In the olden days of Mortal Kombat, secret characters would appear in place of other characters. This was impressive & cool.

Flash forward to Deadly Alliance where all the characters' stories are totally removed from the fighting. I wish MK would incorporate more story in the fights. Now, we all hate lame Japanese taunts at the beginning of fights, but how cool would it be to have Shao Khan bust in on you fighting the Dragon King, have you two fight the Dragon King together & then have you beat a weakened Khan??? What would be cooler than that? Why does this battle (& the death of Liu Kang in DA have to relegated to the cutscene??) How cool would it have been to have this be your first two battles as Shang Tsung or Quan Chi - beat Liu (& fatalitize his ass) and then beat Shao Khan???

In the era where we're beyond digitizing characters & have game engines on par with CG storytelling, I think a quick in battle cutscene would rock. Otherwise, the Arcade mode is monotonous. It makes sense & should be the next evolution in the single player mode. Vs. can remain barebones & devoid of story. But arcade mode should have these kind of random interruptions by new & secret characters.

Hopefully, Konquest will have something like this. It looks like it will go a long way from the random monk wandering on the generic backdrop to an actual story which you control. I just hope the interface is handled well & isn't too buggy. And, it better work with my arcade stick (no other analog 3-D adventure game does)...