Shacknews has posted an informative hands-on preview article from the Microsoft event X10 concerning various aspects of the latest installment of Mortal Kombat. Below are a few interesting excerpts from the article.

Mortal Kombat is making the rounds today as coverage of Gamescom in Cologne, Germany has gotten under way! German fansite MKUniverse is covering the event and are reporting that the two characters alluded to by Ed Boon are the Princess of Edenia, Kitana and the yellow cyborg Cyrax. The two arenas mentioned by Ed are both from Mortal Kombat 3: The Bell Tower and Jade's Desert.

We are happy to announce that the upcoming game Mortal Kombat will be showcased at both the Cologne Games Con and PAX 2010 in Seattle. Several responses on Twitter by WB representatives confirm as much. Also confirmed is that several new characters will be announced at these events, so stay tuned in the coming days as we get our first taste of big news since this year's E3.

It looks like James Kozanecki over at GameSpot Australia had the chance to interview Hector Sanchez from the MK design team at NetheЯRealm Studios! Here’s a little bit of what he had to say:

Hector Sanchez: “We’re opening up the frame windows a little bit more to link combos together... We’re not doing the dial-a-combo thing that Mortal Kombat’s had before. The combos are actually customized for each one of the characters and as you play more, you’ll be able to discover different combos that work together. It’s not just ‘Okay, hit these six buttons in a row’ and then some canned animation plays. Everything actually flows together, the animations open up on certain frame counts. We’re really trying to get that more in-depth – pay attention to what’s going on, get your timing together, and stuff. There’s a lot of cool surprises. I’m sure soon enough, just like with any other game, the fans are going to discover things that even we didn’t think of. We’re giving the fans the tools, and we’ll see what kind of painting they can come up with the tools.”

To watch the video in its entirety, click here and fast forward to about the 4:40 mark. A big thanks to fellow MK fansite Inside Mortal Kombat for the word on this update!

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.

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.

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:

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:

E3 came to a close on June 17th, but as the media left the floor and the fans tuned away from their streams, Mortal Kombat was the game on everyone's mind. After winning Gamespot's Fan Choice award during Day 2, the game was chosen to close out the site's coverage of the event. Ed Boon narrated over the gameplay featured as designers Paulo Garcia and John Edwards took control of several of the game's revealed characters to showcase gameplay mechanics, special moves and fatalities. We've compiled some screenshots from the over 10 minute video:

As the second of three days at E3 rolled on, new information about the upcoming Mortal Kombat game surfaced in the form of new interviews and video. Firstly, G4 conducted an interview with Ed Boon in which he talked at great length about the gameplay, specifically the combo system, of the game, which he confirmed would be about in Spring 2011 for the Playstation 3 and XBox 360. A small transcript from the interview: