A certain brand of wisdom that also remembers the early to mid-nineties might suggest that those years should probably stay there, in the past, with all the other embarassing tropes of the time that have faded away.

I was as baffled as anyone by MK3 at a first glance, but even in 1995, it was the absence of characters that was disappointing, rather than any misguided dedication to a suit of different colours. If anything, UMK3 probably should've been the turning point for even the thickest and most ingrained of players.

Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. That applies as much to MK3's mistake of leaving Scorpion out of a game as it does to MK4 and DA's Reptile attires.

I don't even consider myself a Reptile fan, but it's clear to anyone that those who are his fans will never stop thinking of him as a ninja and they have always reacted loudly and angrily to any attempt to regard him otherwise.

But again, this thread shouldn't even be about ninjas. It should be about whether or not a V looks better than a breastplate.
And I guess maybe about whether or not his mask looks like a bird's beak. Personally, though, I think the one in the fan art looks pretty much the same as the one in the game.

To be fair, one of MK's big weaknesses might've been that they never had the gault to commit to change. MKDA (and it's sequels) provided the long overdue maturation of design for most characters, but Reptile was an open ended high concept character, given an idea rather than a definitive new example.

If they were committed to taking complete ownership of their brand and informing people of what they want, then I think change would've come more smoothly. Relevant to this entire conversation by way of the fact that, yes, they're committed once again to adopting unremarkable shared traits amongst the characters.

MKDA did great things for a lot of characters.

But Reptile wasn't one of them. A character who the fanbase was already screaming for years to stop being a gullible henchman, devolving into a creature with the mind of a barely sentient housepet, is not what I'd call "high concept".

Especially since that form was intended by the creators to be just a stepping stone foreshadowing his becoming the vessel of Onaga, which the creators thought of as some great destiny for the character, upgrading him into a huge, monstrous boss, but everyone else rightfully saw as "it's not even really Reptile, he's being used by someone else entirely. Again."

He shouldn't be a ninja

he should be a pirate or an astronaut..or a cowboy.

Yes. That's what I said...


I agree with Chilly McFreeze, though. We need new thinking. It's about time Reptile became a cowboy ninja cyborg viking pirate lizardman, imho.

Hop A Long Scales

ffs! I'm sick of this shit! DAMN IT, CHILLY! What is that vest?!
Obviously MK4-style Reptile head is the best, gosh!!! I hope that hat's green!!! Listen, you probably don't get it, but Reptile is a very intelligent super cowboy sheriff who goes undercover with the skin of a horse on his face and he drinks at the trough to fool the other cowboys and then HE SPRINGS HIS INVISIBLE TRAP ON THEM!!! stfu white BS in mah MK


Anyway, good job. imho

Thank You
I will work on Astronaut and Pirate versions tomorrow.

I think Razorsedge had the best comment. The hood's not connected to anything makes it look awkward. He would look better with a simple green and black suit with the hood connected to it, and maybe they could reuse the chestplate with an alt costume or something. But as I said before his costume is probably not going to change much, so we'll just have to wait and see.

what do u guys think we are gonna see for alt costume ?

something like this..but with some armour or clothes...and green

I actually like that outfit. Would be really suiting for reptile i think. But i also really dont mind his current. Its exotic and works...just in a different way. Maybe we could see this outfit for DLC

....whats the deal with this?

people constantly sayin that shit on this board and it's idiotic as hell.

simply put, reptile is not a new ninja it's an old one. oh, so no ninja-ish outfits? what? you dont wanna see a mask again or some sh*t? the hell outa here.

After looking at the render some more I think the biggest problem is the face. For whatever reason it just resembles a bird more than a lizard. If they fix the face I would be happy everything else is fine. Hopefully they'll change it like they did for the transformers movie. A bunch of fans saw Megatrons face and hated it so Michael Bay changed it.

Simply put; Reptile isn't a ninja, never was a ninja, and has very little reason to ever actually become a ninja.

He was a third colour swapped onto a character model that was reused twice in 1992 and a few times again in 1993, when technological restrictions actually made that acceptable. Today, models are constructed individually, and the general audience (not necessarily the MK audience) is much more savvy and intelligent. It's "idiotic as hell", as you put it, to actively desire characters to be in a club of travelling flaps, pads, and pants, with no rhyme or reason.

You can argue for warm and fuzzy uniformity all you like, but surely any right thinking individual has to accept that it's styleless and utterly moronic.

I don't know. Another well-known fighting game franchise and its fans apparently have NO problem whatsoever with their characters looking just as simple and generic as when they first debuted, or even reusing the same design over and over and over again, up to and including its most recent installment...

