Mortal Kombat HD Remix with MUGEN

Not Mame, Mugen


The mini game could be done by making the enemy be the stage it self more or less. Instead of attacking a person, you would attack the stone or any other prop. It's just one way that comes to mind, that is making a character using sprites normally used for a stage.

Wow I cant believe I said MAME >_>

However that makes sense.
 
Don't worry, I'm having a blast working on these projects. I just have a few things going at once, and I need to jump around. It helps me stay active also, because I get bored easy.

Anyway I got another animation done tonight, the sweep fall and get up. Tomorrow and the next few days I'll work on Raiden.
 
I want to see more of your UMK3 Scorpion and others MK1 Characters.
Did you render the new animations? I remember the pics you posted months ago (Liu Kang and the face of Cage) no update in them right?

About Jiggeh, will be cool fi you post some pics of the Kano face, i like to see the technic of different artist, like your super low poly MK characters in the past.
 
Here's my request and a small mock-up I made. Unlike recent Midway "ports" (really emulated versions) that focus on only the arcade versions, this is an opportunity to pay tribute to the console versions that we all probably grew up on. They can be included in this remake. Here's what the PC intro could look like in HD:

mk1_pc_intro_hd.png


I always thought this was the coolest thing when I first saw it, and was shocked it wasn't on any other port.

The Genesis/MegaDrive also had exclusive content like a "code of honor" screen, options for flags, etc. Also, depending on what flags you entered, you could see different silhouettes in the Pit, usually the initials of whoever the top-ranked player was, or a bouncing head that belonged to Fergus McGovern from Probe Entertainment. Are these options that the group would consider including in this remake?

Here's the code screens from the Sega version I mentioned:

mk1_genesis_codes.png
mk1_genesis_cheat_screen.png
 
This project is really meant to reproduce the MK1 arcade. As a child I was SOOOOoooooo excited for Mortal Monday and when I finally got Mortal Kombat for the Sega Genesis. I played the hell out of that game, but even back then, having been an avid arcade player, I was so disappointed. It was awful and even as a child I knew I was being fed crap so Akklaim could make a quick buck. I looked at how the life bars were drawn differently, how less than 1 third of the sounds were present including the announcer's voice and all the screams. I looked at how the colors were clearly missing and how the sound track was just brutally awful. Everyone in 7th grade or whatever would make fun of how the Nintendo version didn't have blood or proper fatalities. I played the Super Nintendo version and I was totally envious. I didn't care about the blood being turned to sweat. It had mostly all the colors, the announcers voice and many of the screams/also most of the animation. Even the midi remake of the music sounded so much closer to the original to me. In my mind personally, Probe dropped the ball big time and were easily out-shined by a competitor. I'd prefer to forget anything they did and I have no desire to pay homage to their garbage port of the arcade. I can understand that their were hardware limitations on the Sega Genesis, and even if it wasn't as colorful because of these restrictions, you look at how little care they took in making the translation (just look at the life bar difference if you need evidence) and it's obvious they half assed the job because they KNEW they'd make money on it since they were going to show blood. Then to add insult to injury that douche-bag president of Probe further desecrates the game by having the stones to include his fat head as a graphic; actually it makes me want to vomit in my mouth a little.



Here's my request and a small mock-up I made. Unlike recent Midway "ports" (really emulated versions) that focus on only the arcade versions, this is an opportunity to pay tribute to the console versions that we all probably grew up on. They can be included in this remake. Here's what the PC intro could look like in HD:

mk1_pc_intro_hd.png


I always thought this was the coolest thing when I first saw it, and was shocked it wasn't on any other port.

The Genesis/MegaDrive also had exclusive content like a "code of honor" screen, options for flags, etc. Also, depending on what flags you entered, you could see different silhouettes in the Pit, usually the initials of whoever the top-ranked player was, or a bouncing head that belonged to Fergus McGovern from Probe Entertainment. Are these options that the group would consider including in this remake?

