Mortal Kombat on XBLA in November, reveals Midway

Eww. Why couldn't they have put MKII on Live? That's something I'd pay for.

Doesn't XBox live have problems with playing this games online with others? Wasn't there this problem with SF2 and Doom? What's to say this won't have the SAME problems?

Yess! "Get down here!"

Mortal Kombat is so much cooler than street fighter.

I always wonder why shoddier versions go on XBLA, too. I would have preferred a better Street Fighter II. And I would have preferred a more recent MK, or at least a very cheap MK1.

I hope it's ported well, Doom is an odd mix of ported very well and very poorly.



Meh, then again, no way will I buy this without doing some surgery on the controller. The dpad is just too poor for these games. Even in Doom, half the time I hit right or left on it to change weapons it registers a down hit and sends me into the map. SFII was just a mess.

I guess I should crack one open and sand it down...

Really looking forward to this. But what day in november?

This is absolutley hysterical. 2D fighters on xbox live are a joke! The controller is not adequate to pull of your special moves (fireball, dragon punch, hurricane kick for street fighter)

Steer clear of Street Fighter; Demo MK before you end up wasting xbox live points or 5.00 (no game is worth 10.00 on xbox live arcade)

I've always liked them both but when sf3 came out with a parry system i was sold on ken vs ryu.

im pretty sure the game will be 800 points, but i only buy 400 point games.(except for small arms, i'll pay 1200 for that)
any word that live arcarde games will come down in price? i mean geo wars and billiards has been out for a while shouldnt there be a price drop just like kameo or something?

From the previous MK article...

"Though I haven't been a fan of the series since MKII (seems like it took a dive starting with MKIII)"

This is not the first time I've heard someone say this. Indeed, for a long time, I felt the same way, but it wasn't until I saw competitive play in Ultimate Mortal Kombat III that I had a change of heart. UMK3 is my new favorite of the entire franchise.

Being a competitive Street Fighter player, I shunned the MK series along with the best of them. MK is a different level of depth than Street Fighter, and it wasn't until I saw some really skilled players go at it to prove this point. There is far more to the game than holding downback to avoid being thrown and Kabal-abuse - there is a semi-stringent juggling system and a interesting attack/counterattack game to be had. The run button in competitive matches *is* used as an offensive positioning move, and not just a gimmick.

Some video links perhaps?

http://www.gamespot.com/pages/tags/index.php?type=video&tags=umk3+mortal+kombat

Watch the last video to see my longtime gaming friend Julien Robinson get pwned by Lex's Kung Lao in the second round.

Hopefully this will get some of you pumped for UMK3 when it comes out on XBLA someyear. =P

UMK3? Well I guess I know I won't have to worry about spending money on MK online. 2? That'd be a different story.

Street Fighter series is greater than Mortal Kombat series...

... but Waku Waku 7 rules them all!

Oh, and any of you chumps who think you're so skilled on Hyper Fighting should play me. Zeruel99 is my Gamertag. Add it and get owned up.

I would pick Street Fighter any day of the week, however I enjoy MK quite a bit as well.

Anything post MKII in the 2d realm sucks. That's when they moved away from Shaw Bros. influenced characters and started adding palette-swapped robots.

It's the information superhighway man! The future is now... You can do your shopping at home or play Mortal Kombat with a friend in Vietnam!

Haha, perhaps this is a prime example that XBox has a bad game line up, when everyone gets SO excited over a couple generation old 2d fighter instead of any "next/current gen" games.

Allow me to support those who say that this should have been MK2. That was definitely the pinnacle of the MK franchise.

Awesome. The best damn game in the series.

i agree. id get it if it was mk2. screw mk3.

Dang. Sorry that older 2D fighters have more replay value than most of the craptastic stuff that comes out now. Still playing Fight Night? Perfect Dark Zero? Oblivion? Thought so...

Why is it that current gen gamers have shied away from skill building games and instead focus on flavor of the month FPS and braindead RPGs?

Still needs a joystiq, er, joystick

I must have gotten in before the boom of "OMG SFII is SOOOOO much better with itz precizion controal and gemply mechanix!!1111" crowd.

I always preferred the MK series. Personality goes a long way, and, yes, SFII's control is better. MK just has a much more compelling storyline/history, which is rare as hell in a fighting game.

to Zeruel...thats what XBox 360 is all about, flavor of the month FPS if that. I think they tacked on this XBLA just to get people playing more and cashing in more for a game they could play on the old system.

"12. It's the information superhighway man! The future is now... You can do your shopping at home or play Mortal Kombat with a friend in Vietnam!"


BRILLIANT!

@dantebk

Waku Waku 7 was awesome. I am shocked that someone else has played it lol Neo-Geo FTW!! Another cool underated fighting game was Project Justice (DreamCast).

"Haha, perhaps this is a prime example that XBox has a bad game line up, when everyone gets SO excited over a couple generation old 2d fighter instead of any "next/current gen" games."

Yeah, I've seen no excitement whatsover that absolutely dwarfs UMK3. Not GoW or Lost Planet, or Smackdown vs. Raw, or Rainbow Six Vegas, or Crackdown, or CoD3, or Halo 3 and Halo Wars, or Small Arms or Castle Crashers...your stupid trolling both here and on Kotaku extinguish any hope I have for the future intelligence of our planet.

does anyone know if this plays the same as mk trilogy on n64? that was my fav, and i hope this is pretty much just like it b/c i never actually played this version. thx

Grant - The 360 does have a joystick: The Hori DOA4 arcade stick. It has a six button face similar to that other fighting game series and a Japanese styled (read: ball top) joystick. Pretty good transition stick for US fighting game players as the throw of the stick is similar to US arcade sticks, but without the typical bat styled top.

