In continuance of a now four-year tradition, TRMK will be reporting LIVE from the floor of this year's Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, California. The earlier announcement of the appearance of Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance makes this year's E3 Expo the most anticipated event in TRMK history since our first year of live E3 coverage in 1999.
Without giving away details, we expect to have one of the first, if not THE first, reports on MK:DA's presence direct from the show's floor. We hope that you keep your browser tuned to TRMK during the show on Wednesday, May 22nd until the final day on Friday, May 24th and into the following weekend as we provide full-access coverage of Mortal Kombat at E3. Stay tuned for more announcements.
GameSpot has a whole slew of exclusive Mortal Kombat: Deady Alliance content tonight. Included are 6 screenshots, of those 5 are brand new. These new screenshots are available for free until next week when they become part of GameSpot's pay area, GameSpot Complete. In addition to the screenshots, GameSpot Complete also offers a new exclusive video of in-game fighting action. In both the screenshots and the new video, we finally see the appearance of game's new blood and particle system. In-game weapons now leave a colorful trail behind their motions and the new blood looks quite spectacular, even in a static screenshot. In addition, the game's life meters have been tweaked and now include a close-up picture of the fighter next to their name, similar to Virtua Fighter 4.
Head on over to GameSpot to check out their screenshots before they are no longer accessible, or even better, sign up for the GameSpot Complete service to check out the video. The month of May is free for all new accounts.
Given the look of the screenshots and of the video, it appears that MK:DA is taking form very nicely. If this is any indication of how complete the version to be shown at E3 is, we expect to have quite a detailed hands-on preview to share with our readers.
The anticipation is building. E3 is only 3 days away. Keep it tuned to TRMK for all of your MK:DA E3 coverage as we bring it to you LIVE from the show's floor on Wednesday.
Four E3 press screenshots from the Xbox game, Tao Feng, have made it up on the Internet early over at the French site, NewTechnix. The significance of this news is that Tao Feng is the first fighting game released by Studio Gigante, the development team started by ex-Midway staffers, including Mortal Kombat co-creator John Tobias and past Mortal Kombat team members, Josh Tsui and Dave Michicich.
Tao Feng is expected to be at E3 in Microsoft's booth; however, it is supposed to be only in a behind doors press area. If we are able to say anything about this new fighter while we're up at E3, we will share whatever we can.
I peronally would like to welcome everyone to the new TRMK. This is the fourth redesign of our site and is the most important redesign of the site's history. As you can notice, we are now at the new URL http://www.trmk.org. You can still reach our website at our old address; however, you will be redirected to this new URL.
The most important feature of the new site is the ability to customize the entire theme of the website. Currently, you are probably looking at the default blue and green theme you have been so accustomed to seeing. By clicking on the "Choose Your Theme" button at the top of the page, you will have four choices of how you would like the page to appear. As of today, there are three other themes to choose from besides the default theme. These three themes are a red and yellow Shang Tsung theme, an iced-out Sub-Zero theme, and a golden yellow Scorpion theme. Go ahead and click on the "Choose Your Theme" button and find one you like. We will be adding more themes in the future and will even take requests and submissions for additional themes at a later date.
As of right now, we are still using SmartNews 2.0 as our news content backend but plan to transition to a new and more robust system. The new layout is not quite complete as you will see one or two problems creep up from time to time. Hopefully we've nailed all of the showstoppers and everything works out well. Currently, there are quite a few placeholder pages in place in anticipation of the new backend. Once we transition to the new backend, we will be implementing more areas of the site.
In addition to the upgraded layout, we've upgraded our server. The new server will allow us to use the more robust backend without having any problems serving pages on the fly. The increased server capacity will allow us to offer more robust content and better community services.
While the hardware and the look of the site has changed, our philosophy has not. We will continue to bring you the latest news on the world of Mortal Kombat at the highest levels of professionalism. As long as I am still running this website, that will be my promise to you.
I hope you enjoy the new layout as we are totally excited about it. Please join us tomorrow as we descend upon Los Angeles, CA and initiate our live coverage of E3 2002.
