The PlayStation Vita has a growing lineup of fighting games and another high profile title hits the list with Mortal Kombat.

Developers NetherRealm Studios have assured us that this is more than just a simple port of MK9 from PS3 and 360 and the game will come sporting some brand new features and gameplay tweaks designed for “on the go” competition.

DLC characters such as Skarlet and Freddy Krueger are confirmed and the Vita version will be running at 60 frames per second (like it’s PS3 big brother). Recognizing the Challenge Tower as being a good match for handheld gaming, the team decided to add a second one. This new one has 150 challenges, some of which make full use of the Vita hardware.

Mortal Kombat head honcho Ed Boon also let loose that while the game won’t be touch screen-heavy, the game will let you perform fatalities with the front touch screen for increased accessibility.

No date has been announced yet for Mortal Kombat for the Vita, but we’ll keep you posted as we get more news.

Last year’s Mortal Kombat was a lot of things. High scoring receiver of reviews all around. A critical reboot to the franchise. One of the best fighting games of 2011. It was a runaway success.

Choosing to take that success and run with it, Warner Bros. has officially announced Mortal Kombat Komplete Edition, a re-release of Mortal Kombat which will come including all previously released downloadable content in one box.

Every character DLC (including Freddy Krueger) will be front and center in the Komplete Edition along with the Mortal Kombat: Songs Inspired by the Warriors album, the 1995 Mortal Kombat film (available via PSN or Xbox Live Zune Marketplace). Also featured will be three classic Fatalities for Scorpion, Sub-Zero and Reptile and the Klassic Skins Pack which features 15 old school costumes for various characters.

Mortal Kombat Komplete Edition will be available February 28 for Xbox 360 and PS3.

The List is headlined with Street Fighter X Tekken and Ultimate Marvel Vs. Capcom 3. Here’s the complete line-up for the upcoming event:

• Street Fighter X Tekken
• Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3
  
• Soul Calibur V
  
• King of Fighters XIII
  
• Mortal Kombat
  
• Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition Ver. 2012

The annual fighting game tournament happens in Las Vegas, July 6-8.

Superherohype is reporting that New Line Cinema has announced that they are moving forward with a brand new Mortal Kombat film. Kevin Tancharoen, responsible for the Mortal Kombat: Rebirth pitch film that led into the web series subtitled “Legacy”, will direct. The studio and director are planning to begin production early next year, for a 2013 release.

You’ve sat back and watched week after week as all 9 webisodes of Mortal Kombat: Legacy came out on YouTube. Was there any surprise that this instant hit was going to come to Blu-ray players? You knew it. We knew. Now get ready for it!

Having gained over 12,000,000 hits on YouTube, the show did an outstanding job of revitalizing interest in the series outside of the world of video games. Directed by Kevin Tancharoen, Mortal Kombat: Legacy the series has done so well that when it was all wrapped up, Warner Bros., who had been planning for the series to hit DVD and Blu-Ray, and perhaps even television when it first debuted, gave it the green light. While a television show may still be a ways off, the entire nine-episode series will hit both DVD and Blu-ray platforms on November 8.

Appearing on both formats, the feature will have specials including behind-the-scenes accounts, detailed exploration of the fights and stunts staged during the production of the web series the fight scenes, a look at the role Fatalities and hyper-violence play in the Mortal Kombat cannon, and a retrospective of how the series came to be and the drive for the series that brought the Tanchareon to the limelight.

Starring Michael Jai White (The Dark Knight, Black Dynamite: The Animated Series), Jeri Ryan (Star Trek: Voyager, Leverage) and Tahmoh Penikett (Battlestar Galactica, Dollhouse), if you missed out on this series, you missed a real triumph for video gaming media. Don’t worry, you can still check it out on YouTube. With an MSRP of $19.98, this is sure to be just as big a hit in stores as it was on the web.

In the words of Shang Tsung from the original Mortal Kombat film, “Let Mortal Kombat begin!”  Fans of MK should recall the viral extravaganza of Summer 2010 known as Mortal Kombat: Rebirth.  The short film starring Michael Jai White and Jerri Ryan, to name a few, showcased the possibility of a reboot for the MK film franchise.  Instead it spawned a brand new web series based on the video game’s lore.

