Today marks the celebration of Christmas, but for all of the hardcore fans of Mortal Kombat Online, today is also known as our seventh anniversary. Every year at this time we've always tried to do something special, whether it be commenting on our past achievements, premiering a new layout, or providing some sort of exclusive. This year we've decided to provide you with a quick look back at the days of yesteryear. Mortal Kombat Online has changed considerably during the past seven years, even forgoing a name change. For those that are new to the site, up until 2004 we were better known as MK5.ORG. That's how we started our claim to fame, and since then we've grown into the internet's largest worldwide community of over 28,000 registered fans. A lot of our community has changed since our early days, and most of our original staff has changed besides the co-founders. One thing that hasn't changed is our continued dedication to the fans. It's exciting to know that we've been able to provide a home for all of you for so long. With that, we invite you to take a moment to look back and see how it all stared:

• MK5.ORG - Version 1
• MK5.ORG - Version 2
• MK5.ORG - Version 3
• MK5.ORG - Version 4
• MK5.ORG - Version 5
• MK Online - Version 6

Time to tip your glasses, here's to many years to come! Happy Holidays!

GameSpot has been presenting their nominations for their Best of 2005. While it didn't get nominated for Best Action/Adventure Game (where the competition is fierce), Midway's Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks WAS nominated for Most Surprisingly Good Game under their Special Achievement awards! From the article:

At GameSpot we make every effort to approach each new game without any preconceptions about its quality. But in some cases, a game will surprise us with how good it is, which makes us realize that we weren't really expecting much from it, for one reason or another. Maybe the game seemed generic at first glance, or maybe the concept seemed too gimmicky. Oftentimes, the odds are stacked against a game from the outset. Movie-licensed games, for instance, have a long tradition of being, well, garbage. Some genres simply have a reputation for being too unwieldy for or inaccessible to the average gamer. The sleeper is the one that rises above any preconceived limitations and proves itself to be truly great, which is exactly what these five games have done.

...

Considering that every other Mortal Kombat game that didn't focus solely on one-on-one fighting absolutely tanked, and the developer's previous work included duds like Wu-Tang: Shaolin Style and Backyard Wrestling, Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks was a real long shot.

The awards will be announced on Tuesday, December 20th, at 5:00 PM PST. To see the list of nominees for this award, click here. To see the main GameSpot Best of 2005 page, click here.

Our thanks to forum/chat member DECEPTION for the heads-up on this news story!

UPDATE - Tuesday, December 20, 2005 – The winner of the award was announced earlier today, and the winner comes as no surprise to this site. Let's have a round of applause for Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks, who won the award in this category! To see the rest of the choices as well as the video explanation behind their decision, click here. Our thanks to MK Online forum member DoctorDrewX for the tip on this update!

GameSpot got their hands on Midway Arcade Treasures: Extended Play for the Sony PSP and even posted a review on their site. Unfortunately, they expressed disappointment with most of the games ported to PSP. MK fans will be interested in this paragraph from the article:

The most disappointing problems, however, are in Mortal Kombat II and Mortal Kombat 3. Both of them seem as though they're dropping frames and running too fast. And both are saddled by load times that infiltrate every part of the game. Even selecting a character takes a second longer while the game loads up the character-selection voice clip. And the music loading totally messes up the way fatalities sound. On top of that, both games sound very tinny and, in a lot of cases, distorted. You get the impression that these games were thrown on here without much care for actually making them accurate representations of the arcade originals, which is pretty lame, considering they're probably the largest draws in the entire collection.

Overall, they gave the game a 5.2 out of 10. To read the review in its entirety, click here. Thanks to MK Online forum/chat member DECEPTION for the heads up!

Today, after a long number of delays, Murdoink has opened Version 6 of the net's longest running resource for Mortal Kombat sprites and backgrounds, Mortal Kombat Warehouse! Mortal Kombat Warehouse (a member of the MK Online Network of sites) now features new themes and improved organization of sprites and backgrounds. From the introductory article on the site:

But the look isn’t the only thing that changed, the site’s sections order has been completely renewed, now you won’t find a huge endless lists of sections with the same game categories for each, instead of that, you’ll find the MK games listed as sections with everything else that belongs to that game as a category.

Inside each game section you’ll be able to Select Your Fighter, after you do that you’ll get a complete page with everything related to the fighter you chose: Biography, Sprites, Movelist, Ending, Renders and/or other pictures depending of the game, inside the Sprites section you’ll find Animations, Props and obviously the Sprites that are now categorized for you to easily find them, inside the Movelist section you’ll find the instructions to perform Special Moves, Combos and Finishers, along with the famous Fatality Theater.

One of MKW6’s biggest and new features is the inclusion of complete spritesheets, the layout was thought to contain all the sprites for each character from each MK game, categorized as I stated before. The point of this is that sometime in the near future the site will archieve the goal of having ALL the sprites for every fighter from MK1 to UMK3.

Our congratulations to Murdoink on reaching this milestone with his site, after all the trials and tribulations he went through to make it this far. Remember, accept no imitations. The original Mortal Kombat Warehouse is located at http://mkw.mortalkombatonline.com or http://www.mortalkombatwarehouse.com.

1UP has released the list of nominees for their Best of 2005 awards, and have opened up the voting so that gamers can choose their picks. Once again Mortal Kombat gets a nomination for 1UP's best of the year award, as Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks has been nominated for Best Action Game!

Voting is going on now; however, their site does not say when the voting will be closed and the winners announced. In order to place your votes for Best Action Game (and all other categories), visit their Best of 2005 site by clicking here.

Our thanks to forum/chat member Kahn91 for the heads-up on this news story. In addition, our congratulations to the folks on the MK: Shaolin Monks development team for this important nomination!