It all started here with our exclusive render of an angry Baraka, that gave fans their first glimpse ever of Mortal Kombat: Deception. Since then you've downloaded the screenshots, read about the new characters, saw the interactive environments, and set your eyes on the return of Stage Fatalities. Advancing on the backbone of 2002's hit Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance, Midway Games is determined this next installment of the best selling beat 'em up franchise will continue to drive back the darker days of the series that fans enjoyed in Mortal Kombat II. Ed Boon and team see no better way to achieve this goal, than to make Mortal Kombat: Deception the first Midway online enabled fighting game for home consoles! When this game is released this Fall, fans will be able to fight once again against complete strangers, show off their moves, and disgust their opponent with a blood drenching finishing move.

At Mortal Kombat Online, we're having a hard time waiting until Fall to get our hands on this title. That's why we are proud to announce our return to Los Angeles, California for our third consecutive LIVE coverage of the Electronic Entertainment Expo! On May 12-14, stick it here as Scott Howell, CCShadow, D'Arque Bishop, and ]{0MBAT provide their first impressions of Mortal Kombat: Deception as well as the Mortal Kombat titles in Midway Arcade Treasures II! With a day to day breakdown of the games, exclusive screenshots and videos, and in-depth reports, Mortal Kombat Online plans to do everything in its power to outshine its first coverage of E3 in 2002 that rose this site to the top.

This year, Mortal Kombat Online wants to involve its readers in our E3 coverage. That's why we are giving you the opportunity of a life time! From today until Friday, May 7th at 11:59 PM Eastern time we will be accepting submissions for our exclusive Fan Interview with co-creator of the MK series himself, Ed Boon! All submissions are allowed one question per username; any duplicate submissions either by same account and/or clone accounts will not be accepted. We are looking for very well written and thought provoking questions only. From all of the submissions we will be picking the ten best entries which will be taken to Los Angeles to be used in our formal interview with Ed Boon. The ten winning entries will also be entered in a raffle for a free Mortal Kombat Online Shirt! To submit your question please fill out our submission form located here. Any submissions not sent through this form will not be selected for the interview.

As always, our coverage will be updated in conjunction with our E3 Coverage Section. There you can view all of our past trips to E3 and the media that came from those events. Don't miss out, our coverage begins the morning of Wednesday, May 12th!

We're packing our bags, getting on a jet plane.. and we're not sure if we'll even want to come back again! Get ready as Mortal Kombat Online takes the sky to Los Angeles, California to kick off its LIVE coverage of the Electronic Entertainment Expo on Wednesday, May 12^th! With Mortal Kombat: Deception and Midway Arcade Treasures 2 center state at the Midway Booth, we envision this being our most exciting coverage ever done from the E3 show floor. Last night the deadline came for our fan interview with series co-creator Ed Boon, and well over a hundred die hard questions were submitted. We've picked the top ten, and they will be released as well during the week of E3; you won't want to miss out! With that, here's a little something to hold you over...

As you might of noticed in a press release sent out yesterday by Midway Games, they mentioned a special invite-only party that would reveal all of the official details on the current project in works by Ed Boon and team. You'll also notice that during our announcement of our E3 coverage this year, that we have made no mention of this party, and that our coverage would start on Wednesday during the first day of the E3 Expo. Well.. is it ok to say we lied? If there's anything we like to do at Mortal Kombat Online it's keeping secrets. But it's now time to take the the cat out of the bag. We were invited to the official party itself on May 11, and later today we are bringing you more then just exclusive details!

Last night we got our first hands on impressions of  Mortal Kombat: Deception, and we were more than impressed! During the party we had several conversations with various members of the Mortal Kombat Team including Ed Boon, Steve Beran, Mike Taran, and Tony Goskie among others.  We've returned home from the party late, so we need to get some rest for the big day, but expect all the information on the party and more when our E3 Coverage kicks off later today!

Last night, we at Mortal Kombat Online had the privilege of attending a party held by Midway Games in honor of their new game, Mortal Kombat: Deception! During the party, a special presentation was made by Reilly Brennan and Ed Boon, giving a brief history of Mortal Kombat, and more importantly, a brief rundown of MK: Deception. During the presentation, Ed gave a detailed rundown of the game modes, including Arcade, Konquest Adventure, Chess Kombat, and Puzzle Kombat.

