TRMK is back! We've taken a bit of a hiatus recently when it has come to the Electronic Entertainment Expo; however, we are determined to break this losing streak and bring you the same quality of coverage we started way back at E3 1999 all the way to E3 2002.

This year, Midway will feature the first ever playable to the public version of the next installation to the Mortal Kombat mythos, Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks. Join us as we go one on one with Shaolin Monks producer, Shawn Himmerick. If you would like the opportunity to ask a question about Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks, click on the comment bubble on this news post and we'll make sure it gets answered. As always, we will provide our impressions of the time we spent playing the game.

Also, if you would like any of the TRMK Staff to personally find out about anything that is at this year's E3, feel free to add your comment to this thread and we'll make it a point to get what you want.

Coverage starts on the first day of the show, Wednesday, May 18th. We hope that you join us then.

Midway has revealed the box art for Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks, which will be released in September. Click the image below to enlarge it.



+10 TRMKarma: Special Forces

Fellow MK fan site, , today released a video capture of a promotional video for . The video demos gameplay elements and sets up the storyline behind the game, along with some ingame footage and pre-rendered cut scenes. It appears to have been included with the May 2005 issue of on their free included DVD.

You can download the trailer from TMK.

Note: This video is an .avi format at 600x480 resolution. If you do not see the video, you may need to download the .

Here are some images from the video:




+10 TRMKarma: Prophet

Classic Mortal Kombat fans rejoice! In a huge announcement scooped by 1UP.com, Midway has revealed that they are releasing a Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP) version of Midway Arcade Treasures. Included in this compliation will be wireless multiplayer versions of Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat II, and Mortal Kombat 3!

In addition to the amazing MAT PSP announcement, Midway has announced a PSP version of Mortal Kombat: Deception. The PSP version will be fairly close to the console versions, featuring online play, Konquest and Puzzle Kombat modes.

Both games are scheduled to be released this Winter 2005. We hope to have more information on these titles at E3.

Here is the full roster for Midway Arcade Treasures PSP: Spy Hunter (single-player), Sinistar (single-player), Defender (single-player), Paperboy (single- player), 720 (single-player), Klax, Joust, Marble Madness, Toobin', Rampage (3-player), Gauntlet (4-player), Rampart (3-player), Wizard of Wor, Xybots, Championship Sprint, Arch Rivals, Cyberball 2072, Xenophobe (3-player), Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat II, and Mortal Kombat 3.

has updated with a of the playable build of Shaolin Monks that will be shown at E3 next week. In addition to the preview, three new gameplay videos, an official demonstration video, an exclusive interview video with Ed Boon and seven new images debut with the article. Some of the new images are high quality renders of and . From the article:

Shaolin Monks goes out of its way to create a vibe very much like that of MK II. The opening level has you battling ugly, ogre-looking creatures inside Goro's lair. As you progress, you'll eventually end up at the bottom of the classic pit stage, complete with plenty of corpses impaled on the spikes around you. In fact, once you climb out of the pit after a brief platforming sequence, you can uppercut enemies into the pit. À la MK II, the game even goes the extra mile of switching to a top-down camera view of the enemy shrieking as it falls to its doom. The graphics shown in the demo weren't exactly awe inspiring from a technical perspective, but aesthetically, they caught the feel of old-school Mortal Kombat very well.

+10 TRMKarma: Special Forces

GameSpot has scooped a new sizzle-reel style trailer which was to debut at E3 2005. This video will run on the Xbox E3 Booth video screens along with a myriad of other titles and on Midway's video screen outside of their booth in Petree Hall.

Midway released updated versions of the boxart from Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks today. The box art features some minor changes from the previously released image on GameSpot, namely Liu Kang's expression, the Shaolin Monks logo and the Rating Pending badge.

IGN.com updates their pre-show E3 coverage with a preview of the playable build of Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks to be shown at E3 this year.

