Midway FAILED at 3-D Mortal Kombat because it was unfamiliar territory. My point: Soul Calibur is the STANDARD for weapons based 3-D combat. Tekken or DoA is the STANDARD for Hand to hand based 3-D combat.
Midway was trying to compete with both of these two formulas that have been refined and perfected before Midway even started flirting with 3-D.
Simply put, the combat play in the 3-D Mortal Kombat games were choppy and could NOT compete with the counterparts of that kind of gameplay. If they wanted to play that game, if they wanted to compete, what they SHOULD have done was pay attention to some VERY comprehensive 3-D fighting gameplay models such as Tekken and Soul Calibur.
Honestly, I was excited as hell when I heard of MK
A because it was supposed to have everything I loved about 3-D fighting games in one package with my FAVORITE characters from any fighting game. But they executed it poorly. They didn't try to learn from the experts when it comes to 3-D fighting, they just mashed it all together and threw in some gimmicks in hopes that it could compete.
Seriously, how bad would it actually be to have a Mortal Kombat that could hold its own in the 3-D fighting game arena? I don't think it'd be that hard to implement a very refined 3-D fighting game experience.
I'll just down right say it... If Midway did some blatant 3-D fighting copy pasta where the weapons combat was a carbon copy of Soul Calibur's and the hand to hand was a carbon copy of VF or Tekken, and coupled up with a seamless transition between the styles, you would have had a champion in the 3-D fighter market. Because even though that would have been a blatant copy, the game play WOULD NOT HAVE FAILED and considering that the fatalities, special moves, MK aesthetic was intact, they would not have suffered at all on the markets. They would have dominated.
Netherrealm Studios needs to take a lesson from those heavy hitters if they want to compete in the 3-D fighter market again. But if not, go back to the 2-D fighting of UMK3 with heavily intensive 3-D graphics that pushes the consoles to the limit. Either way, they wouldn't fail if they'd just stop thinking that gimmicks such as "rage kombat, klose kombat, and free fall kombat" can even compete with the other fighters. Hell, even the DBZ games are gimmicky like the MK ones, but they even managed to do better.
Midway has some amazing ideas. Some of the best I've ever seen when it comes to fighting games. But good god, they can't execute them to save their life.