However, rather than go into detail, we'd rather just have Reilly and Ed speak for themselves. Our intrepid reporter ]{0MBAT managed to videotape the entire presentation. The presentation can be downloaded here. We do warn you that the download is over 240 MB and lasts over twenty minutes. A smaller version is available here thanks to Konqrr.

More information and media will be coming today. Stay tuned to MK Online for the latest in E3 information!

This is D'Arque Bishop, reporting to you from the show floor of the Electronic Entertainment Exposition. As promised, we're here to cover Midway's new fighter, Mortal Kombat: Deception. After spending last night and this morning playing the E3 build of MK Deception, we feel that it's time to present our impressions of the game so far.

The E3 build has twelve characters playable: Scorpion, Baraka, Mileena, Sub-Zero, Hotaru, Sindel, Kenshi, Bo'Rai Cho, Ashrah, Li Mei, Nightwolf, Ermac. The characters have the same level as detail in MK: Deadly Alliance, and we've noticed some details in the characters that have not been seen in renders so far. For example, characters returning from MK Deadly Alliance tend to have the same fighting styles in MKD. However, we have been told that this is not set in stone; their styles may change. Also, small little graphical details can be seen, such as the fact that Mileena's veil is translucent; you can see her teeth underneath the veil. Li Mei's costume is also much improved, in that while her costume is the same color has her MKDA one, it is much more reminiscent of the armor of a soldier in the Dragon King's army. The three ninjas, while LOOKING like ninjas, are VASTLY different in appearance. For example, Ermac's mask is actually black bandages wrapped around his head, while Sub-Zero's is more like a samurai helmet. Also, some characters have returning moves, such as Sub-Zero's ice clone and Scorpion's teleport punch. (In the case of the teleport punch, Scorpion disappears in a whiff of black smoke, and appears on the other side of the current view in a blast of flame.) Ashrah possesses what appears to be souped-up versions of Raiden's torpedo and Kung Lao's spin. Finally, Baraka's weapon style is referred to simply as Blades, and not Baraka Blades.

The core fighting engine and how characters move is little changed from MK Deadly Alliance. We have been told that more characters now have throws, and also we have observed that combos are easier to pull off. The biggest change in how the game plays is in the interaction of the characters with the environments. One thing we noticed is that a death trap is considered to be the gameplay equivalent of a ring-out. It does not end the entire match; the game continues to the next round with the characters returning to their starting point in the arena. One thing we noticed in the arena that is constantly falling to pieces is that both characters can fall to their deaths on the spikes below at the same time. We have yet to figure out, however, what method they use to determine the round winner. That part may not be finalized. To pick up a background weapon, you choose your weapon style when within range of the weapon, One thing I did notice is that once you grab a background weapon, you cannot change back into another fighting style. Also, if you get knocked into a death trap and the map resets, you keep your background weapon and a new one is put in place.

Not much can be said about Chess Kombat that has not already been said. However, one item that may not have been noticed is that the fighting arenas in Chess are NOT from Deception; the two used are actually 3-D versions of MK1's The Courtyard (complete with aged Shang Tsung on his throne) and MK2's The Dead Pool. As far as Puzzle Kombat goes, one item that makes it much different from games like Puzzle Fighter is that there are multiple rounds in Puzzle Kombat. Also, fatalities are done automatically in Puzzle Kombat.

We have also acquired several official images from MK Deception, including the proposed box art for the game. In addition, we have gameplay movies recorded, and will get those to you ASAP. Finally, for those interested in our Fan Interview, the Interview was performed at the party last night, and we hope to have it online as well.

This is D'Arque Bishop signing off from the E3 show floor. We will be back later tonight with more information.

We are now making available even more new screenshots from the Electronic Entertainment Expo as well from the official Mortal Kombat Party at the Standard Downtown LA, on Tuesday Night. Feast your eyes and enjoy... and who is that short guy standing with myself, CCShadow, and ]{0MBAT?

Check out the entire gallery in our E3 2004 Coverage Section!