Written by Kevin Tancharoen, Aaron Helbing and Todd Helbing, “Mortal Kombat: Legacy” is an anthology of nine live action shorts and brings to life the motivation behind each character’s participation in the Mortal Kombat tournament. Each episode will provide never-before-revealed insights into characters featured in the upcoming videogame as well as the game’s universe.  As of today, April 12th 2011, Mortal Kombat: Legacy has begun its run and can be view on Youtube at this address.  Enjoy!

The demo will be available exclusively for PlayStation Plus members globally for the PS3 on March 8th and then open to all PSN users worldwide on March 15th.

The demo will later be available for download on Xbox Live for the Xbox 360.

The newest chapter of Mortal Kombat, legendary fighting game franchise, marks a triumphant return to the series’ roots in the fastest and most brutal installment to date. Available on April 19 for PS3 and 360, Mortal Kombat goes back to a mature presentations and reinvents its classic 2D fighting mechanic in addition to adding new game-play features including tag team, a deeper story mode, and nostalgic arcade battle online and offline. Players will be able to choose from an extensive lineup of the game’s iconic warriors and challenge their friends in traditional 1 vs. 1 matches as well as several new game modes. Exclusive to the PlayStation 3, fans will be able to play as and against infamous God of War fighter Kratos and take advantage of the game in Stereoscopic 3D. The game is being developed by the newly re-named NetherRealm Studios, led by Mortal Kombat creator and creative director Ed Boon.

The latest trailer for the Mortal Kombat reboot features fan favorite Liu Kang. It just wouldn’t be complete without a bunch of flying kicks and fireballs and that’s just what you get in this clip. Peep the video after the jump.

Directing the series is Kevin Tancharoen, the same person who directed and produced the unofficial Mortal Kombat: Rebirth fan film that got people talking about another live action Mortal Kombat in the first place.

STAR TREK: VOYAGER star Jeri Ryan, will appear as Sonya Blade in the digital series. Michael Jai White of THE DARK KNIGHT, SPAWN has been casted as Jaxx with Darren Shahlavi 300 filling in for Kano. Jeri Ryan and Michael Jai White were in the original fan short with the rest of the unofficial fan short cast rumored to be appearing in the web series.

Shooting for “Mortal Kombat” is currently underway in Vancouver.

You can read the full article here, but keep in mind that there was no direct quote. The writer of the article was discussing Casamassa’s life and martial arts school, and the Mortal Kombat reveal was more of a side note. We’ll follow up to see if there’s a story here considering that even IMDB has very little on the project.

Could there be a new film since Warner Bros has shown interest in the property? Perhaps this is mocap for a new game? Either way, we’ll keep you posted.

Joust was cool back in the day, but we’re picturing something that will either have a huge special effects budget, or NO sfx budget– either seems likely — and will be bad regardless.

Spy Hunter, on the other hand, might have promise.

*We finally caught MK: Annihilation on TV last night. It was so very not good.

Mortal Kombat makes a Next-Gen debut in Mortal Kombat Vs. DC Universe. While some fans may be worried that having a crossover title may water down the core of what makes Mortal Kombat what it is, they need not worry.

Mortal Kombat Vs. DC Universe pits the characters of Mortal Kombat and the DC Universe against each other in a tale of the two realms colliding. With characters on both sides having no idea of why the two realms are merging or who the ‘invaders’ from the other realm are, the table is set for a struggle to stop a catastrophic event that will lead to the destruction of both universes.

Mortal Kombat Vs. DC Universe has a story mode that is split into two halves. One half is the Mortal Kombat side and the other is the DC Universe side. Choosing either storyline will split up the game into multiple chapters. Each of these chapters will have you play as a different character as heroes and villains alike try to get to the bottom of what is going on with their realm and the threat posed by the merging of the universes.

As you play the story mode with each realm, you’ll only be able to see a small part of the role in which they play in the overall narrative. Only by completing the story mode with both universes, will you be able to learn the full extent of what’s going on.

The classic arcade mode is exactly as one would expect. The one slight deviation made here due to the crossover licenses is that after choosing which character you’d like to play as, you’ll need to choose whether you’d rather fight against Mortal Kombat characters, DC Universe characters or a mixture of both. Also, you’ll be able to perform fatalities in this mode as well (fatalities aren’t possible in story mode).

