Damn after reading all of this I know MK 8 won't be a cross over game simply cause it's alwayz been M rated & the fans know ed said it's gritter & darker...that doesn't sound like a t-rated game also ed said he was going to wipe the slate clean of the mk franchise those are simple facts & we only have 2 days left so then chill out it's coming with a vengance!!!.....

I don't think Ed Boon's dumb enough to get rid of his money maker.

He'd have to be on some serious drugs to do something like that. If it is true, though, then we should all start saying our goodbyes to Mortal Kombat.

Without the blood, gore, and fatalities, Mortal Kombat wouldn't have made history. I mean, isn't MK the first M-rated video game?

Theres no way in hell this is going to be anything else other than an M or 18.

Crossover ? Rated Teen?
Hahahahahaha!
That was a good one..

Didn't April Fools already happen?

Very Dark and gritty =/= Rated Teen

End of story.

That reminds me. I remember at E3 06, When the dude from gamespot joked with Ed during the live stage demo, & said, "Gamespot: So this game is rated T for Teen right? Boon: lol, well, that's our goal." I know it was a joke, maybe thats where this dude from the podcast prolly got his insensitive.


In the words of the man himself. "Reality's boring. Nobody pays for Reality." Who knows boon may shock us all. Though I'm with all of you. I hope it stays FIGHTING based like the past MK games.

wait... Midway can't decide their rating, can they? I thought it was ESRB...

Now I'm wondering what happened to the UT3/GOW shooting crossover rumors.

Well, the rating ESRB places upon a video game is usually the rating the game producers were shooting for.

just because blood and guts got mk attention, doesnt mean it has to rely on all the shit. the same people whining over blood are the same people that bitch and want 999999 fatalities over a decent fighting engine.

i personally could give two shits about blood or finishers.

a teen rated game wouldnt be bad at all.

wouldnt suprise me if it was a teen rated game...they would increase profit from it. by lowering the ratings, theyll sell more copies.

dont forget the early ratings system. the first 2 mk games are rated teen...13+


but seriously, i doubt it will be rated t. they know the fansboys will cry about it...as seen in the past 3 pages. "rated t!!! what!!!!! ill never play mk again!!!"..without even seeing the game. welcome to mko.

Best post evuh!

Yeah I don't think that it would be a crime against humanity if MK8 was rated T. That said, as everyone else has pointed out, the ESRB rates games that are basically finished products, and MK8 is at least 4-6 months away from completion (and even that's just an educated guess). So I think that people can really stop freaking out about what rating MK8 will get for the time being.

As for the blood and gore, it has been a series hallmark since the beginning. Hardcore fighting game fans might see the MK series as leaning on the gore a bit much to distract people from the fighting engine, and part of me agrees with that sentiment. But honestly? MK:DA, MK:D and MK:A were all going to have the fighting systems they have regardless of how many stage fatalities and regular finishers each game had.

Everyone seems to think that if the MK team does one thing, it has to be at the expense of another. People seem to have in mind some trade off system, as if the MK team decides to bring back the krypt, it'll be at the expense of adding 5 full characters or something like that. Or more to the point: If the MK team is concentrating on a new fatality system, it'll be at the expense of the fighting engine.

I've heard this logic so many times on this board and I've even bought into it from time to time. But in my opinion, it's not the fact that MK8 is a glass and five people can only fill it with so much water. It's more like...MK8 is a lasagna pan, and the lasagna only turns out as well as the ingredients that 100 different cooks use. If the 30 cooks go out and buy rotton tomatoes, it's going to make the whole thing worse, but the other 70 cooks who bought the noodles, the garlic, the ricotta etc shouldn't be blamed because they didn't have enough time to get better tomatoes, it wasn't their job to get the tomatoes.

Okay, late night hunger aside, I just mean that the MK team isn't the five man crew that created the first game. I'd assume that there are probably over 100 people working on MK8. I'm also assuming that there are parts of that team dedicated to certain aspects of the game. The music people are probably not designing characters for example.

Sure, the heads of departments and producers most likely collaborate to make sure that everyone's on the same page, but if the fighting engine is lame, it's not because the art designers failed or the people designing the fatalities failed.

It's because the people designing that aspect of the game came up with and executed a faulty plan or it just didn't come together as well as they'd hoped due to time constraints, but I don't think that's because those people were bogged down by 15 other things that they were working on for the game. That part of the team was responsible for the tomatoes and they bought rotton ones.

