GameSpot has posted 2 new videos (scroll down to "Official Movies") containing short Biographies of both GameCube Deception exclusive characters, Shao Khan and Goro. Mortal Kombat co-creator, Ed Boon, explains why these characters are so important in the world of Mortal Kombat and why they are returning. GameSpot also has another new video featuring a few of the two new character's combos.

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Midway Games, publisher and developer of the Mortal Kombat series, today announced expansion plans in Europe with the opening of Midway Games GmbH in Germany. The new extension will be headed up by industry veteran, Uwe Fuerstenberg, previously of Titus Interactive Group and Acclaim Entertainment GmbH.

"Growth in the European territories is a major initiative for Midway," said David F. Zucker, president and chief executive officer of Midway. "This expansion into Germany will allow Midway to continue its strategy of becoming one of the industry's top publishers."

"Germany is a key European territory for Midway, and one we're keen to improve our market share within," said Tony Adams, managing director for Midway Games Ltd. in London, UK. "We consider ourselves very fortunate to have a seasoned industry veteran like Uwe Fuerstenberg running this new operation, and look forward to his contribution going forward."

Midway Games announced a multi-year agreement with Epic Games to use their next-generation Unreal 3 Engine for next-generation consoles and PC games.

This agreement with Epic furthers Midway's strategy to align itself with the top development technology and talent in the industry. The relationship also allows Midway to build on Unreal Engine 3 technology to create specific tools and assets that will be utilized across all Midway internal studios. This studio-wide effort is expected to be instrumental in the development and progression of major franchises as well as the creation of new game properties. The agreement also underscores Midway's commitment to the premium PC games market.

Midway also added that the engine and development tools were being utilized across several development studios including Midway's Chicago studio, the makers of NBA Ballers and the Mortal Kombat franchise; Midway's Austin studio, developers of Area 51; and Surreal Software, the creators of The Suffering.

For some really awesome screenshots and more technical details on the Unreal 3 Engine, check out Unreal Technology.

The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences (AIAS) handed out awards last night in Las Vegas at the 8th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards, considered by the gaming industry as the Oscars of video games. In the category of Fighting Game of the Year, Mortal Kombat: Deception racked up another esteemed award by beating out nominees Def Jam: Fight for NY and Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 3. Congrats Midway and Mortal Kombat Team!

Midway announced this morning that the Nintendo GameCube edition of Mortal Kombat: Deception will arrive in stores 1 week early, Monday, February 28th. Deception for GameCube features both Goro and Shao Kahn as playable characters to make up for the lack of online play in the GameCube version.

In additon to the announcement of hastening the release of Mortal Kombat: Deception for Nintendo GameCube, Midway also announced a pre-order marketing campaign for their sci-fi first person shooter - Area 51.

The reasons why Mortal Kombat fans should be interested is that when you pre-order Area 51 at participating retailers, you receive a free copy of Midway Arcade Treasures 2 when Area 51 is released on April 25th. Midway Arcade Treasures 2 is a compliation of classic Midway and Atari arcade games, including Mortal Kombat II and Mortal Kombat 3.

Also, for those who have Mortal Kombat: Deception, they may remember that an Area 51 Demo was included on the disc as a bonus feature. If you liked the demo and don't have MAT2 then this offer is for you.

To culminate the week of GameCube Mortal Kombat: Deception updates, the official website - - has added the in-game bios of Goro and Shao Kahn.

Goro
Place of origin: Outworld
Alignment: Evil
Allies: Shao Kahn
Foes: Baraka, Kitana

Kitana's army allied with my Shokan warriors in an attempt to destroy my old master, Shao Kahn. It was rumored that he has weakening and that our victory was inevitable. During the last battle against Kano's militia, however, I was attacked from behind by a shadow warrior, Noob Saibot. I do not know for how long I lay dying on the battlefield, but when I regained consciousness, I was greeted by the last person I expected to see.

Shao Kahn
Place of origin: Outworld
Alignment: Evil
Foes: Kitana, Raiden, Liu Kang

My defeat at the hands of the Earthrealm warriors had left me weakened, and my dominance in Outworld was waning. Kitana's forces were closing in. It was only a matter of time before they would overrun my stronghold. Using a powerful magical item retrieved long ago by my minions, I created a clone of myself to draw my enemies' attention while I escaped into the wild. When I have regained my strength, I will destroy all who have opposed my rule.

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GameSpot has a real gem for Mortal Kombat fans in a new video for Unreal Championship 2, the Xbox exclusive first-person shooter with a third-person melee fighting twist.

