OK, I'll again quickly clarify a couple things.

YES, I know Goro's lair was a secret area in MK2, I was referring to the main backgrounds (what, you don't think I check the boards on MKOnline on a regular basis)?? And unfortunately, just so everyone knows, giving (gameplay) suggestions or ideas on Shaolin at this point is no longer necessary'due to the extreme long-lead process of finalizing a game these days, we LOCKED content on the game SIX months ago and have been polishing and implementing the ideas we already had since then. I couldn't add another fatality no matter how much Ed or I wanted to right now so we'll still take the comments but note that they won't be thought about for Shaolin.

OK, OK'I guess if Ed wanted to, we'd find a way, but he knows better.

As you already know, Midway LA (formerly, Paradox Development), is developing the gam'about 10 people from the MK team in Chicago helped to make MKSM come to life (and probably close to 50 helped in some smaller way to get the job done). For example, the Cinematic group in Chicago consists of about 15 people and they made the opening movie (that ROCKS). There are 8 total characters available in Versus mode. I haven't seen any of these games referenced. My life has been all about this game for 2 years, I lost my girlfriend and I barely know who won survivor, thank God for TiVo. The playable demo should be out soon for OPM and OXM so be sure to check it out.

OK, the Cast of Characters.

A quick answer to a question related to this topic, for many of the costumes we used MK2 throwback styles unless some other idea was liked by the team better. The woman just didn't look good as palette swaps. We tried to make it work, but really they all looked to similar and not that appealing that way. You might notice some of these attempts in the concept art in the extra content.

The beginning of the choosing of characters was easy. If the character was a main character in MK2 the character HAD to be in this game. If a character was a secret character in MK2 there is probably a reference to them, big or small. One of the "secret" characters changed how we used them in the game many times trying to make them fit. Sometimes characters didn't fit the story right or violated MK history. Some we just didn't have time to implement RIGHT so we cut their appearance to a cameo.

After the MK2 stuff we drifted to MK1 and MK3 for some inspirations and ideas, and then we also drifted to some favorites of the crew. Yes, sometimes decisions get made that way. Scorpion was always going to be in this game no matter what because he is Ed's Favorite. Reptile was going to be in it because he is one of my favorite. I'd bet there are some others that are in there because Adam (Adam Puhl, the lead designer) likes them. There is really a nice wide variety of MK characters throughout the game. Some have big parts and some small, but a lot of fun. I love how we use Sonya in the game, I think it is really a great reference to MK and should be fun for the fans.

The non-boss enemies were also fun to create. For example we wanted to bring the "eyes" that glowed in the back of the Goro's lair to life. So concept art was done and inspired just from the eyes you see in the background. Everyone has probably seen the Oni at this point now from screen shots or the footage from Goro's Lair. Other enemies were more traditional like the Tarkatan army. We basically knew the look, though their costumes went through many modifications. Then we really got into their fighting style. You'll notice their fighting attacks change over time in the game and some of the enemy attacks change with difficult setting, as well. HARD difficulty will have more than just more blocking and attacking more often'there are additional attacks. HARD is seriously HARDER.

I know you wouldn't think it but many of the characters also went through a huge numbers of revisions. One of the most revised characters was Sub-Zero. Mark Lappin was/is the Character Lead for the game and he probably did 8-9 passes on Sub-Zero alone. I know we went through literally 5-6 heads and styles of head costume on him. Even "simple" costumes like MK2 style ninjas have a huge amount of work that goes into them. Mark did a great job getting the feel for the characters, and making them feel like MK2 without them looking crappy. They look "Old School" not "old". Then sometimes costumes would have to change because of MK History correctness. Annoying, but needed.

Some other examples of seemingly easy costumes that were really hard were Raiden's costume. It was fairly plain from MK2, so we had to get detail into the materials and such to not have him look plain. Similarly with Johnny Cage we had a lot of passes on the clothe texture on his pants to look right and a LOT of passes on his skin. Of course, Kung Lao and Liu Kang had the most passes done to them.

Adding Kenshi was a good idea. I kid, Kenshi would have made no sense in the story. He is not in this game or is he? Again I kid or am I? Seriously though, we can't give away all the secrets.

I should have explained this earlier, but just like the backgrounds, a character takes like 3 months to get done on this project. Mark or other character artists would do some concept art for a few characters every month and then get notes from Steve and Tony. Then they'd modify the concept art and go to the first pass of the models, get notes form Steve and Tony, then another pass. And depending on how that went some went through many more passes. Then just like the backgrounds, even after all that we did 2 more completely separate passes, one after alpha, and one right before beta to polish them up. I feel I can literally say, blood, sweat and tears went into those characters'Tony cries a lot when he does art.

Alright this needs to be all I write tonight. We are coming down to the final stretch right now and bug fixing and trying to get a submission candidate ready for Sony & Xbox in a couple weeks. High stress times right now, if you only knew how much stress. Damned Adam just e-mailed me something he wants to change in the game, MAN he makes me angry, I told him I'd punch him in the face if it causes ONE bug. ONE new bug = ONE punch in face.

Tell Your Friends,

Shaun