A couple of weeks ago, we made the call for the second Mortal Kombat Online Fan Interview. We had a lot of questions submitted, but in the end, we picked what we thought were the best ten. On Tuesday night, at the pre-E3 MK party thrown by Midway, Scott Howell and Justin Deering sat down with MK team leader and co-creator Ed Boon to have him answer the questions YOU submitted. However, as a surprise for you the fans, we are providing the interview not as a expressionless text file, but as a full movie file! This file is encoded in Quicktime format, and comes in at around 30 MB.

To download the Fan Interview, click here.

Our thanks to the many users who submitted their questions and participated in this Fan Interview!

Note: We're aware of the poor quality of the video and the darkness of it; we're working on a tight schedule trying to get everything up in at least some form for all of you as fast as we can. We should be able to get a better version up tonight. It was just the conversion from the camera that made it dark. Later tonight we'll try to get a better version up ;-)

Greetings from Los Angeles, CA on behalf of the entire Mortal Kombat Online staff! We have just wrapped up Day Two of our LIVE E3 Coverage, and it has definitely been an exciting (though exhausting) day at the Midway booth. We have had ample time with Mortal Kombat: Deception and the MK Development Team, and have learned a great deal regarding the next installment of this phenomenal series.

To headline, we are excited to announce that Mortal Kombat: Deception has been nominated as the Best Fighting Game of E3 2004! While the winner has yet to be announced, we are confident that MK: Deception will (literally) beat out the competition. Good luck to the Team MK! Next, we were finally able to access the online portion of MK: Deception, specifically the Kombat mode and the Puzzle MK modes. Scott Howell and D'Arque Bishop were able to kick it back arcade style by facing off in Kombat over XBox Live via the Midway booth's Local Area Network. This was able to provide us with a teaser of how the online functionality of the game will act, and we must say we are impressed. Though it was only over a LAN, we were unable to notice any amount of lag or decrease in game quality for the online experience. This was very promising, particularly as Steve Beran re-confirmed that MK: Deception Online will only be compatible with broadband connections. This is a breath of fresh air for those who feared choppy dial-up opponents.

Also of particular note, we were able to observe the PS2 and XBox versions of MK: Deception side-by-side. While the game looks beautiful on both formats, there are note-worthy graphical improvements on the XBox (including HDTV support, bump-mapping, and smoother textures). The PS2 version still looks fantastic, and both versions are sure to go through some major polishing. Steve Beran noted that the remaining months on the development cycle will go directly towards tweaking and tuning the game for each system, and fans are sure to be pleased with the finished products regardless of which console they play on.

In more exciting news, Midway granted MK Online direct access to the press booth so that we were able to capture exclusive direct-feed footage of MK: Deception! Be sure to check-out the downloads section to see ]{0MBAT and Mobster4Christ face off in battle and showcase many of the game's exciting new elements. The first three videos are in MPEG format, while the Press Kit footage is in Windows Media format.

• Hotaru Vs. Ashrah
• Nightwolf Vs. Bo'Rai Cho
• Sindel Vs. Mileena
• Press Kit Raw Footage 1
• Press Kit Raw Footage 2

As you check out our screenshots and videos, be sure to look out for the many Classic Mortal Kombat throw-backs. MK Chess features a montage of revamped MK1, MK2, and MK3 background elements. This includes The Deadpool (featuring Shang Tsung observing the match from above in his MK2 attire), The Courtyard, The Portal, and a Hall of Fame (with the Destiny Towers of MK1-MK4 looming in the background). Also, Dan Forden has obviously had his hand in remixing classic Mortal Kombat background tracks, as newer versions of these tunes appear in MK: Deception. These added touches truly make the game feel like a tribute to the fans of Mortal Kombat, retouching on the history we all know and love. You may notice that one of the screenshots was taken from Psi-Ops - one of its special features is the early MKD trailer included on the game!  And by the way... who is that old looking gentleman sitting next to ]{0MBAT?

Click here for the entire gallery of media - Well over 50 screenshots in total for this update. Reporting Live Los Angeles, see you tomorrow as we wrap up our final day of coverage!