For those who are unaware, Midway acquired the rights to publish the Unreal franchise back in July 2004 and immediately decided to cross-promote licenses between the Mortal Kombat and Unreal franchises by introducing Raiden as a character in Unreal Championship 2.

Those who have the original Unreal Championship will be psyched to hear that UC2 features a custom Unreal engine, tailored to the Xbox hardware, and not a port of Unreal Tournament like the original UC was.

In the GameSpot video, Raiden is shown performing several of his melee attacks including a spinning staff attack that explodes his opponents into gibs and his "shocker" fatality.

UPDATE: IGN has a developer interview up that explains the decision to add Raiden to Unreal Championship 2.

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GameSpot's online weekly webcast show, On the Spot, has live footage of Mortal Kombat: Deception on the GameCube from the show which aired 2/3/05. Along with details about the D.I.C.E. Summit and other Nintendo GameCube games, the hosts of On the Spot feature Deception at about 60% into the show.

During this demonstration we get a chance to see the 3 fighting styles of both Goro and Shao Kahn. Goro features the styles of Shokan and Kuatan, with the Dragon Fangs as his weapon style; while Shao Kahn features the fighting styles of Tai Tzu and Lui He, along with the Wraith Hammer.

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Game Chronicles Magazine has put up a short interview with Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks producer, Shaun Himmerick. In this interview, Himmerick provides an overal synopsis of the game's art and gameplay elements, including some details on multiple character fatalities dubbed, "Multalities". Read on for more.

GCM: Describe the action-based puzzles. Will they be set apart like a mini-game or more integrated into the plot?
Shaun Himmerick: Nearly all of our action-based puzzles are integrated straight into the game play. The only exception is Test Your Might, can I say that? Sure. We have Test Your Might in the game, of course, and that is a simple mechanic for players, but we try to use it in innovative ways throughout the game, and that it still pretty smoothly integrated into the game play.

For example, one of the areas is set in the Wu Shi academy and there are catapult all around. You can toss enemies up into them and it will send them flying off in various ways to you in another way for you to dispose of enemies. However, some of the catapults must be used to throw enemies into specific items to break down barriers and open up areas for you. We are constantly giving the player new ways to finish off your enemies, some are just for you to have more fun and some must be done to solve the action based puzzles. We really wanted the worlds to be very interactable and useful to the player. With the interactable environments, Fatalities, Multalities, and huge upgradeable move sets of the characters, you are constantly being given more tools at your disposal.

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has posted six from the upcoming GameCube version of Mortal Kombat: Deception. Most of the videos are more of the same demonstration videos that have been posted in the past; however, one contains Goro and Shao Kahn chosen as chess pieces and one is a demo of puzzle kombat.

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Midway Gamers Day 2005 being held in Las Vegas today has provided and with some new images and videos of this year's two upcoming Mortal Kombat titles.

GameSpot added while Game Informer has added of that include some hi-res images of Shang Tsung, Reptile and Kung Lao. They both also have the first trailer that shows almost every aspect of what to expect in Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks. You can find the complete trailer in a high quality downloadable clip over here at or a lower quality incomplete video clip at .

GameSpot added for the port of that feature even more images of Shao Kahn and Goro. There are also a new of the TV commercial for the GameCube port. At press time Game Informer's pictures and media for MKD were not live yet, but they will be once they are, so be sure to check their coverage out too!

UPDATE: IGN checks in with their own preview of Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks. And GameSpot now has a preview of their own.

+10 TRMKarma: SycloneFX

Ten years ago this day, I posted my first ever MK FAQ, the , out to the Newsgroups. A bit of history on the FAQ: back when this was written the game wasn't out yet (or just went to Beta across Chicagoland) and most of it was based off of rumor, and few facts. We also thought that the game would be different across the country to make finding codes/moves harder, hense the "Chicago Area" in the FAQ title. I was responsible for Chicago, while others had volunteered to other regions.

It has been a long ten years and I have grown a lot from the beginning when I was a fairly naive & inaccurate, as you can see in the FAQ. Starting out as FAQ writer looking to help people on the Internet learn how to play MK3, I had no idea that 10 years later I would still be doing it. I had no idea how much covering MK was going to shape my life, without it I wouldn't be where I am today. I also would never have met the people I have met and never been able to touch the thousands of people that visit here daily looking for help in their game.

Thanks to those who have supported me, mostly of all Jeff Greeson and TetterkeT here at for giving me a home here many years ago when Mortal Kombat 4 came out. And thanks to Midway for making a great game, and I can't wait to see what this year has in store with Shaolin Monks.

