Mortal Kombat: Jax Confirmed, New Stage Revealed, and More from Gametrailers TV!

Updated on Friday, October 29, 2010 at 1:08PM by haunts

Image courtesy of SRKGametrailers TV featured Mortal Kombat, and as promised it had a lot of new information about the game as well as some exclusive reveals!  Jax has been confirmed to be in the line-up and the Subway stage returns from Mortal Kombat 3.  JrockEclipse was kind enough to share what he saw on the program, via SRK.  The first screen cap of Jax from the show has also come in. We look forward to more screens and/or video from the show to surface. For now, here are the details!

Click to read more ...

Mortal Kombat: The Countdown Has Expired and Revealed an Official Website Relaunch

Last month, a mysterious countdown appeared on the official Mortal Kombat website.  Well, the countdown has expired and has revealed a revamp of the Official Mortal Kombat website. 

The website lets you choose between six characters to get some background info.  It adds some forum and chat functions and will have updates each "Mortal Monday" from here on!  It will also have more MKasts (podcast).

Full press release is inside if you want more info!

Click to read more ...

Mortal Kombat: IGN Interviews Ed Boon. Expect your Favorite Characters from MK I - III to Return.

Ed Boon: "we're coming back with a vengeance. As aggressively as possible in all those categories that I talked about. To me personally, I'm confident that the people who play are going to walk away totally psyched to buy this game. "NetherRealm creative director and series co-creator Ed Boon was interviewed by IGN.  The interview hits pretty much the same topics that have been covered before. It talks about the Mortal Kombat legacy, finding a balance which will please both casual and hardcore fans, and so forth. The game will be playable to the public for the first time at PAX so hopefully a lot of new info and impressions come out of that event. Here's an interesting bit though:

IGN: No, no. I don't want to hear the announced [characters]. I want to hear the one's you're revealing right here.

Ed Boon: Well, I wish I had the OK to give you that information. I can tell you this though, and I've said this a number of times, this is in some ways a retelling of the Mortal Kombat I-II-III storyline. I think for the most part, if you have a favorite character from Mortal Kombat I, II and III, there's a very good chance that they're going to be in the game. 

I think that the new Mortal Kombat being a retelling of the story of not just one but all three of the first games is quite interesting. The part about which characters to expect in the game is equally exciting for Mortal Kombat fans.  Hit the link above or the source link for the full interview.

Game Informer Interview with Ed Boon about Mortal Kombat

Game Informer's website has a pretty big interview with series co-creator Ed Boon (creative director of NetherRealm) about Mortal Kombat. It has a lot of interesting questions, but it is broken up into like 6 small pages. Anyway, hit the link above or in the source for the full interview and here's a sample:

GI: How do you make everybody happy? You’ve got the instant-gratification people who want to print out the FAQ and do a fatality, and then you have the serious fighting-game players, too.

Boon: I think you need to make the average player able to do something cool and big on the screen. To throw a spear, it’s tap, tap, button. Ninety percent of the world can do that. Then a smaller percentage can do the quarter-circle fireball thing. And then a smaller percentage can interrupt the fireball and break out of it and do this. And then a smaller percentage can interrupt this, interrupt that. I think if you offer that for all of those levels, so this guy’s having fun because he’s throwing iceballs, and this guy’s having fun because he’s interrupting this move and cutting into this move and showing off in front of people, that’s where you get the big numbers in the millions of players.

Ed Boon Talks Mortal Kombat 9 and his New Team's Home at Warner Bros.

Kotaku talked with Mortal Kombat co-creator Ed Boon about Mortal Kombat 9 and how things are at NetherRealm Studios now that they are with Warner Bros.

The developer is hard at work finishing Mortal Kombat 9, which is expected in the first half of 2011. Warner is giving Ed and his crew more time on this installment than Nether Realms' previous benefactor, the failed publisher Midway. Warner told Ed and his team "We want to give you more time. We want you to focus on quality."

'I think what people are seeing are the results of that," Boon says. "We're not working under the same accelerated pace that we were during the past few games." The game will also avoid being over-bloated with features as some previous games had been. 2006's Mortal Kombat: Amageddon, for example, had more than 60 characters, multiple mini-games, a "Kreate A Fighter" mode, and more. This time the team is focusing on offering unlockables, which have been a staple of the series' first few installments.

"We're going to have a Krypt. It's going to have a really elaborate and sophisticated unlocking system," Boon says. "We'll have really deep online stuff. Not to say that we're never going to do [those over the top bonus modes] again, but this game's not going to have a puzzle game or chess game. This is really us focusing on those first three games..."

Warner also seems more focused on extending the franchise beyond fighting games.

"Warner Bros. made it pretty clear when we came on, that there's a lot more than can be done with Mortal Kombat," Boon says. "Not 'a lot more' as in, 'Let's release two games a year' and beat it into the ground. A lot more in terms of other media—movies, comic books, TV shows, stuff like that."

"I would certainly like to do something more than [just fighting games]. But it's important that the first game we work on is successful and proves to us that this was a good move by Warner Bros. to pick us up."

Mortal Kombat 9: Executive Producer Shaun Himmerick Interview at X'10

ConsoleCreatures.Com interviewed Mortal Kombat 9 Executive Producer Shaun Himmerick at the recent X'10 media event in Toronto.  It's a good overview of the game if you haven't kept up with it, but it goes into more detail on a few things. For instance, I was not aware of how detailed the internal damage system is in this game. Also, at least one of the babalities, animalities, or friendships will make a return but he didn't say which.

Mortal Kombat 9: Playstation Magazine Article, Demo for Public Play Expected at PAX

Mortal Kombat 9 has a new feature article in the latest Playstation Magazine. It's a good overview if you haven't been keeping up with the game since E3 but doesn't contain much that hasn't already been made public.

This article is the basis for a lot of jubilation around the interwebs currently as it mentions a bunch of characters that have not been confirmed previously (Cyrax, Sonya, Kano, Liu Kang, Kitana, Smoke and Jax), but that list of characters is preceeded by "it's expected the roster will be rounded up with...", which indicates that it is speculation on their part and not confirmation. None of those names would be a huge surprise to fans and would be welcomed to the roster.

In other Mortal Kombat 9 news, the game will be at PAX (Penny Arcade Expo).  According to Shoryuken, a playable demo for the public will be available for the first time at PAX on September 3, 2010.  More news about the game is expected.