UPDATE: We are providing a better quality (but unfortunately larger file size) version of the Fan Interview! This version is much brighter and has a much improved audio track derived from the WAV file created by Konqrr! To see the new Fan Interview video, click here. Our sincerest thanks to Konqrr for the better quality audio track used in this version of the video!

Last night the E3 Expo came to an end. Mortal Kombat Online would like to thank its users that have appreciated all of the hard work that has gone into this year's coverage. The last day at E3 was spent getting final impressions of Mortal Kombat: Deception, as well as having our final discussions with various Midway contacts and team members. Most of us are already on the way home, or will be leaving later this morning- so don't expect our next update until sometime towards the end of this weekend. Once we get back and get things situated, we will post more information learned on the gameplay, and eventually get the rest of our videos up that we haven't had time to post. We've been very tired from long nights of reporting, so once we're fully rested, expect more updates. Even though the Exposition might be over, our coverage will continue soon!

Update: Well to hold you over.. we just remembered in two different brochures given to us at the Midway booth, that it confirms Raiden is in the character roster of MK: Deception. Also, we read earlier today that Gamespot has confirmed that Jax is also in the line-up.

Mortal Kombat: Deception's Konquest Mode can be summed up in one word: Wow. Where to begin? Well, the star of the show is a pupil of Bo Rai Cho's named Shujinko. His name will probably be customizable in future versions, but for now he's known only as Shujinko as this was just the E3 beta of the game. Anyway, as you control Shujinko you meet your friend, Apep, who pals around with you and shows you what missions there are for you to accomplish. When he leads you to the dojo, you train with Bo Rai Cho to learn new moves.

You may have heard that Konquest Mode is a game all on its own, and this is absolutely true. You start out in a dojo with Shujinko as a young boy, and all the other kids in the village are acting out a play. The characters that the children are pretending to be are famous MK warriors, such as Kung Lao, Goro, and Shang Tsung, acting out famous events in the Mortal Kombat universe.

The main missions as well as the side missions there are to do are simply incredible. There is a sick boy who you help by finding medicine for him, or a guard that is hungry and you go to the butcher to get some food for him. By helping people, you can get various rewards such as Kurrency (koins), or being granted access to areas that were blocked off before. Many things such as secret fighting styles will be unlocked through Konquest Mode, so it is important to help as many people as possible.

It's been said multiple times that every MK character will be in this game. The Midway guys confirmed this again at the pre-E3 MK party and E3 itself. Even in this beta version, we are shown characters from Lin Kuei clan members to a messenger for the Elder Gods.

It is this messenger of the Gods that grants Shujinko the ability to develop the fighting styles of all the warriors he encounters. Herein lies in the customization: with all the fighting styles in the game available at your finger tips (through Shujinko), it is up to you to decide which ones you want to use. And you will have every fighting style in the game to choose from; as Shujinko's adventures lead him through the 6 different worlds that Bo Rai Cho sends him to: Earthrealm, Outworld, Netherealm, Orderrealm, Chaos Realm,and Edenia.

One of Ed Boon's answers in MK Online's 10-Question Fan Interview revealed that you can play as Shujinko in Konquest mode until he is an old man, at that point he will be playable in regular Kombat mode as well as online.

In short, Deception's Konquest mode is everything a die-hard Mortal Kombat fan could ever ask for! Check out these videos:

• Konquest Mode's Beginning
• Konquest Mode's End

Mortal Kombat: Deception's Chess Kombat might seem uninteresting at first, but once you've played it it's hard to put down. For starters, this game is not exactly like chess. If you've never played chess, don't let the name fool you because you will be able to pick this up relatively easy. It's more like that game Archon, but you don't have to have played that before in order to start Chess Kombat either.

When you first start, you can elect to play against the computer, a second player, or someone online. Next, you will be asked to assemble a team of 5 characters. That's five different characters, you can not pick the same characters over and over. You may, however, use the same characters that your opponent is using. This is good, because it forces you to master many different fighters and not just stick to one.

