Tragic news was reported today for fans of the first Mortal Kombat movie: Trevor Goddard, who played Kano, was found dead in his home in Hollywood yesterday. From the MSNBC article:

The coroner said the cause of death may be suicide, however there has been no official word on how the actor died.

Goddard, who was 38, was a native of Perth, Australia. According to the Internet Movie Database, Goddard starred in the recurring role of Lt. Cmdr. Michael "Mic" Brumby in "JAG" from 1998-2001.

Among Goddard's film credits were "Mortal Kombat," "Deep Rising" and "Gone in Sixty Seconds."

The article can be read in its entirety here.

The staff of MK5.ORG extends their deepest condolences to Goddard's family and friends.

UPDATE (June 11 2003 21:53): It appears that the cause of death has been confirmed as suicide by prescription drugs, according to an MSN Entertainment report located here. Our thanks to MK5.ORG forum member MK_Man for the update on this sad story.

In our continuing coverage of Mortal Kombat: Tournament Edition, we now bring you an updated version of the MKTE ad already being displayed in certain gaming magazines. Ad #2 is pretty much the same, but it does give us some great news: The game's release date is now August, 2003. This is excellent for Game Boy Advance owners, who have only a 2 month wait till its release. MK5.ORG would like to once again thank our sources at Midway Games for providing us with the latest ad!

It brings us great pleasure to announce the newest feature of our website. In association with Amazon.com, we are proud to introduce the opening of the MK5.ORG Online Store! Now you can purchase all of your Mortal Kombat merchandise from one central location. At the present time we offer Mortal Kombat video games, guides, and movies. Any proceeds we make are strictly for site maintenance and upkeeps so we can better serve you in the future. Don't waste anytime, start browsing all of our items located at store.mk5.org now!

We were able to obtain some of the first exclusive details of the next major Mortal Kombat release by series co-creator, Ed Boon. This will hopefully settle some confusion of news of the game in recent magazine publications. This information we received on MK6 came personally from Ed Boon himself while we were covering this year's E3 convention in Los Angeles. From our conversation:

• MK6 will use an improved version of the MK:DA engine; there will not be a complete rewrite.
• The next installment of Mortal Kombat will feature more platform-specific code. Each version of MK6 will use the same engine, but it will be tweaked to use the strengths of each specific console. The focus will be more on pushing each system to its limit, as opposed to trying to keep all 3 versions of the game as close to each other as possible.
• The backgrounds will be much more interactive than anything we've seen yet. When asked about background items that could impale you, Ed assured us, "That's only the beginning."
• Multiple fatalities are an extreme definite.
• An online component is confirmed, and will play a major role in the game.

The game, which is currently referred to as "MK6", has not yet been officially named. Chances are, however, that the final name will include a subtitle like Deadly Alliance and Tournament Edition, and not the number 6. MK5.ORG will follow the development of Mortal Kombat 6 straight to its completion, which is reported to be released sometime in 2004.

As promised to the fans by Midway, they have added some video footage for their upcoming Mortal Kombat: Tournament Edition. What they have actually added was essentially footage from the infamous Scorpion vs. Quan Chi fight that was shown at several movie theaters last year to promote MK:DA and was also available elsewhere on Midway's site. A similar video to this one was also shown at this year's E3 convention.

Here is the direct link to the trailer.

Thanks go to MK5.ORG forum user Kombat19 for the tip!