Here's the code screens from the Sega version I mentioned:

mk1_genesis_codes.png
mk1_genesis_cheat_screen.png
 
But @calactyte in other way, if you play SSF2 of Sega Genesis, it was great port ! OMG the game is one of the best SF game for all time,I have thousands of hours on this game. How from capcop do it with same hardware limitations but with all voices, animations, sound tracks. fantastic graphic, all that is there !! And the game is much bigger from MK , like characters, stages and all other stuff.
 
Actually I totally agree! SF2 was to me almost arcade perfect on Sega Genesis. The music was perfect the sound to me was almost perfect and all the animations were there. Really as you pointed out, all SF2 on Sega Genesis does is prove it wasn't hardware limitations which held back the Genesis Port of MK, so much as lazy or incompetent coding/art development. Probe was terrible and they should be remembered as such in my mind.



But @calactyte in other way, if you play SSF2 of Sega Genesis, it was great port ! OMG the game is one of the best SF game for all time,I have thousands of hours on this game. How from capcop do it with same hardware limitations but with all voices, animations, sound tracks. fantastic graphic, all that is there !! And the game is much bigger from MK , like characters, stages and all other stuff.
 
Actually I totally agree! SF2 was to me almost arcade perfect on Sega Genesis. The music was perfect the sound to me was almost perfect and all the animations were there. Really as you pointed out, all SF2 on Sega Genesis does is prove it wasn't hardware limitations which held back the Genesis Port of MK, so much as lazy or incompetent coding/art development. Probe was terrible and they should be remembered as such in my mind.

I remember getting SF2 Special Champion Edition for X-Mas, I didn't have a 6 button controller, I couldn't pause the game and had to press start to switch from punches to kicks lol.

Did you guys find a way to make this MK game run on Mac?
 
Actually I totally agree! SF2 was to me almost arcade perfect on Sega Genesis. The music was perfect the sound to me was almost perfect and all the animations were there. Really as you pointed out, all SF2 on Sega Genesis does is prove it wasn't hardware limitations which held back the Genesis Port of MK, so much as lazy or incompetent coding/art development. Probe was terrible and they should be remembered as such in my mind.
:) I talk about Super Street Fighter 2 but , yeah Street Fighter 2 was not bad too ;) And i'm agree with all what u say about MK port .
 
I remember getting SF2 Special Champion Edition for X-Mas, I didn't have a 6 button controller, I couldn't pause the game and had to press start to switch from punches to kicks lol.

Did you guys find a way to make this MK game run on Mac?

Only way I know of right now is to make a WINE based wrapper which I plan to do given MUGEN is probably not being ported directly to the Mac any time soon. I talked about this many moons ago and did test to see how well MUGEN would work in it. Everything works except the joystick support which one would need to use a keyboard to gamepad emulator to have.

Anyway, about home versions. It really was more due to hardware limitations than incompetence that caused the 16-bit versions to be inferior to the arcade. Most games ported from the arcade back then suffered limitations to one thing or another.

Street Fighter II had relatively simpler colors and hand drawn sprites rather than digitized so it suffered less but all the home versions still had smaller fighters than in the arcade and less colors. Some graphic styles suffer less when run through a lower palette (64 colors on the Genesis for example) especially if you give them some TLC. The SNES version came even closer in terms of graphics but still had smaller sprites because the SNES couldn't handle sprites over a certain size without performance problems. But it was close enough for most people. I assumed like most people that the 16-bit home versions of SF2 where perfect but I compared them to the games running in MAME and I saw even then there are cut corners such as smaller fighters.

In Samurai Showdown and other games ported to the SNES they even left out some of the biggest characters rather than make them a lot smaller. They also had to remove some of the animations from the background. This only got worse as time went by and the arcade got more powerful.. I mean.. in MKII on SNES not only where the characters smaller but they where totally drawn over so they look different. On the SNES It was at times a tradeoff... less animations for more colors and on the Genesis the tradeoff was less colors for more animations and frame rate. But both had size limitations when it came to sprites it seemed to me.... although there where of course workarounds like making parts of bosses in certain games a part of the background.