Thanks Again Everyone,
Patrick

PS: For comparison's sake, here is the possibly the final revision of the MK3 FAQ before UMK3 came out. Vastly different from what I started from.

GameSpot has added new videos from Midway's Gamers Day. The first video is the presentation Shaolin Monk's producer, Shaun Himmerick, and Mortal Kombat co-creator Ed Boon, gave explaining various elements of the running demonstration trailer.

The second video is an interview of the two developers explaining how Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks came into existance.

Game Informer updates their coverage of Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks with an interview with Shaun Himmerick and Ed Boon. Here are a few quotes with some choice details.

GI: How many playable characters have you settled on so far?
SH: More than two! There isn’t a final number yet. We could fit in a ton of playable characters if we were willing to sacrifice differentiation. If one character fights the exact same way as all the others, heck, we could have everyone be playable. But, we don’t want to do that. We really want to make each character feel and play differently. Right now Liu Kang and Kung Lao feel and play completely different from each other. So there may be as few as three and the most there would probably be is six.

GI: Would those remaining characters be unlockable?
EB: Yes, you’d start off with only Liu Kang and Kung Lao, but would eventually unlock more playable characters.

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IGN has posted a with Ed Boon about Shaolin Monks from Midway's Gamers Day event last week. IGN also added 12 new pictures to their images .

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Thanks to Jakks Pacific, we managed to get our hands on a couple of Mortal Kombat TV Games controllers and were able to spend a few days with them. Surprisingly the controllers are overall pretty darn close to the arcade version of Mortal Kombat. We had no problems with them with respect to gameplay and are deemed worthy at a price of $20. Here's a snippet from our review.

Aside from all of the differences, Mortal Kombat TV Games has a lot going for it in the good column. The first good thing is that the character sprites fill almost half of the entire screen. When it comes down to the overall look of the game, the larger the character sprites are, the more substantial the game feels, and MKTVGames exudes substance.

Mortal Kombat TV Games will retail for $19.99-$24.99 at all major electronics stores and retailers in March. Jakks said that most stores, like Wal-Mart, will be carrying the 'M for Mature' rated version of the controller while some smaller retailers have placed a few orders for the 'T for Teen' rated version. The differences are that the internal ROM setting for blood and fatalities are turned off in the Teen version. Enjoy our review, now with videos!

Also, stay tuned as we reveal how you can get a chance to WIN your very own Mortal Kombat TV Games unit. That's right, we're giving away our two controllers to two lucky TRMK readers! Coming Soon!

[size=6][color=red]EXTENDED UNTIL Friday, March 4th
Read our review of Jakks Pacific's Mortal Kombat TV Games? Like what you read and want to own your very own unit? TRMK is giving away one Mortal Kombat TV Games unit to two lucky registered members of our message forums who simply add a comment to this story.

In order to be eligible, here's what you need to do:

1. Register an account on our message forums.
2. Activate the account by following the instructions in the activation e-mail sent to the address used to create the account.
3. Add a comment to this story by clicking the comment bubble at the bottom of this news story, or from this forum topic and click "Post Reply".
4. Enter any message (within the Forum Rules guidelines) and submit the response before 11:59PM EST/10:59PM CST, Friday, March 4th.

Once you've posted your reply, you're in! Posting multiple comments in this story will NOT increase your odds of winning. Rules: Odds are based upon number of entries received. Contest begins 4:00PM EST/3:00PM CST, Friday, February 25th and ends 11:59PM EST/10:59PM CST, Friday, March 4th. Two winners and one alternate will be selected at random from the users who have entered a reply in this topic. The winners will be contacted by e-mail at the e-mail address the forum membership was registered. Once contacted, the winners have 48 hours from the post date of the e-mail notification to provide a valid shipping address within The United States or Canada (no P.O. Boxes). Winners must agree to have their names used in any announcement of contest winners. The units are NTSC format, therefore, registered members with International shipping addresses outside of The United States or Canada are NOT eligible. Should a winner fail to claim or refuse to agree to the rules and stipulations of the contest within the 48 hour notification period, the alternate will be contacted, wherein they will have 48 hours to provide a valid shipping address within The United Stats or Canada. Since Mortal Kombat TV Games is rated "M for Mature", winners must be 17 years or older to be eligible. Winners will be contacted no later than 11:59PM EST/10:59PM CST, Monday, March 7th. In the event that any of the winners and alternates are deemed ineligible or disqualified, prizes will be awarded by TRMK Staff via random selection process from current registered users. TRMK is not responsible for technical difficulties due to e-mail or server issues.