Sorry for taking such a long time to say that, but people seem to think that spending more time/resources on an aspect of a game will simply make it better. If the plan is faulty from the beginning, no amount of time will cure that facet.

Also, taking the people that are working on different parts of the game (ie the krypt, the facial damage, the fatalities, online etc etc etc) and bringing them in to "focus" on what's more important doesn't make for a better product either. It would be like saying that game X is better off because the motion capture guys are now working on the PR team, since PR is a problem for game X. Those are totally different parts of the process.

Okay, that might be a bit of a stretch, but you get what I'm saying. If the team in charge of the fighting system fails, it's their fault. No amount of realistic time or realotting of resources would fix that problem.

All that said, MK is predicated on violence. It's what separated itself from Street Fighter in an era where most 2D fighting games played in a similar manner. Now, fighting games are much more complex these days, and while Virtua Fighter and Tekken can look very similar on the surface (much like say, Street Fighter and Samurai Shodown might've looked to the none fighting game fan back in the day), they play completely different and you notice it in the first minute of play.

So while MK might not need the blood and gore as much as it did in the past, it's still as symbol of the series. I'd personally like to see MK jump to the forefront of the violence debate gain and really push the envelope. Rockstar games' GTA and Manhunt have had the spotlight for far too long, and MK's violence seems almost cartoony by comparison.

Should the violence be more important than the fighting engine though? Again, I think that's the wrong question to ask. The better question would be: Can the groups that are making these aspects of the game do a great job that comes together well enough? Will one relatively smaller part of the bigger team fail and bring down other parts of the team? Will the people making the fighting engine fail, bringing down the team responsible for incorporating the the blood, facial damage etc or vise versa? Time will tell.

I would guess though that with so much riding on a completely renewed and revamped relaunching of the franchise, the MK team wouldn't waste this opportunity to create a next gen splash in a dying market by doing some wimpy crossover. They'll want to create a simple to learn yet complex fighting system to introduce newbies while bringing back the hardcore "MK" aspects for long time fans. That's how they will sell to the mass market (that and a good marketing/PR campaign).

They're not going to sell more copies simply by slapping a "T" on the game instead of an "M." There'a alot more to it than that. Everything from game quality, word of mouth, game reviews, commercials, name recognition etc sell games. By that logic, GTA would sell more if it was toned down and rated T instead of M. But doing so would take away from part of what makes the game sell so well in the first place.

No, MK can still sell just fine with an M rating. It can keep the blood, violence and gory fatalities. If it's a good game and it gets good reviews, has a good marketing campaign and good word of mouth, it'll outsell previous enteries in the series regardless of whether it's rated T or M. So what would the point of toning the game down be, exactly? A better game with a better marketing plan gets to a wider audience regardless of how gory the fatalities are, so why not try to keep the hardcore fan base happy by keeping the soul of the game intact? They're already changing everything else after all...

Scorpio, why don't you go play soul calibur or something since you have no idea about mk.

wtf are you talking about?
because i dont care for blood, i have no idea about mk?
thats the most jewtastic comment ive ever heard.


go back under your rock.

You can be so egotistical sometimes, dude. It's no wonder bad karma follows you.

Allow me to inform you on this issue.

Every fighting game has at least one key feature that makes it a good game. Here's a list:

Soul Calibur has its great set of weapons.

Killer Instinct has its long-lasting combos.

Street Fighter has its light-shinning special attacks.

Super Smash Bros. has its list of nastolgic characters and arenas.

Dead Or Alive has its highly sexy set of women.

Tekken has its complex fighting engine.

Mortal Kombat has its strong usage of BLOOD and GORE.

Without these key features, none of these games would have made it this far (even though Killer Instinct is no longer in the market, it's still a famous game among gamers). Mortal Kombat's blood and gore is the foundation the game's creativity. The different types of fatalities, the extra-cool hara kiris, the stage fatalities, the weapon usage, and the list goes on. The blood and gore is what makes Mortal Kombat unique. Therefore, it should stay.

i don't have bad karma.


i don't believe in karma.






i never said mk shouldn't have blood or fatalities. i was merely saying this isn't 1992 anymore. they don't need to rely on buckets of blood puring out from one punch. catering to that one thing instead of focusing on more important things is exactly thy mk has dug its self into a hole. and they are still fighting to get out.

blood wasn't what made me a mk fan. it was the way they did their moves, the graphics (at that particular time), the gameplay was fun, and the characters bios and stories were very interesting and made you wanna keep playing.

my love for mk doesn't come from its still beating heart, but its very soul.

*sniff* aww....that was beautiful