It seems the saga of an HD remaster of the original Mortal Kombat arcade trilogy is an on-going one. New concept art has emerged from the latest in a string of aborted attempts at a revival, revealing interesting features from Mortal Kombat Kollection Online. Read on:

Back in March, Mortal Kombat Online took an overview of the winding Saga of Mortal Kombat HD. The ill fated project began life as a contemporary remake of the classic games, using new actors to recreate the original sprites in an HD digitized format. As revealed by an unnamed source who worked on the project: the game was shelved by Warner Brothers for internal reasons [full story].

Little has been made known or available from the aborted Mortal Kombat HD project, but thanks to make-up artist Tanea Brooks -- we've now got our most intimate look at some of the work that took place!

Our friends over at TRMK have just posted a pretty amazing bombshell: according to their sources, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment is in the process of developing a re-release of Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat II, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3! However, this collection will have more in common with Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix than Midway Arcade Treasures. Entitled Mortal Kombat HD Kollection, the game will be a high-definition remake of the first three Mortal Kombat arcade games. From the article:

Recently, Game Informer caught up with series co-creator Ed Boon and touched on a subject unknown to most. Following the release of Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks Paradox Studios was slated to do another game featuring rivals Scorpion and Sub-Zero called Mortal Kombat: Fire And Ice. The game apparently would have played somewhat similar to Shaolin Monks, but due to funding the concept was eventually abandoned.

It looks like Ian Fisher over at Shogun Gamer has conducted an exclusive interview with Vincent Proce, former Midway employee and the artistic genius behind the MK reboot art showed in an earlier update. A selection of questions from the interview:

Ian Fisher: What was the main inspiration behind the MK reboot concept art you did? Was there anything in particular like a film or comic that inspired you to take that direction or was it all natural and pure brilliance on your end?

Vincent Proce: Mortal Kombat is a part of history. The MK team is a pretty tight knit group and they have been very successful doing what they do with the MK franchise. I didn’t want to mess with that machine even if I could. Besides, there really wasn’t any opportunity to innovate within that group. So in my pitch I figured I would just take a completely new perspective on the game as a whole.

I had a burning desire to redesign the characters for a long time and finally, I just did it. I looked at it as an alternate view of the same universe, sort of like what the Marvels Ultimate Universe is within Marvels multiverse. I also wanted to reinvent the fighting game genre to possibly expand the MK fan base. I took the characters the way they originally appeared in MK 1. Their color, silhouette and weapons are essentially the same (with a few more deadly weapons added of course) and just redrew them the way I saw them in my head.

Ian Fisher: If Midway were to develop a new Mortal Kombat game, what would you focus on or change from previous installments?

Vincent Proce: I would make a spin off universe that reboots the entire franchise into a different branch. Everything would be rethought and adjusted, from how the arenas are laid out to how the fight mechanic works in relation to the controllers, to the back story of all the characters.

To read the interview in its entirety, click here.