Personally, i dunno WHAT I'd do if tobais became Burger King

And what was so good about Tobias? MK back then was nothing but pallet swaps and a pretty lame story. The fighting is the only thing that kept it alive.

I mean we really have any idea on how good he would of been when we compare the old games to the new ones.

I'm not flaming him or anything, but honestly, we have no idea what things would be like with him now. It could suck for all we know.

Who knows, if he was still here maybe MK would've turned into Tao Feng

Fixed your quote for you.

ugh i just threw up a little

Basically what i meant by the fighting, but thank you ;)

I am not keen on Tobias coming back.

Care to explain why?

Once again, Tao Feng.

I'm not to cool on it either.
I mean MK's characters where so bland and boring back then, what with all the pallet swaps and what not. I mean basically everyone's story was the same.

At least Vogel made them somewhat interesting and gave em' good background story's.

Ha! No worse than the last 3 MK games.

And if you want a reason for, how about MK1-4?

no way are the past 3 games better then mk1-4 style and story wise... u must be as crazy as the joker to think otherwise or just really new to mk....

Are you guys forgetting? Tobias created about 90% of MK. MK1-MK4, weren't those the games that most of us here fell in love with? Mortal Kombat was a shitload more popular when Tobias was there.

Mortal Kombat is a John Tobias creation.

If Tobias rejoined the MK team it would be like Cheech and Chong getting back together for another movie. Bigger deal than most of you are making it out to be, he's not just another game maker, he's the fucking master of Mortal Kombat, Tobias laid the ground work for Vogel and others.

He hasn't been responsible for for what MK has become recently, but so what? It's not any better than it was before he left. If he were to return to making Mk games, I'm sure he'd have some cool, fresh ideas.


-GTB

it'd be great to see what he and the newer team members could come up with. tobias was instrumental in creating what was, so it'd be interesting to see what he'd do with the newer stories, characters, etc.

Or perhaps spent the last 5 years in tenure of MKO studying both MK, and both literature. And my sentence is easy-hearted: MK1-4 mostly is inferior to MKDA-MKD.

Well yes, this does seems kind of a redundant defense against someone who cannot bother to write "you".

My main beef with Tobias are the character designs, overall tone and story. I remember clearly how dark Mk3 was supposed to be. Yeah: bright blue spandexed indian vs. Balcony stage. Tobias was eclectic, unthoughtful, and what is mostly the Sword of Damocles above his head: uninspired: admittedly:

Kano-terminator, Kang - B. Lee, Scorpion, Sub-zero, Reptile, Smoke and so on: ninsploitation movies, Raiden - Lightning from B.t.i. Little China, Sonya- I can gues Sarah Connor, but I negate that. Cage- van Damme.

Ok, this has been acceptable for MK1. But going through to Mk3, and then the abysmal content that has been thrown in our face called MK4! Really, aside those who possess the mental capacity above the average USA Junior High student 18+ MK4 had serious lackluster content. Not counting gameplay (I should if this was about how hard MK4 sucks).

No, I am not an elitist fuck.

But I can be one depending on the request of Sub-Zero the7th, M0seph or XiaoDun....

Quite frankly, even at his worst I'd take some of Tobias's Tao Feng designs over new MK ones. Lots of people harked on Stryker but then Kobra came into the picture and Stryker was suddenly almost as cool as Scorpion.

Saibot should return

Have you ever seen Bob Kane draw Batman, or his villains?

He [co]-created the character and probably dramatically outdid contemporary comics sales, but you'd be mad to miss him.
As the MK legacy machine rolls on and starts to devour new generations of contributors, I think the audience of this very young medium will start to understand that the past is valuable, but not necessarily the answer.

Tobias deserves the credit of a co-creator, but we've tangibly seen MK blossom under Vogel into something, I think, is much more in keeping with what we associate with the brand.
With, one assumes, a bit more room to move, Vogel was able to follow up on some of the ideas and techniques of layering Tobias was using, but with far greater success. I love that MKM and MK4 were able to overlap and tell a relatively cohesive story (much like MKDA), but for whatever reason, Tobias' era was never able to flesh that out to any great depth. It was simple ideas connected to other simple ideas.

Like Bob Kane [and Bill Finger] creating Batman - Tobias helped envision these iconic characters, but maybe wasn't the one to fully capitalize on their value. To that end, I still think we've got a long way to go before we see that awe inspiring, definitive version, and if the franchise can crawl that far, it might even take the benefit of another generation coming on board.

Video games have been a very cinematic art form over the past few years, but as sequential entertainment, there's a lot in common with the comics medium and industry. I think, because it's a younger medium and currently in the grips of a new even younger audience, it's hard for gamers to appreciate that.