Good luck finding one now though. From what I understand Hori doesn't make them anymore and I haven't seen them in a game store in ages (since SF2 came out for 360 pretty much). Have fun on eBay.

Waku Waku 7 was nice, but I'd much prefer a Last Blade or Mark of the Wolves on XBLA. Passing on UMK3, waiting for FFS.

I'd get excited for this, but then I remember the sting of betrayal I felt after paying $10 for a less than perfect SFIIHF with severe control issues.

Show me Killer Instinct, and then I'll be happy.

Mortal Kombat 3 IS MY FAVORITE Mortal Kombat it has a vartiaty of charaters all with their own unqiueness,the game is indeed competitve and very fun.
Though I wish MK trilogy was there instead of 3 just because trilgoy had like every character (basically mk armageddden 2-d version. but yea its a great addition to do quikly devleping xbla
P.S MK OWNS STREET FIGHTER, STREET FIGHTER IS SO SIMPLE N U CANT EVEN RUN,NO COMBOS,MK HAS ALOT MORE DEPTH.....

@Turo

Yes it's pretty much the same as Trilogy minus some characters (i.e. Raiden, one of my favorites). I'm not sure if Brutality is in this one. I was mostly a MKII player but this is a good game too because it had some flashy combos.

I can't relate to all the people bitching about SFIIHF. The game is excellent. If you don't want connection issues play the traditional online mode. I'm sure none of you have the arcade machine in your basements so don't tell me it's not a good port.

What am I saying, I forgot that Joystiq is bitch central my bad.

Wasn't MKIII just MKII with more characters?

Already have it on my Super Nintendo (which works perfectly fine), so I'll be a little hesitant to buy it. They better not charge $10 again like they did for SF2 (which I didn't buy) and Doom (which I did).

Now, if it were or MKII, then I'd download that in a heartbeat.

MK3 gets my vote over SFII on the 360.
I've got Street Fighter II Turbo on the
3DO and it looks & sounds twice as
good as my 360 demo that I downloaded.
It take ages to load on the antique console
though.
Why didn't they port this version? /shrugs

Killer Instinct didn't have the insane complexity of MKIII. It was almost simplistic in its approach. But getting off 50+ (can't remember how high you could get it) hit combos with Glacius at the end of a round sure was a hell of a lot of fun! :D

UMK3 is a broken system, as far as I know. I've seen combo videos that show infinites for most characters (Reptile being the most egregious), and I saw some form of these infinites being executed in some of those matches linked above, so I know it's not a "training only" combo.

This is why Street Fighter (in particular, a game like 3rd Strike) is more superior. SF is much more technically demanding, and even skilled Japanese players mess up some harder combos fairly often.

Either way, they should have ported MK2, like many are saying. I think that would have gotten many more buys, although UMK3 will do okay too. Hopefully they fix some of the game-breaking bugs that caused certain UMK3 cabinets to be near unplayable!

And KI was a pretty solid system for back in the day. I haven't seen competitive matches of it, but with the combo breaker system, I'd imagine it's fairly reasonable? Much more so than getting caught in an uppercut and losing all your life like UMK3. :P

Anyway, I can't imagine this will play well on the 360 controller, and arcade sticks are expensive, rare, and mostly worthless. Plus, the whole lag issues that plagued SF2. Hopefully UMK3 still plays well, though.

I liked the MK series, and I was very impressed back in the day when it came out for PS1. However the version that came out later bundled with the Midway Classics was a gaping hole of suck. This version may be worth it if they can get it arcade perfect. I will wait and see. At this stage in the game there should be no excuses for dropped frames, music playing/ not playing right. The irony is that as I recalled, minus some load issues the older ps version was perfect. Well enough of my old man rant. I just hope they don't f%^& this one up like the previous re-release.

MORTAL KOMBAAAAT!

MK holds the crown for best 2D fighter. Sorry SF fans.

Oh, and to the person above who asked why there aren't skill-building games anymore, it's because they don't sell. You have games becoming mainstream (and companies like EA) to thank for that. It's a horrible state of affairs, really. Brilliant games like 3rd strike (and other fighters) are destined for a few poorly-run arcades and the niche-est of the niche crowd. Meanwhile, rehashes of Madden with huge bugs and 1 new feature sell 2 million copies in one week. Look at what happened to a good game like Psychonauts (haven't played it because I can't find it).

It sucks. Most people don't care. They don't want to have to invest time to get good at something; if they do, people throw it away because they have short attention spans.

*sigh*

Bah. Why don't they bring any of the SNK fighting games to live? My favorite has *always* been The Last Blade 2. It didn't require memorization of a hundred billion combos, just some nice parrying and a few awesome specials.

@ Grant & Zeruel:
We make sticks for the 360. http://www.gopodular.com

I'm just glad to see more titles coming out. Street Fighter is still my favorite just because I played it first when I was growing up... Although Karate Champ wins all.

"Wasn't MKIII just MKII with more characters?"

No. UMK3 was MK3 with more characters. MK3 added a run feature than MKII didn't have, as well as a new combo system. Honestly, I would've prefered MKII, although I'm still surprised that - of all the MK3-based MK games - they chose UMK3. Why not choose Mortal Kombat Trilogy? Just allow players to choose whether or not the bosses are available for online play. (Kintaro is especially cheap.)

You guys are all on drugs. Eternal Champions (Sega CD version) is the hands down best 2D fighter ever. It had environment death-traps, fatalities and FMV death sequences. It used the 6 button controller, an SF style fighting system and MK style fatalities.

Eternal Champions Sega CD FTW!

Friggin eternal champions. Reading that makes my blood boil. The last guy in that game makes the blue clear chick from DOA on the 360, seem like a fourth grader with scoliosis. I broke several controllers trying to beat that guy.