Speaking of fatalities, bringing DC Universe characters into the mix does change things a bit. While all the Mortal Kombat characters and DC Universe villains can perform fatalities, things are just a little bit different for DC Universe heroes. Instead of fatalities, they perform Heroic Brutalities. While they won’t kill their opponents with Heroic Brutalities, they will give them the beatdown of their lives. This had to be done to keep the DC heroes within the confines of their lore. You wouldn’t expect to see Superman kill someone after all.

The fatalities themselves have been watered down quite a bit. They’re much tamer than and not nearly as shocking as they used to be. While one could argue that we as a society have become accustomed to having a much higher tolerance for shock and gore, its simply a case of the fatalities being very mild to keep the ESRB rating as Walmart-friendly as possible.

Another worry some may have had about the game is that the DC Universe characters would play like already established Mortal Kombat characters. There is no need for Mortal Kombat veterans or DC fans to worry about that either. None of the DC Universe characters are mere palette swaps of Mortal Kombat characters. They all have their own styles and animations. While some may seem to share a similar basic stance, all of the moves are unique.

If the Mortal Kombat fighting experience has been your thing, you’ll find the gameplay to be solid. Even though the title is 3D, it takes place on a 2D plane. You can hold down a trigger button and move around freely, but the core mechanics are classic Mortal Kombat. The next-gen consoles have made the animations and attack transitions more fluid, but there are still the jerky and awkward movements if you’re not spot on with your combos. Nothing against this game so much as just a quirk inherent with the way the combos are handled in the franchise. Mortal Kombat Vs. DC Universe is definitely a tighter experience when compared to Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance.

Mortal Kombat has always had its own unique style and either people have loved it or hated it. If you didn’t like Mortal Kombat before, this is not the game that is going to make you change your mind. However, Mortal Kombat Vs. DC Universe does have enough going for it to satiate fans of the franchise.

If you’re of the DC faithful and want to play the latest videogame with your favorite characters, we recommend having a little taste of it first before wolfing down the whole meal. You just may find that the Mortal Kombat flavor is a delicacy that you can’t get accustomed to.

Mortal Kombat Vs. DCU hits retail shelves on November 16.

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Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe will release on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on November 16.

by Gavin Jasper of 4thletter!

It’s been a busy week for me. You take time off from work to go to a comic convention and you come back to find more work forced on you than usual. It really sucks, but I pushed through it, knowing that the greatest videogame of all time was on its way.

We’ve seen a lot of strange crossovers in videogames over the years. The Incredible Hulk crushing down on Dan Hibiki. Spawn clashing with the behemoth Astaroth. Wario and Bomberman trying to outmaneuver each other. Solid Snake trying to vanquish various Pokemon. Tony Stark out-skating Tony Hawk. I can go on and on.

Just a week ago, Mortal Kombat vs. DC was announced. Obviously, this is inspired by the long-been-touched-but-still-popular Marvel vs. Capcom series. Some would say that that’s the only reason it exists. At least Capcom released a few Marvel fighting games prior, including X-Men: Children of the Atom, which featured their character Akuma as a secret character. This is just straight out of the oven, confusing just about everyone

Already, the internet is filled with complaints and discussion. Will there be Fatalities? Will Batman be able to kill, turning this into some kind of interactive version of Justice League: The Nail? With only 20-22 characters announced, will we get anyone good out of this? What about those of us who want to see Stryker fight the Joker? I mean, the thing about the Joker is that he’s so unafraid of death that it makes him even more annoying and scary to deal with, but I’m sure even he would be afraid of the indignity of dying at the hands of Stryker! And what of the blood? Are they really going to tone this thing down? Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of making it Mortal Kombat, throwing us back to the days of SNES Mortal Kombat 1 or that awful animated series? Why would they tone it down, anyway? Didn’t Black Adam graphically shove a mask through a man’s skull in the pages of a major DC comic?

You know what? I don’t care. This is awesome. I’m honestly more pumped up over this game than Grand Theft Auto and even Mario Kart. If this game turns out to be good, then good. If it turns out to be bad, then great! This is going to be the videogame version of the Ghost Rider movie, more so than the actual videogame based on the Ghost Rider movie.

Here is a list of ten things I’m looking forward to in the upcoming Mortal Kombat vs. DC game:

10) The Battle for the Cosmos Suddenly Becomes Even Better

Sometime later, Baraka will be cut in half by Kung Lao’s giant, green hat construct.

