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Preview  Mortal Kombat 5
- By Mike Ryan


The chaps over at Midway have been extremely tight-lipped in regards to the upcoming Mortal Kombat 5. Information is few and far between, but from what little we’ve been given, we can expect quite a game when it is released next year.

As about 93% of the gaming community knows, the Mortal Kombat games have been some of the most interesting and controversial arcade games since MK1 showed up in arcades during the early 1990’s (was it really that long ago?). Fatalities were the name of the game in Mortal Kombat, where a player could add insult (and more injury) to injury by finishing his (or her) opponent off in a variety of violent acts of murder. The groundbreaking game has seen four arcade/home console sequels, two console platform games, a cartoon, a live-action TV show, and two movies just to name a few, so it was safe to say that the series was not going to die after Mortal Kombat 4.

Mortal Kombat 5 is going to be the first fighting game in the series that is going straight to a home console. Since the arcades are very slowly becoming extinct, Midway felt the best route to go down was to release MK5 direct-to-home. But this won’t make the game any worse. Ed Boon, the man behind the Mortal Kombat series since day 1, is once again at the helm of the fifth version. He recently conducted an interview, which can be found at mortalkombat.com, in which he spills his guts (pun intended) about what to expect for Mortal Kombat 5. “Well, you can throw everything you know about MK out the window, cause we are using a completely different fighting engine” Boon states. There will be combos in the game, which have since become a given in many fighting games. Boon also said that there would be a variation on the two on two fighting mode, but we’ll have to wait to see how different it would be.

Boon also hinted at the possibilities of “team fatalities,” which, if done correctly, could once again set a new standard in fighting games. Characters will also most likely show wear and tear on their outfits during the fights. Boon also says we can expect to see a return of the Test Your Might side-game, as well as Test Your Sight, and others not yet known. Returning characters we can most likely expect to see include Scorpion, Sub-Zero, Liu Kang, Raiden, Kitana, Sonya, Jax, and Shang Tsung.

With no definite release date, we can expect Mortal Kombat 5 to be released mid-to-late 2002. And if anyone over at Midway is reading this, I have one request: please - no Friendships!

- 10.29.2001