The Leader is your most important fighter; if your leader dies, you lose. This is kind of like the King in chess. Your Champion is the most powerful fighter; it can move farther than your other pieces can. Your Sorcerer (you have 2 of these) is interesting, as you have access to 8 different spells such as imprison, resurrect, etc. If you lose one of your Sorcerer's, then you only have access to 4 spells, so try to be careful. Then we have the Shifter. When you fight as the Shifter, you turn into the person you're fighting against. Last, but not least, we have the Grunt. Your grunt is like chess's pawn, you will have the most of this piece and will do most of your fighting as the Grunt. Make sure you really know how to use the fighter you select here.

Once you begin, you will notice 2 pieces on the board highlighted in green. These recharge the health of all your fighters if you manage to get your piece on that square. You also have one piece reserved as your trap, you can set it anywhere on the board you like. You want to be aware of where your opponent set their trap, so you know to avoid that square.

Now when you begin your first move as the Grunt, you can move one space diagonally or 2 spaces vertically (you can move horizontally if that space is available to you). Different pieces will be able to move farther, or shorter, depending on the piece. When 2 pieces land on the same square, that's when the good ol' MK fighting begins. Whoever lands on the square second is considered the attacker and starts with a 10 point bonus (slightly more health). The battles go pretty quickly, faster than a normal MK battle since your health starts out very limited. When you win, you are given the opportunity to finish your opponent with a Fatality - it really wouldn't be Chess Kombat without it!

The best part about Chess Kombat? The classic, retro, MK backgrounds redone in 3-D! We've already seen the pics of The Courtyard (which can be seen in the video below), The Dead Pool, The MK3 Champions, and The Portal. And the game's not even finished! Who knows what old-school stages will end up returning? These are definitely a treat for the long-term Mortal Kombat fans. The monks and Shang Tsung's guards are enough to make any MK fan start salivating. In the E3 version of the game, you had one stage as the background for the entire game. It remains to be seen if this will be true for the final version.

So, check out this exclusive, direct-feed video of Chess Kombat.

Also, as a special treat to the Mortal Kombat fans as to what E3 was like, there was a huge set of 16 TV screens right outside Midway's booth. Here is a special video of one of the MK: Deception trailers being displayed across all these TV sets at once. Enjoy!

The Puzzle Kombat Mode in Mortal Kombat: Deception is quite simple, yet quite addictive. Many people have described it as feeling like Tetris, Columns, Puyo Puyo, or Dr. Mario. The truth is, this game is a lot more like Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo.

The game is not like Tetris in that you need lines, or other puzzle games in that you want 3 or 4 of a similar kind in a row. You can gather up many many different blocks of a similar color (say red), and then when you get a red dragon koin color, that will wipe out every red block connected to it. Dragon koins are fairly rare, giving the game an interesting challenge while not making it impossibly hard. As you obtain the dragon koins and knock out your blocks, you can do combos along the way, and this will charge up your super meter.

Once in a while, you can get an item such as a bomb - This knocks out every single block of the color your set your bomb down on, whether it's connected to the other squares or not. Using your bomb in a combo charges up your Super Meter faster. Of course, every time you get rid of a bunch of your own blocks, you're also sending a bunch of extra blocks to your opponent's screen. One of the other things we noticed (thanks to some very good playing skills, and a little luck) is that when you clear your screen all the way down to the bottom, you get a little notice saying "EXCELLENT!" and it bumps up your Super Meter as well.

While you're playing Puzzle Kombat, you have caricatures of the normal MKD fighters representing how well you're doing - and as you do your combos they will do a special move. Each special move that your fighter does affects the blocks in a different way, so which character you picked comes heavily into play. For instance, if you do a combo while playing as Scorpion, it will jumble your opponents blocks around. Not all of these specials are aggresive, as Mileena has a drill for her special that will destroy two columns of her own blocks. Still another special in the game will group your own blocks by color.

Your fighters are also pushing each other to the corner of the screen, so when one person's blocks are all the way up to the top, that person has also been pushed all the way to their corner into a deathtrap - FATALITY! Each background in Puzzle Kombat has its own unique Stage and therefore Stage Fatality, as well.