9) Explaining Retcons with Other Retcons

Notice how in all the 2D Mortal Kombat games, all the ninjas dressed exactly alike, but yet they always changed their styles from game to game? First they had a simple, colored cloth. Then in the next game, they had better masks and quiltier clothes. By Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, they all had more dynamic outfits with colored blocks pasted to their chests. Why would all these ninjas, many of them unrelated in the storyline, know to change their style from adventure to adventure?

Obviously it’s this guy’s fault.

Considering the job this guy did on Risk and the Teen Titans, you’d think Superboy Prime would make a great fit in the Mortal Kombat universe.

8) Batman vs. Shao Kahn

The skull-faced barbarian warlord has dominated everyone from thunder gods to metal-armed special force agents. Can even Kahn take on the World’s Greatest Detective?

It doesn’t even matter if Batman has prep time or not. He’s in constant contact with the world’s best hacker.

“Oracle, it’s me. I need your help.”

“Hold on, I have to finish this game of FreeCell.”

“NOW.”

“Fine. What do you need?”

“YOU WEAK, PATHETIC FOOL!”

“What the hell was that?!”

“Hh. Look up what you can on a ‘Shao Kahn’. I’ll keep him busy.”

“Shao Kahn… Shao Kahn… Here we go. Gamefaqs strategy guide to Mortal Kombat vs. DC, last updated on Wednesday. Do you want me to read you the walkthrough on fighting him or should I just upload the Gameshark code that makes him fight like Stephen Hawking?”

7) Return of the Black Mercy

Being forced into a Mortal Kombat game gives Mongul a newfound advantage. By attaching his parasitic plant, the Black Mercy, onto the heroes, he can put them in a catatonic state where they live out their dreams of being in a better fighting game.

6) The Victory of Maxwell Lord

Pressing forward, down, down, back, high punch causes Superman to tear out his enemy’s kidneys and toss them into the sun. Why does this make Max so excited?

Sore thumbs beats a bloody nose any day.

5) Birds of a Feather

Mokap, the motion sensor-wearing martial artist, stops believing he’s alone in his ridiculous concept of an existence when Sonya Blade punches his head off and he meets up with the equally ridiculous Black Racer!

4) Special Trick When You Land an Uppercut on the Justice Society Stage…

Now we know where the portal to Outworld is.

3) Keeping the Legacy Alive

Newly introduced for this game are Didioalities. Not only do you kill your opponent, but you replace them on the select screen with an ethnic minority with the same name and gimmick!

2) Johnny Cage + Booster Gold = Best Friends Forever

Get past the time travel and martial arts and they’re basically the same dude. Hell, if Mortal Kombat had time machines in it, Johnny definitely would have tried saving Liu Kang’s life by now. And now that I think about it, Booster needs to punch people in the nuts more often.

1) Sub-Zarro

Watch out or he’ll tear your foot off with the shinbone hanging out!

by Gavin Jasper of 4thletter!

Back in the mid-90′s, fighting games were a pretty big thing. Over the span of several years, an untold amount of sequels and forgettable copycats oversaturated the videogame market. Once all of that calmed down – somewhere around the turn of the millennium – only the big names remained: Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Tekken, King of Fighters, Guilty Gear, Virtua Fighter, etc. They continued to have sequels and updates as the others just got thrown to the curb.

And yet, for whatever reason, Killer Instinct fell off the face of the Earth despite its popularity. In the mid-90′s, the first game was huge. It was a huge seller on the SNES and the sequel was one of the first big games for the Nintendo 64. After that, it just died. Rare just kind of forgot it existed and instead made a bunch of games starring talking animals.

But you know what? I still remember Killer Instinct. I remember it enough that when I found out that it had its own comic back in the day, I had to get my hands on it. Scoot over, kids, and I’ll tell you the story of a ninja monk, a killer robot, a disgraced boxer, a secret agent, an animated skeleton, a man made of fire, an alien made of ice, a cyber Native American, a cloned dinosaur, a two-headed Cyclops and the evil organization that brought them all together. Let’s look at the Acclaim-released Killer Instinct comic book.

Each cover uses the rendered style that came with the games. While the style is a bit dated, it still just feels… right. That would get old quick if the interiors were like that, but thankfully they are not. Amazingly, the interior art is excellent throughout the series. They’re done by Bart Sears, Sean Chen, Steven Butler, Dale Eaglesham, Doug Tropea-Wheatley, Scot Eaton and David Boller. What the hell? The comic has seven different pencillers for six issues and somehow it feels totally consistent! That’s weird. There are a handful of different inkers too, so they can’t be to blame. Huh!

