They just wanted to make the most of 3 different sprite sheets.

Yup! Notice how in UMK3 for snes and genesis, they had to remove Sheeva's graphics to save space, but they had no problem adding Rain and Noob Saibot. That's because adding a ninja required no new graphics.

Plus, if you've already filmed someone, you don't even need to get an actor in the studio to make a new character. Look at robo smoke... as far as I know he doesn't have a single unique animation. Sektor's victory pose, sektor's teleport punch, Cyrax's air throw for his normal throw animation, the "chest opening" used for Cyrax's bombs and Sektor's missile and the compactor fatality (robo smoked used it for his spear, friendship, and both fatalities), Sektor's winning pose AGAIN for the invisibility, and autocombos are just recycled punches and kicks ending in Cyrax's backhand animation.

So basically adding a ninja (or any pallette-swapped character) was less work and it saved space. So they made plenty of them. Actually I'm kinda surprised they didn't go crazy and add like five more robots to MK Trilogy. They used some retraint on them after original MK3. But they were more than happy to pimp their pretty new ninja sprite, lol.

It was originally to save space by making extra mileage out of the ninja sprites (thus began Scorpion). Then Boon decided to sneak in a secret character one weekend that no one else on the MK team would even know about (Thus began Reptile).

They added in a few more, and then with people like Ermac it was about turning rumors into reality (since the Ermac glitch had been a rumor since MK1) and by the time they came up with Rain, they were basically joking about it.

Life is full of ninjas. You just don't notice them because they are good. They just reflected this in a game.

Essentially they and their respective colors are just a representation of a more complete character, and an example of their willingness, and need to cut corners.

Matt

Not to mention ninjas are just cool cuz they flip out ALL THE TIME.

They're mammals, don't ya know...

Ninjas are fun. I really don't mind the number of them, especially now that they are getting more diversified in their looks and moves.

As unoriginal as the classic ninjas were, they sure well hella' fun to play as. I used to own with Noob Saibot in UMK3 and Trilogy and I just got back into playing Trilogy and fighting as Ermac is really fun to do also.

I stopped paying attention after MK2. The foow up ninjas in trilogy were horrible: Human Smoke, Noob Saibot, Ermac and Rain -please...

And then came Deception. Ermac has been changed to a more Closer Asian look and he is definitely not a ninjas anymore despite his mask. Noob-Smoke, uhh, at least both Smokes are cyborgs. And Noobs background story is very i9nteresting. I think it helped the underdeveloped wraith a lot.

But please don't bring back a human Smoke double and Rain. And please, no more ninjas, we have an overflow of them already.

because ninjas are the best

they might be so many to save space and MK was nothing but a fast project that took over the world and they probley didn't think it was going to make it this far but i think MK is the father of all fighting games

well put BustaUppa. couldnt have said it better

SaDo