Gamestop have now put up Mortal Kombat: Armageddon for pre-order on their website. It appears to have a tenative release date of 10/2/2006 and a retail price of $39.99. Here are the features they list for the game.

* 60+ characters. Almost every character from all previous MK games. Improved air kombat.

* All new konquest mode that will play similarly to MK: Shaolin Monks with a unique storyline.

* Kustom Fatalities - Each character will have a pre-set of around 20 moves in which to dispatch their opponent.

* Create-A-Character, with astounding attention to detail.

* An all new Krypt.

* Online play that allows up to 8 players!

So you should head over to Gamestop.com now and pre-order it for either the Xbox or the Playstation 2. Thanks Jason.

Shacknews' David Craddock gets a chance to bounce a few questions off of Mortal Kombat co-creator Ed Boon in a preview of the final Mortal Kombat game made for the current generation (Xbox, PS2) of consoles, Mortal Kombat: Armageddon. The preview features foundational information covered in the last Game Informer article, allowing those who did not pick up the magazine to gleam a few more details. Here's a bit on the selectable boss character balancing.

But here's the thing: the last time we had bosses selectable by default in an MK game (MK Trilogy), the balancing left a little to be desired... which is putting it lightly. So what about in Armageddon? Will Shao Kahn, Goro and others be able to easily lay the smack down on other "normal" fighters such as Sub-Zero, Sonya, and Kano? "The boss characters are going to go through the same development and balancing as the normal characters in Armageddon," assures Boon. "In Trilogy, [the bosses] had to be pieced together with the 'boss-only' assets created for MK1, 2 and 3. Because of this, they ... never got the same treatment as the other characters, which were balanced from their original arcade games."

Mortal Kombat: Armageddon is scheduled to be released in October 2006 for the Xbox and PlayStation 2.

Midway today announced that Midway Arcade Treasures: Deluxe Edition has shipped to retailers, after a one week delay from the original ship date of February 6th. Midway Arcade Treasures: Deluxe Edition consists of 29 arcade games including all of the games from Midway Arcade Treasures 2 and Midway Arcade Treasures 3 as well as a late addition of the original Mortal Kombat. This 4-disc compilation set will be available for the suggested budget price of $19.99.

This collection includes a wide-array of arcade games that range from fighting to racing. For the first time ever on PC, gamers will have the chance to play the games that started a world-renowned franchise - the first three Mortal Kombat games. Friends will be left behind in a cloud of dust in Super Off Road. Racing skills from San Francisco Rush 2049 and Off Road Thunder: Mud, Sweat n' Gears can be used to out-wit and out-drive the bad guys in APB. Arcade-perfect PC versions of such classics as Wizard of Wor, Gauntlet II, Pit Fighter, Arch Rivals, Rampage World Tour, San Francisco Rush the Rock: Alcatraz Edition, Hydro Thunder and more are included in Midway Arcade Treasures: Deluxe Edition.

For more information, including a full list of games and screenshots on Midway Arcade Treasures: Deluxe Edition, visit our GameRealm.

For the last 9 years, we have been graciously hosted by the great folks at Brainfood. Recently, Brainfood has moved offices and have shifted all of their servers to a co-location facility, eliminating the need for the type of high-speed connection they had at their previous offices. While we thought that we could exist on their new network after the move, it has been proven to be a little more of a burden than calculated.

So after 9 years we're going to have to endure our first major relocation. Unfortunately, this move comes without a long enough warning to make practical plans in making the move clean and seamless.

We will be experiencing long periods of downtime in the next few days and weeks. We will let everyone know when we believe we have everything moved over to our new host. Until then, we'll need to lock the forums down at some point to maintain the integrity of the database so that none of your posts will be lost in the shuffle.

Hopefully everything goes very well and we sincerely hope that you join us on the other side. Thanks for everyone's understanding.

If you can see this, you are now on the new TRMK server. Welcome to our new home and we hope that it works even better than our old host did. Speed alone you should notice a large improvement.

Be sure to drop me an email if you notice any problems with this new server. There may have been areas I missed fixing during the migration.

