This was seen in Play Magazine in Australia
enjoy....

Were you surprised at the success of Deadly Alliance?

Yes, I mean, I was guessing we'd do okay but it really took off. Now we're at something like 2.6 million [units sold] and we were really taken aback. I'ts been five years almost since Mortal Kombat 4 came out and that was on a previous generation, on the PSone, the Dreamcast and all of those. So the Playstation2 came out and it was out a few years with no MK game and people were kind of used to the last generation. So when people saw much better presentationand the introduction of the fighting style changes. This is all added something new and i think that contributed to it.

Did you get a lot of feedback from the fans?

Oh yeah, and everything we heard back was applied to this game (EDIT- exept for kicking out Bo Rai Cho, dammit). In the last game we had one fatality and people wanted two or three so right off the bat we knew we wanted to do that. And then we added the whole hari-kari moves, it'll be interesting to see how the reaction to that is. But basically everything was jotted down that was requested for the next game. A lot of people were asking for the old characters and this has become a big focus in the game. Of course we did receive requests for things that we couldn't possibly put in the game.

One addition are the game modes, are these just fillers?

Even the guys on the team were 'are you sure you wanna do all that kind of stuff?' and you know we got some more people on the team to handle the different modes and now when we see it coming together we're really exited about it. I had to push that whole thing, I really believe that it will be something people appreciate. I'm very confident about all this stuff.

Do you think gamers are used to the violence that made MK famous?

What with Grand Theft Auto and some horror games, I don't think MK stands out with any shock value anymore. When that first game came out it was really singled out with controversy and all that. The whole rating system wasn't in place when the first MK game came out and when part 2 came out there was an M rating on it. I think MK has been around for so long now it's not as shocking.

Why the arena traps?

I wanted to make the game with as many choices as possible. You can literaly have one pixel left where in the previous MK games you're pretty much dead, you can't even block, but in this game at least you'll have a chance to win. I think having this'it's not over till its over' approach will make it different from other games.

Won't this luck element annoy the hardcore fans?

We definitely have an adjustment on the game to turn that stuff off so if somebody wants to play just arena combat they can. But I think if we were to stay the same people would think 'okay, been there done that', there's nothing new to try out. That's the dangerous path to take.

Favourite MK character and fatality?

I definitely play Scorpion the most and my favourite fatality in the whole game is probably Sub Zero's spine rip (EDIT- mine too) from the first game. That was inspired by Predator. In the new game Baraka (EDIT- in the mag, they spelt 'Baraca' the fools) has this one where he slices you at the waist, then cuts off your arms and stabs you in the middle pulling your entire torso away which is pretty good.

It must be fun picking new fatalities?

They're really hard to come up with because you've done like a hundred of them before. We have 30 to 40 guys on the team and any time anyone has an idea for a fatality they write it down and give it to the animators. To come up with 48 unique fatalities sounds easy but there are limitations to the technology. You can't just cut someones head off and take their brains out, it takes a lot of work to do that. Anybody can think of one but to think of one that can be done and is cool is the difficult thing.

Is there a limit to what you would do in a fatality?

I think for me the limit is doing something that somebody might actually think of doing. I don't we'd ever do something that someone in real life would do, so instead we keep everything outrageous as possible. You know you grab their arms, rip them off and keep everything so extreme. So basically anything that is leaning towards reality we kind of steer away from, we're more about the supernatural and the unbelievable.

Finally....... Why the 'K's

I don't even know where that started, I think it was with one of the guys on our team when we were going to name the game. We were going to call it Dragon Attack, Kumitee (EDIT- wtf?) and, you know, all these Van Damme type movie names. Someone suggested Mortal Kombat, then someone said let's spell it with a 'K' and then all the words started to begin with K. It got a little out of control.

I hope you like what you've read, it also says in the mag that it is goin to come out in September... Wierd

Please refrain from typing thread subjects in all caps. ~Crow~