ouch.

I can say pretty confidently that if Midway sells MK it won't be Capcom that buys it. It's been brought up over at Capcom-Unity and company reps have said that it's more likely that it'll be bought by a company that doesn't already have flagship fighting franchise.

This is certainly bad news regardless of what happens, though. Just the fact that selling MK was merely mentioned in an official company statement shows just how dire things are. The ship is more than halfway under water at this point and the lifeboats are all gone. It seems like they're at the point of ripping off doors to use as makeshift rafts now. Anything to avoid total liquidation. But DAB makes a good point that it's possible the higher ups have already resigned themselves to liquidation and are looking to squeeze out as much money as possible before the axe falls.

mk has been in a rut since mk2.

you know why mk hasnt been able to evolve and get better over the years? because it was all a big accident.

midway has never been a great gaming company. the mk game was meant to be something quick to just throw out there and they didnt think nothing of it. and it blew up into something huge.

with every mk game after that, they was just basically doing the same thing just adding twice as much shit as the last. cant really blame them for mk being bad all these years when they didnt have a friggin clue what they was doing with it in the first place.

Scorpio wrote: mk has been un a rut since mk2.

you know why mk hasnt been able to evolve and get better over the years? because it was all a big accident.

midway has never been a great gaming company. the mk game was meant to be something quick to just throw out there and they didnt think nothing of it. and it blew up into something huge.

with every mk game after that, they was just basically doing the same thing just adding twice as much shit as the last. cant really blame them for mk being bad all these years when they didnt have a friggin clue what they was doing with it in the first place.


The only MK games that spiraled downwards into the ground was MK SF,MKA,MK Sub Zero eh MK SZ was okay...other than that they are all klassicks

To be fair, most great game series have the exact same humble origins.

Street Fighter was just a cash in on the Karate Champ craze. Street Fighter II just went a step further and made all the competitors playable and it just happened to catch fire despite the game being plagued with imbalances and bugs galore that would be corrected in later revisions.

Final Fantasy was a last ditch effort by Square to avoid going out of business. That's why it bears the title. Had it not worked out it would have been Square's final game.

Zelda was pretty much an experiment.

That being said, I do agree that MK, and Midway in general, has been an exercise in wasted potential. I look at MK vs. DC and I feel like as good as it is, it's too little too late. We should have gotten this engine six years ago with MK:DA. And we haven't seen good sequels to Crusin' USA or Gauntlet and haven't gotten a sequel to Psi-Ops at all.

I never thought being their since the first mk that this would ever happen.

I just hope nothing but good things come out of this and ED Boon is at least involved some way.

I just hope whoever picks up MK does nothing but help is or make it a competitor like it once was in the past.

Best of luck to MK.

Welp, so much for those magnificent steps. I mean really? Parachutes?

I don't even know what company would be good for MK at this point. My best guess would probably just consist of maybe a younger company with more money, and better understanding of current technology so that they simply augment the MKTeam.

Fighting genre is so anorexic right now that the best I'd see happening, is the new company keeping the MK team on, for the knowledge they do have of successfully producing a fighting game. Other than that, it's pretty much aesthetic stuff that they really need help with. I mean, they obviously need help in a all areas but, I don't think labels like Capcom, Namco, or say EA know what to do with it.

Way I see it, if MK goes over to one of these other well known fighting game publishers, all they'd do is screw it up. I like those other company's because they make they games the way they make them. I'm not so much for the idea of them getting their largely T rated, eastern ideological hands on MK (I know EA is western).

Here's a question:

How do you keep MKvsDC's mechanic that everyone seems to like, as the fighting engine going forward, without MIDWAY?

Isn't the answer that you don't?

How dramatic.

Capcom doing mk would be fail. I'd rather have it Midway or Noway.

I disagree one thing that sega,namco,tecmo and capcom all have over midway is they all have proven track records of producing world class fighting engines.
Midway simply dont have the talent to produce an excellent fighter like street fighter 4.
MK on the new street fighter engine fuck what a game that would be.

First of all. Japanese companies like Capcom, Namco, Tecmo etc. are the worst option for MK. MK is a fighting game designed in American game industry and it has something that every Japanese game lacks off. MK has a brilliant storyline and characters. It has the feeling which you wont find in any Japanese game.

I dont like Jin Kazama, Jan Lee, Ryu Hoshi etc. cheesey asian style characters. Their background and storyline are so cheap. How can you compare Tekken's Iron Fist Tournament with things like Outworld, NetherRealm, elder Gods? Where else can you find characters so cool and so original like Sub-Zero & Scorpion? Nowhere.
Will there ever be more awesome boss than Shao Kahn, more original sub-boss than Goro, more evil sorcerers than Shang Tsung & Quan Chi? Will there ever be a sexier female character than Sonya Blade? The answer is NO!