There is only one writer, though. Art Holcomb takes the reigns in all six issues of this. What’s interesting is how the series is laid out. The first three issues are a basic retelling of the first Killer Instinct game. The latter three issues are special one-shots that take place afterwards. This came out in the latter half of 1996, around the time the second game was making its way to the arcades.

Killer Instinct takes place in a future where corporations have taken over the governments, including the very corrupt Ultratech. Ultratech is run by a very deranged and nameless chairman who resembles Wilson Fisk. Ultratech entertains the people with its bloodsport tournament known as Killer Instinct. Most of these competitors are part of the tournament due to Ultratech’s crooked ways. Some fighters are their own creations, while some fight in return for answers to their own dilemmas.

The first issue mainly focuses on T.J. Combo, a former boxing champion who became disgraced after it was discovered that he fought with cybernetic enhancements. Now he cleans clocks in the Killer Instinct tournament to regain that lost glory. As we see here, it includes him beating the dinosaur Riptor to death.

Combo acts like he’s fighting legit to the media, but in actuality, the Chairman is constantly amping up Combo’s bionic implants. Combo is always being tended to by a voluptuous female tech, but by stealing items behind the Chairman’s back, we see that there’s more to her than being a simple flunky. Combo annihilates the skeleton warrior Spinal, but the Chairman decides that in the next match, Combo will no longer be allowed to charge up his bionics. Pissed off, Combo sneaks off and gets his cyber fix via a back alley dealer.

Meanwhile, Jago is shown visions of the Combo vs. Spinal fight. Jago is one of the main protagonists of the series, with his origin being that he was an orphan discovered by Tibetan monks as a child. Worshipping a wise Tiger Spirit, Jago has trained to be a great warrior with hopes to conquer his own inner darkness and all that jazz. By the second game it’s revealed that the Tiger Spirit is really just a villain Gargos using Jago to his own ends, but they never get far enough to reveal that here. The Tiger Spirit tells Jago to seek out the Killer Instinct tournament because it needs someone heroic to cleanse its evil.

Combo’s ready for his next big fight, finding out he’s up against Fulgore. Fulgore is the first artificial soldier and a blatant knockoff of the Predator, created by Ultratech for the sake of selling to as many countries as possible. Of course, when one guy in the Ultratech boardroom points out how it’s not such a good idea to put faith and money into a robot that has been shown to ignore and refuse orders, the Chairman just calmly tosses him out the window. So he’s Predator AND Skynet mixed in one. That’s a bargain.

Luckily, Combo is amped up and ready to beat down that…

Oh. Never mind.

While this is going on, we find Combo’s personal tech sneaking off to use a stolen key to enter the Chairman’s quarters. Turns out that she’s another one of the game’s main characters, the secret agent Black Orchid. Finding out about the Fulgore project, she knows that this is going to lead to a cliché humans vs. robots war. For whatever reason, she figures that rather than all this covert stuff, she should just enter the tournament and work it out from there. That’ll show them!

The next day, they have the Killer Instinct semi-finals, showing that Art Holcomb doesn’t have much of an idea of how tournaments work. Especially when you consider that Orchid and Jago just joined the thing and there are more than four guys active. Anyway, they focus on Orchid, Jago and Killer Instinct veteran Chief Thunder, which makes sense. These three are the only good guys in the story who aren’t dependant of Ultratech.

Orchid debuts against Thunder. The fight goes back and forth, but after Thunder misses a killing blow, Orchid goes to town on him.

Orchid lets Thunder live and leaves, despite personnel explaining to her that they can’t register the win if she doesn’t finish him off. Jago watches this with great interest and begins to rethink his own reasoning.

Later on, in a brutal and rather pretty fight against the werewolf Sabrewulf, Jago wins and gets ready to decapitate him with his sword. Sabrewulf, long suffering from his own disorder, begs him to get it done. Instead, Jago walks away. From his hospital bed, T.J. Combo watches this, confused. Later on, he confronts Jago about it.

As you can see, this comic desperately needed an editor.