We could be going out on a limb by saying this, but Shaolin Monks should turn out to be really darn good. We know, it might sound crazy to some of you -- the same some that have played Mythologies and Special Forces on PSOne and wondered aloud, "Why would Midway try and change Mortal Kombat into whatever the heck these games are?" We thought the same thing. Both of those titles were less than desirable Mortal Kombat spin-offs. But Shaolin Monks... Ooh, Shaolin Monks feels solid.

Also, don't forget to check out IGN's 8 new gameplay videos featuring some co-op and single player action.

TRMK kicks off our 5th year of live coverage of E3 2005 on Wednesday, May 18th. This year we are upping the ante with a few new features to our E3 reporting arsenal.

In addition to our photos and hands-on impressions, this year we are going to experiment with BitTorrent video downloads during E3. This will allow us to bring our readers a more expanded video coverage from the E3 show floor than we could by serving the videos on our own. Included in this year's plans are video interviews with both Shaolin Monks producer, Shaun Himmerick, and MK co-creator Ed Boon.

We are asking the TRMK community to step up and help out with the effort of seeding the downloads. Please your torrent clients open after you have downloaded the entire file in order to help others users download the file more quickly. If you are new to BitTorrent, grab Azureus. Then head on over to our BitTorrent tracker for all the torrents we will be offering throughout the show. If you have a share ratio of 1:1 or greater on our torrents, please post a screenshot of your ratio in our forums, and we will award TRMKarma after the show.

Next up is our TRMK Moblog, currently hosted by Flickr. A moblog, short for mobile weblog, is a way that allows us to send photos from our own mobile cameraphones directly to the Internet. This year we will be periodically snapping shots documenting our entire E3 trip. If you like to see what goes on behind the scenes of our E3 coverage, you'll definitely want to check this feature out. Just point your web browsers to our moblog and keep an eye out on our Flickr Badge at the upper right corner of the main page.

And finally, we are announcing a new corporate entity from the creators of TRMK, Realm Media Networks, LLC. With this new company, we are expanding our philosophies on what makes enthusiast-created websites successful to other areas of the gaming industry. We've created a great synergistic relationship here at TRMK between our own original content and our dedicated community and we believe that this same formula can be applied to many other game genres. Throughout E3 2005, RealmMedia.com will be updating with information and impressions of many different games on the show floor.

We hope you all enjoy our efforts as we will be working very hard to make 2005 a stellar year of E3 coverage. Please drop us a line if you have anything you would like us to focus on specifically in our E3 2005 forum.

The Mortal Kombat Shaolin Monks Official website is now up and running. It has a similar style to that of the MK: Deception site and features a few new images and two videos, including an awesome intro trailer on the main page.

+10 TRMKarma: Spine Rip

Welcome to TRMK's fifth year of E3 coverage as we are reporting live from Los Angeles. We are extremely anxious and ready for E3 to start tomorrow morning at 10:00am PDT. In continuance of a 5 year tradition, we're filing a pre-show update for everyone.

Earlier this evening you may have noticed that we posted a few shots of the Midway booth setup from this year's E3 posted up at our . This year Midway will have four PS2 and four Xbox machines setup running Shaolin Monks like last year with Deception. We also got word of a rumor that the PS2 version of MK:SM on the floor will have the violence removed. Aparently the order was handed down from Sony to display the game without violence, but the Xbox demo's violence remains intact. This bit of information sounds suspect; however, we'll find out for sure later today.

There also does not appear to have any playable stations setup for the recently announced Mortal Kombat PSP games. The only thing in Midway's booth was a single video screen with rolling demos of Midway Arcade Treasures PSP and Mortal Kombat: Deception PSP so we only expect to see the games in the form of video clips. We'll have more tomorrow once get a better look around when the show's doors open.

We have added to our torrent tracker a new teaser video torrent from Midway's 2005 lineup of Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP) titles. Included in the video are shots of Midway Arcade Treasures, featuring Mortal Kombat, II and 3 and the PSP port of Mortal Kombat: Decption. We are particularly surprised at the Deception footage as it looks remarkably close to the home console versions. Stay tuned as we work on getting up the Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks trailer, Shaun Himmerick video interview, and Ed Boon video interview.