No my friends. If Midway sells MK, itt will gone forever. If MK will really be sold then in the future it will be MK no more.

Let's hope that MK stays with midway or we shall let it R.I.P.

I completely agree with the above statement(s). I doubt very much that a move to companies like Capcom, Namco, etc. could possibly be anything good for the Mortal Kombat franchise. Fighters in general these days have become stale, lifeless attempts at improving on a formula that's been around for well over almost twenty years now. It's like the industry has nowhere else to go from here, or rather, nowhere else that it's willing to go.

A perfect example being Street Fighter 4. Take the best elements of II and III, mix them up with a little bit of EX goodness in there, and voila...however, it's nothing revolutionary or new. Personally, I own SF4 and it's just...okay. If Capcom were to take the reigns, what prevents them from adding even more pointless characters with no backstory, even more degrading female characters with no tact or taste...hell, the list just goes on and on. Even worse, it seems like no other company has the sheer bravery necessary to present brutal massacres like the MK franchise does. Blood in Capcom...Namco...SNK? In short, I think not, despite the outrageous number of moves in these games that demand bone-crunching sounds, charred flesh, various lascerations flowing with crimson goodness. Oh, and God knows I don't want another damn game with moves that require excessively complicated button imputs to pull off even the most simple of moves...Japanese 2D fighters...I'm talkin' bout you!

Personally...I think the fans were on to something with all the old posts about the perfect MK engines back in the Deadly Alliance/Deception eras. I, for one, would like to see something of an expanded 3d fighter that's a bit more realistic. Hell, it's about the only thing that HASN'T been done right in the fighter's market to date. Yes, even WITH the absurd amount of supernatural moves half of the characters can do...good developers have their ways. X3

Hmmm... I'm pretty sure I've got a fifty in my pants.
How 'bout it, Midway?

Psst. Your inner fanboy is showing....

I understand where you're coming from, but let's be honest here. Mortal Kombat HAD a good storyline... which quickly deteriorated into a series of retcons, jokes, confusion, plot holes, and incoherence. Mortal Kombat Armageddon practically butchered everything we loved story-wise about the game while providing hardly any narrative payoff. By comparison, I'd say Tekken's storyling, at the present, is superior to Mortal Kombat's dry, rambling incoherence.

And MK has plenty of "cheesy style" asian characters. Remember Bo'Rai Cho? You could also argue for Dairou and Hotaru as well. Meanwhile, Tekken's got its own unique cast, including devils and demons. And the humble origins of "cool and original" characters like Sub-Zero and Scorpion have their roots purely as pallet-swapped ninjas, comparable to Ryu as "generic karate guy". I think a lot of Tekken fans would argue for cool and unique characters like Kazuya, a man with a devil inside him, Yoshimitsu, a cyborg ninja, King, a leopard-mask wearing luchalibre wrestler, amongst others. Both series have their own unique takes.

MK has its thematic elements, sure, but they are hardly irreplacable. Other franchise, both in the states and in Japan, have taken great strides to replicate these elements in other series. Series like Gears of War have that over-the-top violence MK was once king of, while the demonic, horror elements of games like Manhunt, Twisted Metal, Silent Hill, Dead Space, F.E.A.R, and others thrive on their dark, girtty, oppressive atmospheres, while Mortal Kombat has become the equivalent of Saturday morning cartoon camp, whose horror elements no long envoke disgust, horror, shock, or awe.

I'm not saying a Japanese developer would be better or worse, or if an American developer is better or worse. I know enough not to judge before I try (Silent Hill went from Japanese developers to American ones, and while I'm not entirely happy, they didn't botch it completely).

Overall, we don't know what the future holds for MK, either in the hands of Midway or in the hands of another developer. But I still believe the MK you mentioned above, one so "untouchable", is hardly the MK we've been receiving for over a decade. Perhaps it'll take a new developer, one who'll go "hey, why was this series so good in the first place?" Maybe we'll get an MK game with graphics that shame other fighters, shocking realism and violence to get parents riled up again, a storyline that is both coherent, memorable, and well-crafted, and gameplay to make people want to uppercut instead of hadoken. ... because we sure as hell won't get that kind of game with the current developers.

I agree with TTT, and DAB just sounds like uper managemnt are trying to cash it, and get out. Hopefully the court denies this stupid proposal though, and makes all that money go towards paying off it's debt.

As far as IF MK goes to another company. I really don't see Capcom, or Namco, or even Tecmo picking it up, just becasue they already have fighting games. I certainly wouldn't want to see EA with it either as they would whore the crap out of the franchise. Not to mention Marvel fighting game they did wasn't good at all.