Like regular Kombat, it is best 2 out of 3, so you still have a shot at it regardless of what happens in the first round. The best strategy that seems to work for us while at E3 was to stack up all the blocks of the same color in a row (as best we could) in order to knock a bunch of them out at once when the dragon koin arrives. Doing this in a way that sets up combos would be ideal (for instance, destroying a pile of red blocks, which in turn destroys a pile of blue ones). Remember, doing a combo is what activates your special move, giving you the real upper hand in the game!

Like Chess Kombat reviewed yesterday, Puzzle Kombat will be one of the modes that can go online. In fact, in the video, you can see Mortal Kombat Online's own DArqueBishop and Scott-Howell battle it out over a LAN! Click here to download the Puzzle Kombat video.

While at the Electronic Entertainment Expo this year, we tried to get the most important media assets out to you first while in Los Angeles. Now rested, we are releasing some assets that we didn't have time to get up while on our trip. First, we have some exclusive assets from Midway Arcade Treasures 2. While at the MK Party and at the Midway Booth, we had some time in between our matches of MK: Deception to play some old school Kombat. Unfortunately, only the original Mortal Kombat was playable in this demo build. However, we had a great time reminiscing the older days of blood-shed yore. Not much in room of assets was released for this game, but here is the official trailer that was showcased at E3. We also have raw footage of the game straight from Midway's press kit.

• Midway Arcade Treasures 2 Trailer
• Midway Arcade Treasures 2 Raw Play-Through

Moving on to Mortal Kombat: Deception, we are now releasing two exclusive trailers of the game, as well as an interview with series co-creator Ed Boon that was passed out to various media outlets, including ourselves. We would have brought this to you sooner, but we had our own interview to post during the week of E3. As for the two trailers, one of them is an updated version that was shown on a display of sixteen TVs that were outside of Midway's Booth. Last, check out our exclusive face-off between ]{0MBAT and Scott-Howell, that you won't find anywhere else!

• Press-released Ed Boon Interview
• E3 official Mortal Kombat: Deception Trailer
• ESRB official Mortal Kombat: Deception Trailer
• Exclusive Mortal Kombat Match!

A lot of these videos have already been seen, save the last one, but we at least now have them in one central location. Tonight concludes our E3 2004 coverage as we release our final hands-on review of Mortal Kombat: Deception!

We are excited to present you our final hands on impressions of the E3 Build of Mortal Kombat: Deception! After four days straight of playing this game, it's safe to say we didn't come home disappointed. Mortal Kombat: Deception is here once again to revolutionize the fighting game genre. From our four-page review:

Initially, playing Mortal Kombat: Deception is incredibly similar to playing Deadly Alliance. The familiar elements of three-styles per character, style branch combos, and a slew of special moves remain in tact. Digging deeper, however, it is obvious that the team has spent considerable time under the hood. Increased game speed, level-based weapons, and death traps were all present for us to make use of.

The overall game speed upgrade is not nearly as drastic as Street Fighter 2 to Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo, but it is evident that the characters move with an increased amount of adrenaline. This factor makes the game play a notch more difficult, as it is now trickier to run through a variety of the combos. To instinctively pull of a style branch combo will result in a bit of a shock, as the game registers the hits much quicker. I particularly enjoyed this, as it made me work my brain a little harder to actually pull of seemingly insignificant three-hitters. On the defensive side, combo breakers and reversals were not yet present. However, the block function seems to have changed in order to pave way for more in depth fighting. In Deadly Alliance, after your opponent executes a special move that fails to connect, they are incredibly vulnerable to your incoming attack. In Deception, this is particularly true because though character movement is much fast, the “hang-time� is still the same length. This allows the offensive player to quickly come in for a kill, and definitely makes the defender think twice about executing a projectile that is not likely to connect.

You can read the entire review written by our new Mortal Kombat Online staffer, Mobster4Christ, by clicking here. With that, we would like to thank everyone who helped us with this year's coverage of the Electronic Entertainment Expo! Special thanks goes out to Mobster4Christ, RivetSPOOn (also her mom!), and everyone at Midway Games for all the help and support that they've given us during our coverage. This has been one of our greatest experiences on the site thus far, and we look forward to future trips to E3! This concludes our coverage, if you've missed out on any of the coverage check out our E3 2004 coverage section. Thanks for making Mortal Kombat Online the top source for all of your MK related needs!