There’s a subplot going on about the Chairman and his obsession with listening to “the voices”. Much like Jago hearing the Tiger Spirit’s voice for most of his life, the Chairman has been listening to another set of voices that have led him to greatness. This has led him to work towards creating a portal generator to Limbo. As the Ultratech employees look on in horror, Eyedol, a large, two-headed monster with a club and goat legs enters our realm. The Chairman welcomes him with open arms and calls him master.

The second issue’s climax shows Orchid vs. Fulgore. Again, a well-drawn fight with cheesy dialogue (like Orchid telling the robot, “DIE IF YOU CAN!”). After destroying Fulgore, Orchid is congratulated by the Chairman, who voids her victory by revealing that he now knows who she is and what she’s been doing. With her snooping around so much, the Chairman believes that he should be doing something to improve security. That segues into him revealing Eyedol to the world.

He reveals to the world that Orchid is a traitor who wants to end the Killer Instinct games. Jago and Thunder are guilty by association, which is like saying that you are associated with the guy who held the door open for you at the bank. Because of Orchid’s “threat” to Ultratech, Eyedol has declared martial law on Ultratech City. This means that a bunch of Fulgores are going around stabbing people for their own protection.

The good guys are to deal with Glacius, another Riptor clone, Spinal and two more Fulgore models. T.J. Combo powers through the crowd and makes his way into the fray, coming to the rescue of Orchid, deciding that he wants to be one of the good guys. Orchid and Jago tear apart the two Fulgores and make their way to the Chairman’s quarters.

Eyedol lectures the Chairman on how lame martial law is. “We have commanded legions of the undead. Fought battle to where bodies of our enemies littered the landscape for as far as our eyes could see. You have merely made your people… inconvenienced. We will soon show you what power is.”

Orchid and Jago bust in. Eyedol recognizes the Tiger Spirit presence that comes with Jago and decides to fight him, while commanding the Chairman to deal with Orchid. After some hesitation, the Chairman just high-tails it out of there with Orchid giving chase.

Jago wins the fight and the Tiger Spirit makes his presence known. The Tiger Spirit admits to having battled Eyedol in Limbo and eggs on Jago to kill Eyedol and end the terror once and for all. Jago decides that he won’t kill, even if it’s someone as evil as Eyedol. While the two are having this conversation, Eyedol stands back up and heals back to full strength.

Orchid corners the Chairman and gets ready to kill him, but the Tiger Spirit calls to her with insistence that Jago needs help. Orchid leaves the Chairman, who feels a bit disrespected, and joins Jago in the fight. She turns the portal back on and the two toss Eyedol back to Limbo. Jago feels that this way, he can keep Eyedol in check without having to sacrifice his own soul.

The epilogue has Jago and Orchid discuss their plans. Jago no longer senses the Tiger Spirit, but feels pulled towards the mountains in the east. Orchid feel the need to stick around and help rebuild. They should probably do something about all those Fulgore robots killing civilians, but that’s just me. Before going their separate ways, Jago states, “Stay forever vigilant. For I tell you, the night is coming!”

Um… okay. Overall, not too awful. The story wasn’t all that hot, but considering what they had to work with, it wasn’t the worst thing ever. Three more issues didn’t sound all that bad. Sadly, that wasn’t the case.

In terms of the game’s storyline, after Eyedol was defeated, a time rift happened and some of the competitors were pulled back 2,000 years in the past. The Tiger Spirit manifested itself as Eyedol’s evil rival Gargos and a couple lame new characters showed up to help kill him. Not great, but it was a development at the very least. They decided not to go with that in the comic.

Instead, the final three issues – labeled as specials – take place after the first three issues, but act like the tournament is still going on. Orchid and Jago, despite the stuff they said they would do, are still competing in the Killer Instinct contest for no reason. Hell, in the next issue, the Chairman kills his own replacement and gets back to work like nothing happened. Except now he has a blond henchwoman named Kara doing his dirty work.

The first special opens with Jago fighting Riptor. It’s stated that the day before, Jago had a rematch with Sabrewulf, where Sabrewulf had wounded Jago pretty badly. Jago still takes on the next challenge, which annoys Orchid. Chief Thunder is quick to point out that Orchid would do the same in that situation, working as a bit of foreshadowing.

Jago succumbs to the wound during the fight and Orchid is the only thing keeping Riptor from finishing the job. After making sure Jago is tended to, she confronts Sabrewulf and finds out that he may have accidentally infected him with lycanthropy. D’oh! Sabrewulf defends his actions by bringing up the reason he’s in the tournament in the first place: Ultratech has the cure for the werewolf virus and will give it to him if he fights in the tournament long enough. Since Orchid knows the Chairman won’t flat out give the cure to Jago, she and Sabrewulf decide to figure out where Ultratech is holding it.