I could see Ubisoft possibly picking it up as they are probably the best game developer finacially in the buisness, so they probalby have the cash to spare. Plus they have a pretty diverse line up of games/series, which happen to lack a fighting game/series (if I'm correct). They also don't seem to have a problem putting out an M rated product as well that appeals to both western, and eastern cultures.

I could also see MK going to Epic as well. Mostly because well Epic is a western developer, they don't have a huge line up of games, that could essily be expanded, and they don't have a problem with M rated content. The same kind of content that the MK series is know for. Not to mention that they know thier engine inside, and out and what better company to continue on the MK series that used thier engine in thier last game?

I would also say Microsoft as well simply because they just have so much dam money, but thier sitting on a cash cow of potential with the KI series. And I couldn't even begin to think which internal MS studio would be handed the reins of the MK series.I would hate to see MK go down that path.

Poor Mortal Kombat. ~sobs~ R.I.P

Everyone chill, nothing is set in stone yet, and honestly a new company taking it over could be the best thing to ever happen to the franchise. This series needs a shot in the arm, a breath of fresh air, a *insert lame metaphor*.

I look at this situation with sad-anticipation, yes it's the possible end of an era, but it's the possible beginning of a new one.

IF a new company were to pick up MK it should NOT be Capcom, it should NOT be Namco, it should NOT be Sega, it should be one of your smaller lesser known studios like Ubisoft or something. The entire genre of fighting games has gone incredibley stale, mildly improved versions of the same games coming out every 2 or 3 years. We need a darkhorse, a team with something to prove, someone that will do something new not just copy and paste an existing engine, and shamble together a shell of a game.

Honestly the entire team should be ditched, with maybe Boon and Vogel being kept on as consultants, maybe bring Tobias back in as a consultant aswell, and maybe Luis Mangubat if they can get a hold of him. But everyone else should stay with Midway and try and save the sinking ship with an original IP maybe lightning can strike twice.

But ultimatley what should absolutley not happen is that the game does not just get bought for a lame crossover cash in, and the game should not be sent back to 2D, and whoever continue's the series should hold true to the spirit of the franchise.

It's a said day to think about what is happening now, but the series will continue, do not abandon everything in a fit of disgust. If you stuck with MK through MK4, you'll know that things like this do not come to an end.

I have been an MK fan since I was 6 years old in 1995, it's been a huge part of my life, and I don't see that changing anytime soon. I may have left these boards just before MKDC was released, but after being a member here since shortly after MKDA was released. I always knew that something like this would be the thing to bring me back.

If MKDC is to be Midways last MK game, I can honestly say they did things right for the last hurrah, at least they aren't leaving things with Armageddon.

We can only hope that things work out in the end.

You know I stopped reading your post when I read this part :

""I'd say Tekken's storyling, at the present, is superior to Mortal Kombat's dry, rambling incoherence.""

Sorry but Epic Fail .

Immagine Tobias steppes up and baught MK.(!)

That would be such a shocking moment.
hahaha


-Casselman

Hey, I'm not saying Mortal Kombat doesn't have a good storyline. I've mainly followed the series FOR the storyline and characters. And I'm as far from a Tekken fanboy as you'll ever come across. That being said, having played both Tekken and the recent MK games, you really can't say that Tekken's driving narrative is any weaker than the enormous retcon of MK: Shaolin Monks, the nonsensical and unfulfilling plot of MK: Armageddon, or the forced and awkward crossover with the DC Universe.

No Tekken game can compete with the original games' storylines, however. But then again, those had Tobias's signature touch and powerful character biographies and endings, which the more modern games lacked.

You all talk about new developer team and company with a better potential. But this is all bs. Let me tell you when MK started to run down the hill. Everything went wrong when Tobias left the team. Boon was the brain behind the engine and Tobias was the soul behind the characters, design, graphics and storyline. Don't you see that every character made without Tobias gone to oblivion. Bo Rai Cho, Ashrah, Havoc, Mavado etc. ????? Please..........
Dragon King-Onaga?????
Shujinko?

Dont make me laugh.....

Without Tobias we wont have a fresh and good MK storyline and characters. We need Tobias and Boon together.
MK was successful because in 90's it moved the level of realism and violence to a new, unseen level. Now we need another revolutionary MK with two basic things. Violence and realism on the level unseen today.
It is the only way the MK's star rise up again and it is the only way for Midway to stand on it's feet again.

Tobias was there for MK3-Trilogy...when it started to get a little TOO silly. Once he left, things started changing and becoming more serious.

Yea, quoted for truth.

I assume if a team was to buy the Mortal Kombat license it would also come with builds of the fighting game engine.

Or they just add ketchup and just inputs into Street Fighter.

I don't know why anyone would think that Capcom or Namco would be interested in buying MK, when they have their own well-respected fighting franchises.

Rockstar, son. That's who I want to pick up MK.

this game has got to go to a team that has experience of making fighters its the only way mk will survive.