Last week it was revealed that the upcoming Mortal Kombat game would be making a featured appearance in Australia's Hyper magazine. Today we report on the material covered within this magazine. Though not much new is mentioned, the magazine contains several images featuring the likes of Sektor and Reptile as well as a high quality artwork of Raiden. In addition, there is a timeline of Mortal Kombat's history.

Ed Boon (on secret characters): I wouldn't want to give anything away this early in the campaign, but I'm hopeful that long-time fans of the series will be pleased with the choices we've made in regards to the character roster. We're doing our best to keep the elements of Mortal Kombat that have made it as successful as it has been at the forefront of our minds during development. Secrets are definitely a big part of that.

Ed Boon (on influences): We've been inspired by all sorts of media in making MK. Many movies like Enter the Dragon, Bloodsport, and Star Wars have inspired us. Comic books have also inspired us over the years as you saw with our last title that had the DC characters in the roster. Obviously, we need to mention Street Fighter and Karate Champ as great inspirations. Those games really put the fighting game genre on the map.

Please remember that we do not permit scans of the magazine on our forums, nor do we allow offsite links to scans or the requesting or advertising of scans. This is done with a legal purpose in mind, not to keep content from our users. We will do our best to report on these magazines as they are released and we ask for your cooperation in our scan policy. We ask if at all possible, you make a legal purchase of Issue 202 of Hyper.

The official Mortal Kombat Facebook site updated with a few renders of characters from the upcoming Mortal Kombat game posing on the front of EGM and Hyper magazines. As noted earlier, Mortal Kombat was in the most recent issue of EGM and was featured on the cover. The Australian gaming magazine Hyper will be running a story for the game in their August 2010 issue. Scorpion appears on the cover, giving fans a larger glimpse of his look first seen on the select screen during E3.

The EGM magazine, as noted previously, had an alternate cover featuring Raiden. Below is an image of that.

Thanks to forum member Vash_15 for the lead on this story!

Another interesting interview from E3 2010 has surfaced, this time featuring Hector Sanchez of Netherrealm Studios taking the questions from IG. He was able to confirm a few small details regarding the character roster and the gameplay modes. Below is a list of what is confirmed in this interview:

• Raiden will be playable
• Shang Tsung is heavily implied to be in the game
• Each character will have an unlockable alternate costume
• Konquest mode will not return
• More modes featuring the 2D kombat engine

Hector, similarly to Ed Boon when asked the question about new characters, dodges it by saying that the game will be a retelling of the first three games in the series, but not everything will go as it did the first time around. This continues speculation that there will be characters from Mortal Kombat 4 and on or possibly a new character within the game. He also says the roster is finalized and that he knows all the characters that will be in the game.

To watch the interview in full, click here.

Back in 2008, a series of audio releases from the MK team referred to as MKasts were released to hype up the then in development Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe. The events were typically between 25 to 30 minutes long and discussed various aspects of the upcoming game, including gameplay, storyline and the release schedule for information. These events were hosted by Hans Lo and Hector Sanchez and regularly featured various guests, including Ed Boon.

Today, Hector announced on his Twitter that the MKasts would be returning and that recording of the first could take place later this week. Here are his two relevant responses about the MKasts:

hecterrific: If we can get to 85,000 fans on our Facebook page, I'll raffle a couple of t-shirts off to followers on our next MKast

hecterrific: lol hopefully we record it this week. anything you want us to talk about in particular?

His Twitter account can be found here, and since he has protected his tweets you must request to follow him to view. If you would like a sample of what MKast is all about, you can find them in our news archive. This is the link to the very first MKast. You can find all nine by searching our News Archive. Once available, we will make them available and give summaries of important information as we've done in the past.

Thanks to forum members Casselman and Tyrant-Cenobite for the word on this!

Though E3 has wrapped up this year, immediately afterward a couple of new interviews appeared with series co-creator Ed Boon. Though nothing groundbreaking is revealed in these interviews, each have interesting tidbits that are of note. Beginning with Giant Bomb, Ed talked a bit about the reasoning behind returning to 2D gameplay, fatalities and made a few quirky comments about everyone's favorite love-to-hate character, Stryker. A few pieces from the interview:

GB: It seems like there is definitely a lot of hardcore fighting game fans out there and maybe some new players getting in, do you think that the new game can kind of strike that balance of old and new in terms of attracting players?

EB: I think this is the first Mortal Kombat that we are actively targeting the more hardcore people as well the casual guys. So I think 2D combat makes it more accessible. I do feel that we have put layers in though in terms of the general fighting, really enhancing the combos, giving the player as big of a palette of special moves and catering to the hardcore guys more. So I'm really looking forward to see what they're going to do with that game.

GB: Speaking of stuff from the past, it seems the roster is deliberately taken from the first three games the series.

EB: Yeah I think there's 26 boxes total, with the question mark and the DLC, which is going to be a big thing in downloadable content. Like if you were to ask someone okay what's your favorite character from MK1, 2 and 3, chances are if someone said, "Oh, Nightwolf" or someone like that it's probably going to be in the game. I don't think it's going to be a big secret when we see characters unveiled, but we have some surprises as well as DLC coming too.

GB: Cool. So if I were to say, "Boy, it sure would be cool if Stryker was in the new Mortal Kombat," you would say?

EB: Yeah, it would be cool if Stryker was in the new Mortal Kombat.

The end of this particular interview also reveals Ed was awarded with a Guinness world record for the longest running US voice actor (for the role of Scorpion) at the E3 show this year. He took over the crown from Mario's voice actor when it was determined Mario was not voiced until Super Mario 64. Congratulations to Ed for the prestigious award and may many more years of voicing Scorpion await you! You can watch the rest of the video by clicking here.

Another interview was conducted by Destructoid, in which Ed covered the subjects of his former partner John Tobias, his new relationship with WB Games and some of his first on camera thoughts of the MK: Rebirth pitch:

Destructoid: That was my next question, the fan made trailer, what did you think about that?

EB: I thought it was awesome. It turns out that there was a director who was just really into Mortal Kombat and said, "I'm going to take this approach to making it, I'm going to get this thing made, put it out there and get everybody excited. ... You know how long in comic books they have alternate universes, Batman, Superman, this is the exact same kind of category. Just another universe of Mortal Kombat, another imaging of it and I thought he did a really great job. It's a lot contemporary, it's like Se7en, Saw, like the really dark kind of stuff and it just had such personality everybody who sees it just wants to see that movie.

To watch the interview in its entirety, click here.

Thanks to forum members SubMan799 and MENTHOL for word on these interviews!