Jeff Greeson - jeff@trmk.org
Hello again from the Electronics Entertainment Expo! For second day of E3 we have some more tidbits of game information and another batch of new screenshots of Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance for you all to feast your eyes on.
Featured on the loading screens are Jax, Sub-Zero, Moloch, the first look at Kitana in game, and Mavado. We tried to get some various photos of fighting in all the arenas with many of the available characters to give you all a broad taste of what was available to play at the show. The pictures were taken with a digtial camera from a TV monitor, so they do not accurately portray the exact look of the game. Hopefully we will have some screenshots direct from the game soon.
As for the information we do know, the female Sub-Zero does not have a name as of yet because the third Mortal Kombat Movie that is currently in pre-production will also feature a similar character. So both Threshold and Midway are working on keeping the names the same if not the character's look as well. Although not functioning, the main menu of the game (Version 0.016 to be more specific) consists of the following options that are subject to change:
We've been seeing many of the same questions asked via e-mail and on the message board, so we thought we would answer them here to the best of our ability.
Probably the most frequently asked question is, "Who is the Dragon King?" The story begins with Quan Chi escaping from the realm in which he was imprisoned after MK4. Following his escape, he stumbles across a tomb which houses a vast army of dead soldiers. With the help of Shang Tsung, Quan Chi resurrects the army to overtake the other realms. The leader of this army is the Dragon King.
The status of the so-called "Compilation CD" that was mentioned in a chat a few years ago, is another common inquiry. Basically it isn't being discussed or planned at the moment, but is rather something the team would like to do if they could.
Many of you have pointed out that we have not mentioned anything about the GameCube version of Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance. The code needs some optimization before public display and, therefore, it is not on the show floor.
On a side note, there are currently no plans for a PC version of the title.
During our meeting with Microsoft, we had a chance to get our hands on Tao Feng. Even though representatives said that the game was only 50 percent completed, the game looked very good and had many of their signature features already implemented. The environmental interaction system was probably the most intriguing aspect of the game. The ability of doing special moves off of items, walls, and poles add another level of interaction unseen in fighting games. The character damage system was fully functional and looked great. Between and at the end of rounds, the camera panned around the character, showing cuts, bruises and slashed clothing. The environmental damage system was in a limited form in the version we saw; nonetheless, if Studio Gigante can fully implement their vision of arenas being trashed and destroyed by each battle, Tao Feng will be revolutionary in the graphics department.
With respect to gameplay, Tao Feng shares a few Killer Instinct overtones. While we won’t see 20 or 30 hit KI-style combos, the combo system is similar with respect to the emphasis on timing hits in a somewhat rhythmic style. Combos cannot be executed by just pressing the sequence quickly like in most fighters. Players have to pay attention to the animation of their character throughout the sequence in order to notice clues on when to execute the next hit.
In addition to the combos system, the life meters and round system are similar to KI. When one fighter’s life meter is extinguished, the game cuts to a scene of the character collapsing to the ground. Once the fighter gets up, the game refills that fighter’s life meter and readies the two fighters to continue, while the other fighter maintains whatever life they had. For example, one character could be at 50 percent of his first life meter while the other character is at 70 percent of their second life meter. In the build of the game we played, the number of life meters was set to three; however, that number can be set in the options menu.
The game still has about ten months left in development and still has few more features to be added like the ability to transition battles into a new arena by breaking through walls or doors. The team still has a significant time to tweak and improve anything and everything. But from what we saw and played, Tao Feng is shaping up to be a very impressive title.
Check out more details in the GameSpot article, including details on 'chi' attacks and limb breaks.
After four years of speculation and on-again, off-again rumors, the next-installment to the Mortal Kombat series was finally shown to the world in playable form at E3 2002. Although the version of the game was from an earlier build, Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance was primed for the spotlight at Midway's booth.
Not only are Adema the only artists offering a tune to accompany the onscreen action, but a special DVD element featuring game footage woven throughout the band's in-studio performance of the song — which will be shot before a green screen in New Orleans in late June — will also be included on the Mortal Kombat disc. Scenes from Adema's showcase for Midway, at last week's E3 video game conference in Los Angeles, are expected to be on the disc as well.