say there's a happy middle ground that can be attained to make this crossover possible, but we've seen what compromise has done in the past. The world can ill afford another Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe, after all.