Later on for the 32x they made a version of MKII that was a little better than the SNES version but it still wasn't totally perfect and it was too late. The versions they made (same people) for the PC where the closest to the arcade back then (except for the fact that they didn't have many control options on PC at the time) and it showed.. if the hardware could back it up and the cart had enough space for it they could have made them perfect arcade ports. Then MAME got support for all the MK games and made those obsolete... but until then they where the best.... especially the MK1 that was included in the MK Duo set on CD-ROM with .wav sound effects and music. All official home versions where by Acclaim\Probe\Sculptured Software. Same thing with Primal Rage for the PC versus the SNES and Genesis versions.... all by the same people. The PC version was much closer to the arcade and again it showed if the hardware could back it up they could do it.

Then look at KI for the SNES... the gap between the arcade hardware and the console grew even larger and it certainly showed. No 3D backgrounds.. less colors.. no FMV background or FMVs in general.... inferior SNES MIDI music. etc. only the gameplay didn't suffer too much.

So while i share the dissapointment that none of the 16-bit versions came out exactly like the arcade I don't share the sentiment that it was all Acclaim's fault. The hardware did tend to be more powerful at the arcade especially since they could customize the boards for each game as opposed to the consoles which where made for home in a one size fits all fashion and relatively affordable. Or in the case of Samurai Showdown the Neo Geo was simply more powerful than the SNES and Genesis and could handle much larger sprites. Also again we had to deal with differences with RF adaptors, televisions, etc. the blood never looked as vibrant on my TV as it did in the arcade for example and I spent a lot of time calibrating the TV.

I think today we take for granted that we don't have nearly the same color limitations and for the most part don't have size limitations for the sprites either when making a 2D game. But it doesn't mean those limitations weren't real back then.... even the arcade had limitations but had a higher ceiling than the 16-bit home consoles had.
 
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I'm sorry Smoke Testsu, but getting the life bars to look the same would not have been about hardware limitations. The Sega Genesis (Probe port) was AWFUL. I know that they reduced the size of the characters for all versions and to some degree that would have been an acceptable concession to make. I'm also aware of the Genesis color palette limitations, but the SNES version was 85% close to the arcade where the Genesis version was about 50%. SF2 on Sega had all the sounds FX even given that the sprites were hand drawn. I still think Probe was just lazy. Not getting a simple detail such as the life bars correct indicates as much to me.


Only way I know of right now is to make a WINE based wrapper which I plan to do given MUGEN is probably not being ported directly to the Mac any time soon. I talked about this many moons ago and did test to see how well MUGEN would work in it. Everything works except the joystick support which one would need to use a keyboard to gamepad emulator to have.

Anyway, about home versions. It really was more due to hardware limitations than incompetence that caused the 16-bit versions to be inferior to the arcade. Most games ported from the arcade back then suffered limitations to one thing or another.

Street Fighter II had relatively simpler colors and hand drawn sprites rather than digitized so it suffered less but all the home versions still had smaller fighters than in the arcade and less colors. Some graphic styles suffer less when run through a lower palette (64 colors on the Genesis for example) especially if you give them some TLC. The SNES version came even closer in terms of graphics but still had smaller sprites because the SNES couldn't handle sprites over a certain size without performance problems. But it was close enough for most people. I assumed like most people that the 16-bit home versions of SF2 where perfect but I compared them to the games running in MAME and I saw even then there are cut corners such as smaller fighters.

In Samurai Showdown and other games ported to the SNES they even left out some of the biggest characters rather than make them a lot smaller. They also had to remove some of the animations from the background. This only got worse as time went by and the arcade got more powerful.. I mean.. in MKII on SNES not only where the characters smaller but they where totally drawn over so they look different. On the SNES It was at times a tradeoff... less animations for more colors and on the Genesis the tradeoff was less colors for more animations and frame rate. But both had size limitations when it came to sprites it seemed to me.... although there where of course workarounds like making parts of bosses in certain games a part of the background.