What can be said about Midway Arcade Treasures that hasn't already been said? Midway has capitalized on their vast library of arcade classics and have extended their reach to all three of the current generation of consoles (PS2, Xbox, GameCube) and the Sony PSP. The latest frontier for Arcade Treasures is on the PC in Midway Arcade Treasures: Deluxe Edition.

With the late addition of the original Mortal Kombat, the first three arcade Mortal Kombat games along with the entire catalog of the previous Midway Arcade Treasures 2 and Midway Arcade Treasures 3 are featured in the 4 disc compilation. Deluxe Edition comes with 2 discs to install for Midway Arcade Treasures 2 and 2 discs for Midway Arcade Treasures 3. As with all recent Midway PC games, Midway Arcade Treasures Deluxe Edition contains a controversial Star Force copy protection software program. Just type "starforce" into Google and you'll see many webpages dedicated to the issues people have with this Star Force protection. The first annoyance this copy protection causes is a mandatory reboot of the system in order to play any of the games after installing them, unless you have already installed a game previously with Star Force protection.

If you have previously purchased Midway Arcade Treasures 2, then you have seen everything there is to see here. Both Mortal Kombat II and Mortal Kombat 3 are exactly the same games seen on the consoles, quirks and all. All of the terrible oversights are present, such as flickering and disappearing shadows and the poorly mapped pause and start functions on the same button resulting in no hidden Smoke battle and no Random Select. Unfortunately, instead of fixing these problems plaguing the console release of these games, the developers have introduced a new serious flaw that affects ALL games in the Midway Arcade Treasures 2 compilation. Every game's music is non-existant. Not a single background music song is heard in any of the games on Midway Arcade Treasures 2. The console version of the arcade Mortal Kombat 3 had some big problems with the music and it seems like the baby might have been thrown out with the bath water in this instance. This is an inexcusable omission that cannot be overlooked as the games feel soulless without their background tracks.

It seems like we've already received the best ever version of Mortal Kombat II and Mortal Kombat 3 on the PC back in 1996. It is unfortunate that Midway continuously overlooks these issues, which are completely unacceptable for die-hard fans of the original Mortal Kombat games. One would think that even the novice Mortal Kombat fan would have noticed all of these issues and have had them addressed, especially when the same issues plagued the console versions released well over a year ago.

For even the biggest Mortal Kombat fan, Midway Arcade Treasures: Deluxe Edition is a major letdown. Without any music tracks and all of the same flaws from the console versions, hit the run button on this one.

The Sony PlayStation Portable version of the latest chapter in the Mortal Kombat fighting game universe, Mortal Kombat: Deception, has gone through a name simplification. Once titled Mortal Kombat: Deception Unchained, Midway has dropped the Deception moniker and has just gone with Mortal Kombat: Unchained. The game's boxart was released along with a company line.

Mortal Kombat®: Unchained™ delivers the deepest fighting game ever on the PSP™ (PlayStation® Portable) system with the lethal intensity that helped establish the franchise as the ultimate fighting game of all time! With multiple fatalities per character, multi-tiered interactive backgrounds, extensive game modes, six new fighters, and a new endurance mode Mortal Kombat®: Unchained™ revolutionizes the fighting game genre once again.

Mortal Kombat: Unchained is also scheduled to feature online play and currently has a release date of Q1 2006.

+10 TRMKarma: SycloneFX

IGN has posted the first details on Midway's itieration of Mortal Kombat: Deception on the Sony PSP. Mortal Kombat: Unchained will feature four exclusive characters including Kitana, Jax, Frost and Blaze in addition to the GameCube exclusives Goro and Shao Kahn.

In addition to the added characters, a new Endurance Mode is added to the Unchained, featuring "waves of kombatants". Unfortunately there was no mention of Infrastructure (Internet) wireless play, only Ad-hoc (head-to-head) mode. Also, Midway let slip that the game is scheduled for a Fall 2006 release, a delay from the previous Q1 2006 target.

IGN's story also features 5 screenshots from Mortal Kombat: Unchained.

+10 TRMKarma: DAVE101