When it came to the subject of alternate costumes in Street Fighter IV; Yoshinori Ono said he wanted to remain true to the classic iconic designs that have been a staple since Street Fighter II. With particular reference to the popular trend of item buying and character customization in other 3D fighters, he described not wanting instantly recognisable classics to be obscured by silly hats and things of that sort.

It's a good philosophy to keep design aspects true to the character, but as we've all seen over the past month, being true to a Mortal Kombat design is open to twenty years worth of interpretation and aesthetic. Creating a single definitive design for all time seems almost antithetical to the MK philosophy, at this point, but maybe that's a good thing.

For me, Reptile was never looking better than in MK4 with his face almost completely revealed. I liked Raiden's flowing fabrics and upgraded hat in MKDA; I appreciated Scorpion looking more like a practical ninja in MKD; and I thought it was a shame that Sub-Zero hid under a cowl again in later games, even though the cryomancer armor was a fun deviation.

In Armageddon; MK proved it was at least capable of putting design control into the hands of players with it's Kreate-A-Kharacter mode. There, we were free to put cybernetic Lin Kuei helmets and ninja suits on just about anyone we wanted! What if the same idea was applied to the MK cast, with the team developing a strong basic model (like the ones we've seen of MK2011), with the possibility to tweak them to our preference. Maybe I'd get rid of Reptile's cowl, change Raiden's hat, put Kung Lao's hat on his back, give Nightwolf a mohawk, put Johnny Cage in a sensible shirt.

I haven't seen it discussed, so I thought I'd throw it open to the MKO userbase to see what you all think: Could MK benefit from customizable characters? What are some of the customizations you might like to see?