We're definitely seeing that self-realisation come to light, though.
I think in the future we'll probably look back on the nostalgia boom we're seeing this generation with chagrin, but it's probably going to be a crucial part of the games industry coming to terms with it's creative moxxy and the sustainability of brands. History and context will start to inform gamers in the way comics fans are informed to appreciate and understand characters ilke Captain Marvel, and we'll see a stronger story telling medium [in games].


I really don't think we can dub Tobias saviour of the brand based on his previous exploits, but to be fair, I don't think the failure of Tao Feng is a fair assessment, either. Particularly with things like marketing and gameplay distracting from what is, essentially, an argument of Tobias' abilities as a writer.

dude r u serious? i don't care about how u've spent ur last 5 yrs... nor do i care that u don't like the "Us" its not that serious guy...get over it lol...im not going to argue on a dam message board...
but any-who hate him or love him u have to give respect to where its due cuz like the other guy said tobias created 90% of mk...

Which is ironic really, because conceptually, Kobra was no different than most of Tobias' creations: a homage to a martial arts movie/actor.
Liu Kang = Bruce Lee
Johnny Cage = Jeanne Claude Van Damme
Sonya Blade = Cynthia Rothrock
etc...
and Kobra = Johnny Lawrence in Karate Kid. COBRA KAI NEVER DIE!

And in his defence, even though Kobra wasn't the greatest character, he was still more fleshed out and had more personality than Liu Kang.



As for the topic, I'm not really in the mood to go into a detailed anaylsis of MK's story under Tobias vs. the story under Vogel at the moment. All I'll say is, if Tobias came back, most likely...some things would improve. Some things would get worse. Ultimately, it'd end up the same.

Tobias can't be entirely blamed for the simplicity of the stories or character design. I think a lot of people forget that the first few MKs were made primarily for arcade and when ported to consoles the best option was the 16-Bit Megadrive (Genesis) and at worst the SNES, where a large portion of content was often trimmed. No one wanted to be standing at an arcade, start throwing coins into a machine and be confronted with half an hour of cutscenes, we wanted to start beating the UNGODLY SHIT out of our friends IMMEDIATELY. There was no story mode. No krypt. No production videos. No websites with the entire backstory written out in full. Just the arcade machine. So, he didn't really have as much to work with as Vogel does now.

Mortal Kombat characters get their looks from the artists who draw them, guys like Luis Mangubat.

And their names are decided by committee. How many stories have we heard about how all the developers sat together in one room and tossed names back and forth until "Ketchup and Mustard" became "Sektor and Cyrax"?

Tobias and Vogel took what other people created and came up with backstories and plots for them. They're not responsible for the characters themselves, they're just responsible for how the characters have been USED.

And if you ask me, Vogel has USED the characters he's been given better than Tobias has.

It was Vogel who turned Kano from a mafia thug whose storyline mattered to no one into the General of Shao Kahn's army.

It was Vogel who decided Noob Saibot would turn out to be Classic Sub-Zero.

It was Vogel who made Ermac a hero, and a badass one at that.

Vogel didn't create Kobra, it's not his fault he was given so little to work with there. Vogel isn't even responsible for Hsu Hao sucking. Hsu Hao has a perfectly fine backstory. In fact, if backstory was all there was, he'd be interesting. He's like the Anti-Jax. But unfortunately, Hsu Hao sucks because his design is ugly and his moves are lame. That's not Vogel's fault.

In fact, all the bad things Vogel has ever done are OUR faults. Goro came back to life in Deception because people asked for him. If we had kept our mouths shut, we COULD have had Kintaro instead. But noooo they had to answer fan demand! And so we get a lame story about how Kahn healed him and switched the body with another soldier, and that's why the Shokans turned on Kitana.
We COULD have had a good storyline in Armageddon too, but nooooo, the fans just had to keep asking for another Trilogy! So what did we get? a short, lazy development time where Ed decided to tell Vogel "screw it, 60 bios will take forever and use too much disk space. Spend your time on something else."

In my opinion and I really do not care who takes it too seriously here or not... but I though Tobias leaving was the best thing that happened for this company. He SUCKED and I personally don't like him at all.

Making a return to Mortal Kombat is just digging its own grave. And I could care less who's going to oppose this, but I'm not going to respond back. But still, I thought I must say something about this guy. I really can't stand him. And I don't need to give a good reason here.

The last thing we need is to have another spam related, off-topic fight starting.

So that's what I'm saying, Tobias suck, and I'm glad that they're just calling Noob... well... Noob. What-a-disgrace!