We are now seeding our video torrent of the E3 Trailer for Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks. In addition to the trailer, we have added a few more screenshots to our Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks gamespace.



Also if you haven't been checking out any of our photos at our E3 Moblog you've been totally missing out. Included in the group of recently added photos are behind the scenes photos of our interviews with Shaun Himmerick and Ed Boon.

Check back later tonight when we plan to have the entire Shaun Himmerick interview online.

UPDATE 3:38am: The Himmerick interview is taking a lot longer to edit and render than we anticipated, due to the addition of in-game footage. We'll have everything up and seeded later Thursday morning.

Our interview with Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks producer, Shaun Himmerick, has finally gone live. You can start downloading the video via our torrent file served by our torrent tracker. Grab the Official BitTorrent Client or Azureus if you haven't already.

The interview is 9:50 long and covers many aspects of Shaolin Monks' development, including the involvement of the Mortal Kombat team, the fighting and adventure gameplay styles, the absence of online play, accessing hidden playable characters. Also checkout the screen in the background as it features live gameplay including many of the game's Fatalities throughout the interview.

We are going to follow up later today with videos of all six of the in-game Fatalities from Shaolin Monks, including two "secret" Fatalities that were not posted on the game kiosk. We also may post up our hands on impressions of the E3 demo of Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks today or tomorrow. And we'll be closing up the show with our fifteen minute indepth interview with Ed Boon.

We have posted torrents of six ingame Fatalities from Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks. All three in-game fatalties for Liu Kang and Kung Lao are now available for viewing. The videos are in high resolution NTSC DV format of 720x480 and weigh in around 4 MB each. Alas the sound isn't perfect because of the volume level in the E3 booth. Hopefully we can get some direct video feeds sometime in the future. There is also an in-game Fatality performed by the sub-boss Baraka, but we'll have that for you later in the week.

You can start downloading the videos served by our torrent tracker. Grab the Official BitTorrent Client or Azureus if you haven't already.

Also a reminder to keep seeding the videos once you download it, so all your fellow MK fans can easily get the videos as well.

In their coverage of , our friends over at have posted their own with Mortal Kombat co-creator Ed Boon and Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks Producer Shaun Himmerick. You can also download the interview over at our . You should also check out their awesome from their staff member Mobster4Christ.

For those of you waiting for our promised Ed Boon interview, you may be waiting a while. Sadly the interview was lost, along with the equipment used to tape it, but there is still a chance it may surface. So lets hope that some kind soul who happened across the equipment & tapes returns it to us. Everyone cross their fingers!

Also a big thanks to for adding our logo to their interview as a kind gesture in response to our loss.

Also expect our Shaolin Monks hands on preview by the end of the week! Along with some photos from E3 2005 and maybe some other goodies!

Chart-climbing rock group Rise Against is calling on all Xbox gamers to challenge them as part of the latest Xbox Live “Game with Fame” on June 3, 2005. Xbox Live players can look for the gamertag riseagainstgwf from 3:00 – 5:00 p.m. CDT / 4:00 – 6:00 p.m. EDT to test their skills against the band in Midway’s Mortal Kombat: Deception.

The band’s debut album under the DreamWorks label, Siren Song of the Counter-Culture, has held a firm place in the Billboard Top-20 for New Artists since its arrival on store shelves in August 2004. Rise Against will do ‘kombat’ with gamers from their hometown of Chicago, Ill., where the band will perform at YMCA Field on June 4 as part of the Q101 Block Party powered by Xbox.

For more information on Siren Song of the Counter-Culture or Rise Against tour dates, please visit: http://www.riseagainst.com.

Xbox Live's “Game with Fame” program gives Xbox Live subscribers the unique opportunity to play against some of today's hottest stars. Past “Game with Fame” celebrity players include The Strokes, Hoobastank, Three Doors Down, Incubus and Buffalo Bills' Running Back Willis McGahee. For further information on other Xbox Live events, be sure to visit the “Game with Fame” Web site at http://www.xbox.com/gamewithfame.