Starting this month at TRMK, we are going to start doing a new weekly feature called Mortal Movie Mondays. Every Monday we will take a look at some cool and interesting videos from the Mortal Kombat Universe. As well, we want you readers to submit us some ideas. Head on over to this thread to suggest a video to us.

This week we want to feature Retroware TV's Mortal Kombat Retrospective web-series. In this series, which was actually produced a while ago for Season 1 of their Retroware TV Web Series, the director/narrator Lance puts together what I consider one of the greatest comparisons of the various ports of Mortal Kombat through Mortal Kombat Trilogy. Lance compares everything from the common 16-bit ports of the games, to the 8-bit portable versions, and even takes a look at the later 32-bit Saturn and Playstation ports of the games. Each game is also compared for music, sound and animation completeness in comparison to the arcade version. He even offers insightful notes on the ports, like which games use the wrong music for some stages, and random tidbits.

You can watch Mortal Kombat Retrospective below.



Remember to check back next Monday, for another great Mortal Movie Monday feature. We have another great video treat ready for you!

This week's video is one of the funniest Mortal Kombat related videos I've seen in a long time. The people behind the "Obama Girl" videos from last year, started a new website Barely Digital which is a new "comedy network covering the world of technology." In one of their first films, we get a glimpse of Batman himself getting addicted to playing the new game Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe. Hilarity most definitely ensues, watch the video below to see for yourself.



I personally am still trying to figure out why there is a giant back of a Lincoln Wheat Cent in the bat cave background on the left. Never noticed it the first few times, but now that's all I see.

Remember to check back next Monday, for another great Mortal Movie Monday feature. Also be sure to suggest to us a future video to be featured.

Everyone knows that Midway Games has been in a tough financial spot since it's former owner Sumner Redstone got himself in a bind and abruptly sold the company late last year. This action caused all of Midway Games' debts to have to be repaid sooner than planned. We at TRMK haven't covered this news because it we felt wasn't right to sully the release of Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe with bad news as the game was still starting to appear in stores worldwide at the time. The situation was very complex we felt that posting up the many strings of bad news could appear to be overly negative when we were supposed to be excited at the release of the latest MK title.

So now with that game in stores, and development already in progress on the next Mortal Kombat game, Midway's financial news is a much more important to the future of the series. So we've decided to cover the major events only, and we hope to help explain to the fans what is going on so they understand a bit better instead of letting a misleading headline shape their view of the situation.

The recent news is that earlier today Midway Games made a necessary and expected move to protect it's survival. Today Midway Games filed for Chapter 11 with the US Bankrupcy Court. Filing for Chapter 11 will allow Midway to reorganize it's business, reduce it's debts and get things moving in a much more positive direction to ensure their survival. Many companies have filed for Chapter 11 over the years, and have successfully emerged a few years later much stronger than before. Midway said they are expecting to be able to continue their daily operations as normal, as is common with Chapter 11 filings. This means that any work in progress already, will continue. If you'd like to know more, read about Chapter 11 on Wikipedia.

We wish the best of luck to all of our friends at Midway Games. We can't wait to see them pull themselves out of this with some great new games over the next few years, like the in-development Mortal Kombat 9. Also of note, Midway's latest game, Wheelman arrives late next month, and the highly anticipated Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe Downloadable Content should be arriving rather soon as well.

This week's Mortal Movie Monday video features Mortal Kombat co-creator Ed Boon guest starring an episode of G4TV's animated show Code Monkeys. In the episode, the show's fictional GameaVision game studio closes, and the two main characters interview at Midway for jobs with Ed Boon. The interview doesn't go so well, so Ed calls in some reinforcements to FINISH the interview early. After that bit, the episode features a re-creation of the original Mortal Kombat tournament ladder.



This video was suggested to us by TRMK forum member Snow, you too can suggest us a future video to be featured. Check back next Monday, for another great Mortal Movie Monday feature.

Midway today announced that they have been given a reprieve from having to liquidate their assets and have been given protection from their creditors to keep operating as a company. Basically this means that Midway will not be shut down anytime soon while they work out deals with the creditors the company owes money to.

In approving the motions, the court authorized Midway, among other things, to utilize its cash to maintain ongoing operations pending a final hearing; to continue salary and expense-reimbursement payments and other benefits to employees; to honor and perform obligations under its customer programs, such as price protection and Market Development Funds (MDF) programs, regardless of whether these obligations arose before or after the Chapter 11 filing; and to pay certain pre-petition trade claims held by critical vendors. Midway has received court approval to continue using its existing cash-management system and its pre-petition bank accounts and check stock. In addition, the company is authorized under the Bankruptcy Code to pay vendors and suppliers in the ordinary course for post-petition goods and services.

"Approval of these motions is an important first step in this planned and orderly reorganization, enabling Midway to continue to operate as usual during this process," said Matt Booty, Chairman and CEO. "We remain confident in Midway's ability to use this proven process to address our capital structure and explore our strategic alternatives."

The Mortal Kombat team can continue to develop the next Mortal Kombat fighting game in the series, Mortal Kombat 9.

At the DICE Summit in Las Vegas, GameStop COO Paul Raines mentioned Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe in a keynote delivered to gaming industry professionals. Raines was addressing the strengths of Collector's Editions of games during their first week of sales. Four games' (Metal Gear Solid 4, Gears of War 2, Fable II, and Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe) collector's editions sales consisted of more than 20% of the game's total first-week revenue. The big superstar for GameStop was Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe, whose collector's edition sales consisted of a whopping 55%.

Because of the huge success that Mortal Kombat collector's editions have had at retail, you can pretty much count on future collector's editions from Midway and the Mortal Kombat Team.

This week's Mortal Movie Monday takes a look at one of the most well known movie clips that featured Mortal Kombat. In the movie 40 Year Old Virgin, two of the characters David (Paul Rudd) and Cal (Seth Rogan) play a game of Mortal Kombat Deception while trash talking each other about each other being gay. Half way through the clip David performs Baraka's "torso rip" Fatality on Cal. Then as the conversation ends, Cal gets the last laugh and wins the round and performs Sub Zero's "head rip" Fatality on David.


One funny bit of trivia, is that in the clip they are seen using Nintendo 64 controllers, when the game was only available on GameCube, PlayStation 2 and the Xbox. This isn't surprising to see them not playing the game live, as they probably just had a loop of video playing to make the process of keeping continuity easier. It's mostly funny that the prop department didn't supply the right controllers, because most the cast probably did play some Xbox when off screen in their trailers to pass the time.

We're still looking for great clips to showcase, so don't forget to suggest us a future video to be featured. Check back next Monday, for another great Mortal Movie Monday feature.

UPDATED: Appears GameSpot is having video problems, or pulled the original video that we were using. So I found another copy of the video and have embedded it above.

Updated Again: Appears that the latest video host made some changes to the video after we posted it, and added some very adult videos to the end of the video. We apologize for that, and sadly no copies of the clip are available to view anymore.