Well, the operative word there would be "style," two-fold.
As critical as anyone might want to be of the so-assumed rival, I think it must be acknowledged that Street Fighter was always a bit more nuanced with their approach, and have only become more so over time.

Additionally, if Mortal Kombat had anything to do with martial arts, they might have a few guys sharing the dress sensibility of their fighting discipline as well. Alas; when that kind of logic has presented itself, MK's been quite good at serving up the contrary. Sub-Zero and Smoke, for example, would have some reason to appear quite similar with perfect logic.

Logic to the character was a big part of the message you snipped out in your quote, which of course, is very generous in the Street Fighter examples, and almost completely absent in Reptile's case. You might as well argue he should wear a bowler hat and fake moustache for fifteen years after stealing the Mona Lisa.

Likewise, if MK had hit anywhere near a definitive design sense before 2002, you might see less changes. Street Fighter produced that level of design much earlier, with a much more founded and consistent reference base, with very little need to cause confusion or upset within the fanbase. MK had to wait a decade to start to develop a strong sense of individuality or logic in their characters, and the fanbase was not surprisingly unprepared.

Strict adherence to the dictionary aside, one does not in fact have to be a shinobi from a Japanese clan to be called a "ninja" in the colloquial sense, and you and I both know that.

Reptile is and always has been an agile martial artist who wears a mask and practices stealth for missions where disguise and invisibly are highly important. Certainly he's practiced as much, if not more, ninja-like behavior in canon as Scorpion, Sub-Zero, and Smoke, who really are trained in Ninjutsu or its predecessor Lin Kuei style.

He is a member of Kahn's military branch for spies and assassins. He should share a uniform with the other members of that branch such as Rain and Ermac. If Outworld had a language and that language had a word for "ninja", he would absolutely be it.

Actually, I would lean much more toward that case.
There might be a lot of less than apt examples of so-called ninjas in popular fiction, but a lot of the most prominent examples that spring to mind with no strong foundation in the traditions of historic ninjas, also come from the same period as MK. Those examples also provide better justifications for their deviation, and more artful transitions.

Yes, there was an aspect of stealth to Reptile's original character, but one would think beyond disguising the nature of Outworld's fighters in the original tournament, he'd have no reason to bog himself down in outfits when he can slink around completely unseen, almost in plain sight.

Obviously the argument over dress sense doesn't render hoods and face masks exclusive to ninjas. "Ninja" is only important because we're talking about separating individuals from a techno-defunct uniformity, where one character actually is a ninja, and arguably has the most claim to the design, with the most logical grace being granted to his original counterpart and similarly and more deliberately ninja-esque character, Sub-Zero.

Unfortunately, as characterization goes in MK, Reptile has never been successfully sold as a self-styled ninja in the making. His brand of stealth has a much more weasley quality, lacking the contrivance, strategy or skill associated with even pseudo-ninja fiction. The guy might as well wear a potato sack and gorilla mask if the entire argument hinges on disguise. It certainly doesn't represent what little we know of his character, and does not justify including him in any excemption to developing individualized characters.

Karatekas and non-ninjas really only seem like distractions from what should be a simple conclusion, I think. Fans can be dedicated to a seven or eight-fold brand of uniformity if that's really what they think they want, but nobody can claim it comes from anywhere admirable.

Again, there's an argument to be made that Kahn has so many ninja (all of whom have the job description of either spy or assassin and are therefore somewhat justified in their garb), that it has to be an actual branch of his military and Reptile in a mask is simply Reptile wearing his uniform.

A point that would be valid if they weren't secondary to the first two characters, the characters who have the strongest claim to the design. Kahn can have a uniform all he likes, but at present, the closest we've seen to that has arguably been in Konquest henchman. There's absolutely no consistency of tone in the assumption that he would borrow some Shirai-Ryu gear and paint it different colours for each of his adopted assassins.

See, this is your problem right here.

Your whole argument seems to be that just having a hood and V-shirt automatically means you look like Scorpion and are a palette swap again, and that is simply not true, nor is anyone in this thread saying Reptile should be dressed exactly like Scorpion and Sub-Zero, who by the way, clearly no longer look anything like each other anymore despite both having a hood, mask, and V-shirt.

It's like you're squinting and can only see blurry silhouettes. The details can be, and are, radically different on every ninja without them not being ninja. There is room for a great deal of variation within that category.
And the Konquest henchmen wearing less spiky Kahn armor aren't part of the spy and assassin branch, they're all obviously grunt soldiers. That comparison's kinda like asking why Navy Seals don't wear Air Force flightsuits.