I guess Boon just wanted to build suspense so it would be all dramatic when Scorpion appeared in UMK3. They were planning UMK3 all the way from the beginning pretty much... so I guess they figured they would start by wowing the crowds with MK3, and then bank on the "OMG SCROPIOJN!!!" factor to totally put UMK3 over the top. But instead, the arcades all died. Oh well.

Scorpion was the first character I ever picked in UMK3 as a matter of fact, and I wasn't even a Scorpion fanboy. He lead me to victory, and then I gave him up for Human Smoke.

Yea UMK3 did kinda blow! but MKT was pretty much the best!

Lol I think till MK3, Boon actually payed attention to the story and put in characters relevant to it. Thats why Scorpion was missing, he wasnt really important for the story.

The original guy playing Scorpion and the other ninjas, plus Johnny Cage was fired between MK2 and MK3. Daniel Pesina went and did advertising for a rival game, while in his Cage costume. He had balls, gotta respect him for that. The game itself seemed to sink without trace. I guess they didn't have another actor ready to do Scorpion/Reptile etc for MK3, and instead just had a very un ninjalike Sub Zero.

A couple of other MK2 actors (Liu, Kitana, maybe Shang) took Midway to court over royalties. Don't know the result, but it was most likely settled out of court. As a result, they couldn't use their images, and we do not get "classic" versions of these characters in MKT, like you had Kung Lao, etc.

They were at one point going to make Cyrax as a cyborg Scorpion. This was quickly scrapped, but may be why the spear move still made it, now with Smoke.

I always had a hope in mind that they wanted to try something new. Practically every fighting game series keeps the same characters coming back over and over and over again. Its nice to think somebody wanted to try something even a little different by cutting out so many headliners from the previous games.

But in actuallity I would guess they needed to create a timeline for development that would get a machine out early. So they examined the characters they wanted to create and realized that they could make a game like MK3 and quickly follow up to it with UMK3 since UMK3 had a bunch of new levels (which I imagine aren't terribly hard to make) and 2 characters, a male ninja and a female ninja. I know they had different move sets, but they only had to put together the move animations and properties and setup the hit boxes for 2 characters basically.

I like to think that with MK 3, Boon and Tobias were going for something new like you said Dreemer. I was thrilled that MK 3 didn't have Scorpion. It just made it a totally different game and I liked it. I still love UMK3 though ;)

There is actually a code you can use that can let you use Human Smoke without having to unlock him. This is the code: Select robot Smoke at the character selection screen. Before Shao Kahn says "Fight!" for the match, hold X,A,Z, and C at the same time on your controller. Fire will appear in front of Smoke, and Human Smoke will appear in his victory stance. (Note, this only works on the genesis version of UMK3. You'll also need a 6-button controller for this code) If you can't figure it out, private message me. Hope it helps.

There is no unlocking human smoke. That's just how you select him. In the arcade version of UMK3 you select robo smoke and hold hp+hk+bl+rn+away.

And why are you even saying that? Nobody here was having any trouble play as human smoke.

Woa, this thread strayed off topic lol.

I didn't know. Sorry