Wackiest Elseworlds Ever

Part 8 of a Mortal Kombat Retrospective

Armageddon was treated as the last game in that era of Mortal Kombat, and after its release Ed Boon promised fans that the next game would be much grittier, darker, and serious. There was a lot of talk of a reboot, which was becoming a popular strategy for many other franchises, and independent concept art of re-imagined characters began surfacing. Really, though, everyone was guessing wildly and didn't know what to expect. Eventually, the announcement came that the next fighting game in the series would be Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe, and everyone turned to Ed Boon and asked in unison: "dark and gritty?"

Now, best of times, I'm personally not a fan of crossovers. Theoretically, the two franchises are suited to the possibility as they are both universes that purport the existence of multiple realms or realities, but it nevertheless seemed like a perplexing marketing ploy, and a ten-years-late answer to Marvel vs Capcom that it failed to live up to in virtually every capacity. The fighting engine did away with the style-based fighting of the last three titles and returned to a 2D fighting plane, standardizing most of the basic moves and supplementing them with special moves unique to each character - essentially an elaboration on the original three games. New elements were added in the form of in-round mini-games: free-fall kombat, where fighters were knocked out of the ring and battled as they fell into a new arena; close quarters kombat, which was essentially an involved grapple; and kombat rage, which would allow fighters to ignore interruption from damage.

Making a crossover meant that half the cast had to be used on DC characters, and so only the more mainline kombatants made appearances. The MK cast was composed of Raiden, Sub-Zero, Scorpion, Liu Kang, Sonya, Kano, Shang Tsung, Jax, Kitana, Baraka, and Shao Kahn as the boss character. Appearing from the DC universe were Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Lex Luthor, the Joker, Green Lantern (Hal Jordan), Captain Marvel, Catwoman, the Flash (Barry Allen), Deathstroke, and for their boss, Darkseid. Then, there's a fusion of both Darkseid and Kahn, creatively named Dark Kahn. The story took place after Mortal Kombat 3, giving it something of an anomalous status in Mortal Kombat continuity, but as a release, it was and is still considered Mortal Kombat 8. The story presented in the game's Konquest mode was as good as it could be, but was perhaps over-concerned with creating a reality this game could take place in and evening out the relative power base of all characters so that the prospect of Superman or Wonder Woman losing fistfights with humans wouldn't seem quite so ridiculous. The arcade endings, meanwhile, were almost universally stupid or inane.

Despite critical success, the game didn't sell too well, with most players opting to rent as opposed to buy it, and with little in the way of unlockable content and thus not much replay value, I'm not losing sleep wondering why. The game was a disappointment to fans on several fronts, but most notably, one of the concessions made to WB for the use of the DC license was to tone down the violence considerably so that it could get a Teen rating from the ESRB. DC heroes didn't have Fatalities but rather "Heroic Brutalities" which didn't actually kill the opponent, and what Fatalities were left for the MK characters and DC villains were the tamest to ever appear, going so far as to occasionally avert the screen to avoid kill shots. The game didn't end up garnering enough interest to merit any downloadable content (although this was blamed on the impending bankruptcy), and Midway allegedly scrapped plans to release a bundle adding Quan Chi (which made sense as he was heavily involved in the plot) and Harley Quinn, and a second adding Kung Lao and Doomsday.

As a fan of the DCU it was fun to play as a bunch of characters from the comics, but if anything this suggests that Warner Bros. should just invest in a DC fighting game, as their cast suffered from the same small size and thus notable omissions. I did think it particularly unusual that Deathstoke, of all people, was included, when characters like Nightwing, Two-Face, Sinestro, Circe, Hawkgirl, or Martian Manhunter were left out. Decisions like that wouldn't be a problem if the universe was treated to a full cast. No talk of a sequel.

In 2010, only a few months before the announcement of the latest game, a short film of a reimagined Mortal Kombat universe appeared on the Internet. Directed by Kevin Tancharoen and starring Michael Jai White and Jeri Ryan, the trailer showed a Mortal Kombat considerably more grounded in reality; Baraka was a failed cosmetic surgeon who made himself into a bladed monster; Reptile was a freak of nature; Shang Tsung was a crime boss. Proposed as a treatment for a reboot of the film series, it was later announced that it would be developed as a web series, Mortal Kombat Legacy, tied into the release of the new game. Taking a radically different approach to a franchise with a large fanbase is always risky, but at the very least, Tancharoen demonstrates he's a fan of the series who knows his stuff, and the series looks like it'll be the first adaptation that at least tries to be as gory and violent as the game.

What prompted this lengthy retrospective was of course the upcoming release of the ninth installment of the series, simply titled Mortal Kombat. Like the latest Star Trek movie, Mortal Kombat aims to have its cake and eat it to, being a sequel, prequel, and series reboot at the same time. Raiden, on the verge of defeat, sends a message back in time to himself, and the game is supposedly a second treatment of the storyline for the first three games.

Based on the demo and all the promotional material I've seen, the design team is doing everything right. The fighting engine is a mixture of the best elements from both the major eras of the franchise, the player animations are entirely unique (a series first) and it's gruesomely violent; probably the bloodiest game in the series. It looks fantastic, and there's a presence of detail in virtually all aspects of the game's style that I think will make it enduring, and hopefully make it relevant in a genre dominated by good but unfortunately tame titles. At the very very least, Mortal Kombat promises to be a total fucking gorefest. Slaughter on.