Ten years ago, on December 5th, 1996, the first news post on "The Realm of Mortal Kombat" was made. Honestly, when I started this website, I had no intentions to have this project stick around for so long. Who knew that Mortal Kombat would still be around and still be relevant 10 years after Mortal Kombat 3? Looking back through all of our news archives, I wonder to myself, did we actually write all of this? Did we really cover all of these games?

Listing through all of the games makes these ten years of TRMK really special. Officially, TRMK started in-depth coverage with Mortal Kombat 4. Then followed Mortal Kombat Gold for the Sega Dreamcast. We then got in the middle of the great split of the co-creators of Mortal Kombat, with the departure of John Tobias and several veteran designers. Out came the abysmal Mortal Kombat: Special Forces, which tested the resolve of any die hard Mortal Kombat fan.

The MK Team took a break from fighting games and took their talents back to the arcade with the campy linked-cabinet multiplayer third-person shooter, The Grid. While the Ed Boon led team was hard at work on The Grid, John Tobias was hard at work building his own games studio, Studio Gigante, developing a fighting game of his own for Microsoft Game Studios and Xbox, Tao Feng: Fist of the Lotus.

After one of the longest hiatuses in new fighting game releases, Mortal Kombat returned, this time directly to home consoles, with Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance. With Deadly Alliance, Mortal Kombat experienced a rebirth in many ways, including fighting styles and art direction. This momentum was capitalized on with the stellar releases of Mortal Kombat: Deception and an action adventure title that exceeded the expectations of the Mortal Kombat franchise, Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks.

Finally, the end of the current Mortal Kombat mythos was signaled with the release of Mortal Kombat: Armageddon. And what a fitting way it is to end our first ten years of Mortal Kombat coverage. The death of a storyline we've followed for a decade brings us great satisfaction that we've been around - and in many instances been behind the scenes - the culmination of one of the greatest video game franchises and mythologies ever created.

During this time we've been able to cover the Electronic Entertainment Expo in 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2005, and the last one 2006. We've also have created numerous strategy guides and special features, including game reviews and exclusive interviews.

It's all pretty cool when you look back at all of the history TRMK has been apart of and we have many people to thank for allowing us to still remain after ten years, most notably Ed Boon and John Vogel especially for being there for us throughout the years. Thanks to Frank Chan, Derek Fridman, John Overlie, Nick Bennett and Matt Vargyas for their contributions to TRMK. Thanks to the Realm Media Networks Forums members and the hard working moderators. And special thanks to Joe Fielder for all of his help in our early years and for my brief stint as a Contributing Editor at GameSpot.

And of course, we have you, our readers, to thank for coming to our website over all of these years. If we didn't have an audience, then we would not have stuck with this project for so long. We are constantly reminded on the shear number of fans we have helped out throughout the years and hope that we can continue to provide this service to all of you in the future. Thank you for everything you have allowed us to experience, including numerous features and mentions in print magazines, and to be your voice to the Mortal Kombat team. We are always striving to be even better and we continue to make changes that will bring our readers unparalleled coverage and information on all things Mortal Kombat. We hope to continue this tradition for many years to come and look forward to what The Mortal Kombat Team has in store for us in the next-generation of consoles. We thank you for being along for the ride.

Sincerely,
Jeff Greeson, Patrick McCarron, and Jonathan Wilcox
The Realm Media Networks Staff.

UPDATE: The December 2006 backwards compatible update has been released and Mortal Kombat: Armageddon remains and works on Xbox 360. Enjoy!

According to a forum thread on Cheap Ass Gamer, Microsoft updated their Xbox 360 backward compatibility list on Xbox.com, only to retract the update moments later. Amongst the list of updated games was the recently released Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, and other games of note such as Psychonauts, Rainbow Six: Lockdown and Indigo Prophecy.

While Mortal Kombat: Deception and Mortal Kombat: Armageddon have now made Microsoft's backwards compatibility list, Mortal Kombat fans still await the action adventure title Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks to appear on the list. The full list of games on the December 2006 update is in the forum post over on CAG.

To celebrate our decade of covering the Mortal Kombat series, our good friends at Prima Games has provided us with ten (10) hard copies of the official Mortal Kombat: Armageddon strategy guide. With the news of Mortal Kombat: Armageddon making an appearance on the Xbox 360 backwards compatibility list, a renewed interest in the game has these guides extremely useful as Armageddon is truly the biggest game in the series.

This 304 page tome is an amazing encyclopedia of information of every character's fighting style moves, combos, special moves and fatalities. It also features a Konquest Mode walkthrough, strategies for Motor Kombat, stage strategies, Kreate-a-Fighter tutorials and moves, fatalities and enders for Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3.

Cool? Want to win one? Here's how. Simply leave a comment on this news post before Friday December 22nd, 2006, 11:59 PM CST (next week) and you will be automatically entered. Leaving multiple comments will NOT increase your chances to win a strategy guide. We will pick 10 random unique user replies the following week and we will ship out the guide to your verified address ASAP. Contest is open to all countries allowed to receive bound printed materials from the United States, which pretty much means anywhere.

Good Luck!

In a shocking twist, a game that was initially released in 1995 is back in the spotlight as a nominee for Best Fighting Game at GameSpot's Best of 2006 Awards. In a year that saw the release of the mega ultra jammed-packed 3D fighter, Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, for last generation consoles; another mega ultra jammed-packed fighter is claiming the glory. It is clear that the 2D fighters of Mortal Kombat old are finding new life in the current generation's downloadable Arcades.

Sparked with a spiffed up multiplayer capability, Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 for Xbox Live Arcade is everything the classic Mortal Kombat fan dreams about experiencing. Ever since broadband Internet connections became commonplace, the desire for a Internet multiplayer version of the classic arcade games grew stronger and stronger with every release of the recent 3D versions of Mortal Kombat that featured online play. With Microsoft's engineers on the task, the network code that key members of the MK Team constantly and consistently said was impractical, found success with Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3.

Voting is still underway over at the Best Fighting Game page at GameSpot. Regardless of the vote's outcome, Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 for Xbox Live Arcade has been a success on three fronts: technically, financially, and now critically. UMK3 was also nominated for Best Downloadable Console Game at GameSpot, but did not win. Hopefully this success has not gone unnoticed at Midway and that other classic Mortal Kombat games are on the way to the downloadable Arcades of this generation's consoles.

UPDATE: Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 has won GameSpot's Best Fighting Game for 2006!