GameSpot is reporting that Spike TV has announced their nominees for the 2005 edition of their Video Game Awards show, and among the nominees is Midway's popular action/adventure game, Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks! From the article:

Spike TV's Video Game Awards show is returning this year, and it's bringing some actors, rappers, and rockers with it. The 2005 edition of the awards show will take place Friday, November 18 in Los Angeles. The show praises the best in the business, as voted on by industry vets, and is accompanied by celebrities and musicians.

...

BEST FIGHTING GAME
Fight Night Round 2 (Electronic Arts)
Soul Calibur III (Namco Hometek Inc.)
Tekken 5 (Namco Hometek Inc.)
Darkstalkers Chronicle: The Chaos Tower (Capcom)
Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks (Midway)

Strangely enough, even though Midway bills MK: Shaolin Monks as an action/adventure title, it's listed under the category for "BEST FIGHTING GAME" instead of "BEST ACTION GAME". This may, however, be just a result of MK:SM's versus mode and/or Spike TV assuming it was a standard tournament fighter based on previous MK games. We'll be keeping an eye on this story; when we learn more, we'll report it here!

To read the GameSpot article in its entirety, click here.

Our thanks to Dave Rosteck of Dave's Mortal Kombat for the heads-up on this breaking news story!

The season premiere of Drawn Togther has aired, and as reported earlier, Mortal Kombat's own Scorpion made an appearance! Each character on the show is drawn in their own unique style, and as you can tell from the screenshots below, Scorpion appears in his CG from (most similar to his MK: Deception look).



To download the video clip featuring our favorite ninja spectre, click of here. The episode next airs on Saturday, October 22 at 12:30 A.M. Eastern Time, on Comedy Central. Thanks to both FatalTragedy and Cinder for providing their help with this update!

Jazwares was kind enough to give us some new pics and information on their line of the MK: Deception and MK: shaolin Monks action figures. To start with, check out the better, improved, versions of the wave 1 figures:

As you can see from the pics, Raiden's eyes have changed to white and Sub-Zero's been given an even paler skin color to match most of his MK:D renders. In addition, we were shown how originally Raiden's eyes were planned to reflect light but ultimately didn't work out too well for mass production.

Next, check out the following MK: SM figures:


Everyone's favorite arch-nemeses, Scorpion and Sub-Zero, will come together in a boxed set that can be ordered at the same retailers as the MK:D figures (such as Hot Topic, Tower Records, etc.)

Check out the box:

And Scorpion's spear:

Finally, check out these pics featuring prototypes, never intended to be released, of an unpainted Sub-Zero and a giant Liu Kang and Kung Lao:

Enjoy the pictures, everyone! Look for the wave 2 figures in stores soon. Additionally, assuming wave 2 will be as successful as wave 1 was (and from what we were told, that's very successful), more characters for wave 3 are being planned, such as Kano and Reptile!

Midway has just issued a press release announcing that Mortal Kombat: Deception, the most recent entry in Mortal Kombat's line of tournament fighting games, has achieved Greatest Hits status on the Sony Playstation 2 and Platinum Hits status on the Microsoft X-Box! From the press release:

Chicago -- October 14, 2005 -- Midway Games Inc. (NYSE: MWY), a leading interactive entertainment industry publisher and developer, today announced that Mortal Kombat: Deception® has shipped as a Greatest Hits title for the PlayStation®2 computer entertainment system and as a Platinum Hits title for the Xbox® video game system from Microsoft. As a new addition to these prominent programs, Mortal Kombat: Deception will be re-distributed with new packaging at a suggested retail price of $19.99.

By definition, a title earning the Greatest Hits and/or Platinum Hits distinction requires that a company manufacture more than 400,000 units per respective platform during its first nine months on store shelves. In total, Mortal Kombat: Deception has shipped in excess of 1.9 million units worldwide since its release in October 2004.

To read the press release in its entirety (including box art from the Greatest/Platinum Hits versions of the game), click here.

Our congratulations to Midway and the Mortal Kombat design team in Chicago for achieving this status!

The folks over at Midway have supplied us with ten new screenshots from Midway Arcade Treasures: Deluxe Edition: From the screenshots we can clearly see see Mortal Kombat II as well as Mortal Kombat 3. As reported earlier, those will be the only Mortal Kombat games included on MAT: DE. Thanks to Midway for supplying us with the content for this update!

Here's a high quality version of the MK: Shaolin Monks menu art that's seen in both the PS2 and X-Box versions of the game. Another great post originated by Cinder over at the MKSM forums. As with his other posts, this is in extremely high quality, and it also doesn't have any of the text normally seen in game on the menu:

To read the original post, click here. Thanks to MK Online forum/chat member DECEPTION for yet another News Lead!

Mortal Kombat Online is proud to announce our newest member to our online network of sites, Portable Mortal Kombat! With Mortal Kombat Deception: Unchained on the horizon for the Sony PSP with also the possibility of Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks making a move to the system as well, this should be your first destination to find out all of the latest news, moves, and more exclusively for your portable hand held systems.Congratulations to Sea_Serpent and omnipotentguy for making the move to our network!

Midway Games comes through for the fans once again, this time releasing concept art of Shao Kahn's Armory from Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks at the site's official forums.Thanks goes out to the many users who sent in news leads!

Over on the Midway Boards, Cinder has posted a new render for everyone to enjoy from Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks. This time, the render is that of everyone's favorite Outworld emperor, Shao Kahn! Unlike the previous Goro render, this render is brand new and does not come from the GameCube version of Mortal Kombat: Deception.

To see the forum thread in which this render was originally posted, click here.

Our thanks to forum/chat member DECEPTION for the heads-up about this new render!

Mortal Kombat characters have a history of turning up in odd places. Raiden made an appearance in Unreal Championship 2 as one of the warriors. Sub-Zero made an appearance with his clan in MLB Slugfest. Now, another character is making a rare television appearance. We have confirmed that everyone's favorite hellspawned ninja, Scorpion, will be making an appearance during the season premiere of Comedy Central's pseudo-reality series, Drawn Together, as a potential house-mate! From the episode description:

The Season 1 cliffhanger continues as the cast crash lands on a supposedly deserted island. Everyone, except for Toot, makes it safely back to the house, where they immediately interview potential new roommates, including Scorpion from the video game Mortal Kombat. They settle on Strawberry Sweetcake.

The season premiere will be showing on Wednesday, October 19th at 10:30 PM EST/9:30 PM CST.

Our thanks to forum member atham3 for the heads-up on this rare TV appearance!

Another Fight Night has concluded, and it was a resounding success. Our thanks to the hundreds of people that attended the event, and a special thanks to Midway Games for hosting this phenomenal event. In addition to the transcript being available for Fight Night 2005: Shaolin Monks, we were privileged to snap a plethora of images from the event. If nothing else, these pictures confirm the presence of the Shaolin Monks development team! Thanks again to all who participated tonight, and stay tuned to Mortal Kombat Online as we field the latest happenings in the Mortal Kombat universe!

It looks like Midway Games has registered a new domain: www.mkarmageddon.com. This domain was registered on Friday, September 23, 2005.

It's quite possible that the title of the next MK game will be MK Armageddon.

Thanks to the folks at TRMK for this scoop!