Our friends over at TRMK sent word over to us of a recent interview that they conducted with Eclipse, the development team responsible for the upcoming December 12th, 2005 release of Midway Arcade Treasures: Extended Play for the Sony Playstation Portable System. The interview is now published over on their site and provides an in-depth look on Eclipse's opinions of the returning popularity of retro-arcade classics, the strengths of the Sony PSP system itself, and a nice look on how the first three Mortal Kombat titles receive special attention in this handheld port due out in time for the holidays. From their interview:

TRMK: Arguably, there is no franchise that is more important to Midway than the Mortal Kombat franchise. Have you been able to focus some extra time with the initial trilogy of Mortal Kombat games?

Joe Bonar: Oh yes, these games were certainly the most challenging ones to get working properly on the PSP. That happens when the arcade machine is in some ways more powerful than the hardware we're working on.

Kelly Tainton: While the entire team that worked on this title took a lot of time and care to have the games come out correctly, we had one guy in particular that really grabbed the three MKs by the horn and got them nice and polished. Everything from getting the shadows to display properly, to having the ground scroll at the same speed was done by one guy on the team (with a little help of course). Those three games wouldn't look like they do on the psp without his care and attention.

To read the interview over at TRMK in full, click here.