Later on for the 32x they made a version of MKII that was a little better than the SNES version but it still wasn't totally perfect and it was too late. The versions they made (same people) for the PC where the closest to the arcade back then (except for the fact that they didn't have many control options on PC at the time) and it showed.. if the hardware could back it up and the cart had enough space for it they could have made them perfect arcade ports. Then MAME got support for all the MK games and made those obsolete... but until then they where the best.... especially the MK1 that was included in the MK Duo set on CD-ROM with .wav sound effects and music. All official home versions where by Acclaim\Probe\Sculptured Software. Same thing with Primal Rage for the PC versus the SNES and Genesis versions.... all by the same people. The PC version was much closer to the arcade and again it showed if the hardware could back it up they could do it.

Then look at KI for the SNES... the gap between the arcade hardware and the console grew even larger and it certainly showed. No 3D backgrounds.. less colors.. no FMV background or FMVs in general.... inferior SNES MIDI music. etc. only the gameplay didn't suffer too much.

So while i share the dissapointment that none of the 16-bit versions came out exactly like the arcade I don't share the sentiment that it was all Acclaim's fault. The hardware did tend to be more powerful at the arcade especially since they could customize the boards for each game as opposed to the consoles which where made for home in a one size fits all fashion and relatively affordable. Or in the case of Samurai Showdown the Neo Geo was simply more powerful than the SNES and Genesis and could handle much larger sprites. Also again we had to deal with differences with RF adaptors, televisions, etc. the blood never looked as vibrant on my TV as it did in the arcade for example and I spent a lot of time calibrating the TV.

I think today we take for granted that we don't have nearly the same color limitations and for the most part don't have size limitations for the sprites either when making a 2D game. But it doesn't mean those limitations weren't real back then.... even the arcade had limitations but had a higher ceiling than the 16-bit home consoles had.
 
Sculptured Software also got the life bars wrong in the SNES port of MKII and U/MK3... they made them smaller and put the names outside the bar. All the ports have something or other changed or wrong. In fact most versions except the PC versions which where also by Acclaim suffered the same thing with the life bars. Even KI had wrong life bars and that was by Rare! There may have been a reason why they chose to do it that way other than laziness.

The SNES version of MK1 was graphically OK but had different gameplay versus the arcade and also it seems like it even had a lower frame rate. I think they actually pushed the SNES too far making the graphics as close to the arcade as they did... hence the later ports aren't as close to the arcade graphically as that one. Other than the graphics it was pretty fail in my book especially with the toned down violence. They also removed elements from the backgrounds and such. So graphically speaking it was okay but everything else.. not so. Even when I didn't have any other choice I hated the gameplay in the SNES MK1 port and switched to playing the PC version as soon as I could get my hands on it. Then I switched to the version on CD with better music until my computer was capable of handling it in MAME.

Perhaps it was a combination of their workflow and hardware limitations that caused for the 16-bit consoles to be the way they are but they where still fail to me regardless and I was disappointed in all of them. Even the PC versions left some things to be desired because there wasn't standardized controllers back then and one person was always stuck using the keyboard when playing two players.. also the game only supported 4 button controllers so it didn't have the controls on a controller totally correct either. Although when using the keyboard using the arrow keys and the number pad was OK especially since one could setup the number pad in a 5 on a dice setup similar to the arcade.

Also there where still minor differences here and there but it was still the best versions around for quite some time... and the life bars where always correct on PC.

Nowadays when porting games you can pretty much use the same assets on all versions of a game but back then this totally wasn't so especially since hardware and software was more proprietary so they had to do more work to convert the graphics and such. They didn't have standards for anything every console was radically different from the next and they had to use different workflows for them and it showed especially when they had multi-platform releases.
 
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and the life bars where always correct on PC.

Except for the PC/DOS version of MK3. But that was a small price to pay considering the gameplay/graphics/sound were pretty much 100%.

I'm quite impressed with Bleed's work on UMK3Scorpion, the detail in that fall animation is astounding. Exactly the same as the original, just high quality.

Still waiting patiently to see what music Justin Slaughter comes up with next.
 
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