While in Orchid’s quarters, Sabrewulf notices the only photo she has of her long-lost family. Sabrewulf makes mention of how much Orchid looked like her brother and then sulks about how he has no family. During a Thunder vs. Cinder match, Orchid and Sabrewulf sneak around and enter where they figure the cure is kept. They’re met by Kara and a couple Riptor clones, out to protect the serum. Sabrewulf is having none of that shit.

He tears into the dinosaurs and finds a flask of bubbling liquid. Not listening to Orchid, he downs a bunch of it without thinking twice about it. Instead of being cured, he gets covered in this nasty green goop, grows into a giant and smashes out of the building. Turns out it wasn’t the right serum. Whoops. Now, you’d think turning into a giant, walking swamp on a rampage would be a major setback, but surprisingly no. There’s no actual closure to this. He’s just back to normal in a later issue with no explanation.

Orchid goes to visit Jago and finds him almost completely covered in brown fur. The Chairman is excited as they can finally remove Jago’s mask. The doctor there says he wanted to respect Jago’s wishes and keep it on for as long as he could, but the man needs a respirator to stay alive. They take the mask off and you really can’t make out much of his face due to him having become a full-on werewolf. A full-on werewolf with a birthmark on his upper-lip. A full-on werewolf with the same birthmark on his upper-lip as the one Orchid’s brother has in her old family photo.

The doctor says that the only way he can cure Jago is by either getting some of his DNA from before the infection or getting the DNA of a parent or sibling. Orchid figures out that Jago is her long-lost brother and the issue just plain ends right there.

The next story is more of a mess. It’s about Glacius, the icy alien whose ship crashes near a ski resort. He uses the surrounding snow to heal himself, sends a beacon to his brethren to pick him up and searches a hardware store for parts to help repair the ship. Entertaining bit is when he sees a barbecue grill and believes it to be an alter for a fire god.

Ultratech finds him and takes him in. The Chairman says that if Glacius fights in the tournament during his time on Earth, he’ll let him live to see his people again. With no choice, Glacius reluctantly agrees. He’s handed over to Cinder for fight training. Cinder is a criminal turned into a permanent Human Torch, thanks to a faulty Ultratech experiment. As he later explains to Glacius, he wants one of two things: either to get cured by Ultratech as a reward for his fighting or to get killed.

Right on cue, the sprinkler system goes off in the training room. It causes Cinder to collapse in paralyzing, agonizing pain. So he’s in that room just about everyday, but it just so happens that this time his fiery body sets off the sprinklers. Sure, okay! It looks like Cinder’s going to die from this, but Glacius saves his life. Cinder reacts by pointing out that he wants to die. Furious, he tells Glacius that he’s going to kill him the first chance he gets.

I should also add that the sprinklers were turned off by Black Orchid, not as an undercover tech, but as a fellow fighter in her trademark green leotard. Continuity just exploded.

In the tournament, Glacius dominates against everyone he goes up against. He begins to get into it and enjoys the cheers of the adoring crowd. By the point where he finds himself holding Spinal’s disembodied skull in his hand, he finds that the quicker he leaves this planet, the better. Thankfully, the Chairman has agreed to set him free to meet with his alien people, who should be arriving on Earth any day now. Cinder seems to be a bit bitter about this.

On the site where Glacius’ ice alien brethren are set to land, there are a ton of witnesses. Mainly, they are Ultratech soldiers and other Killer Instinct fighters. Glacius slowly comes to realize that Ultratech is going to attack his people. As pissed as he is, Glacius doesn’t do anything about it, since he figures his boys could wipe out Ultratech’s army easy. A shuttle is released to pick up Glacius and Cinder all of the sudden runs off towards the control console for the cannon they are going to use to shoot it down. He fries the console and gets attacked by a handful of Killer Instinct combatants. Glacius joins the fray and fights alongside his fiery counterpart. For some reason, a bunch of good guys like Combo and Thunder are on Ultratech’s side in this.

A tank fires a laser blast at Glacius, but Cinder takes the brunt of it instead. Seeing the severity of Cinder’s wound, Glacius holds Cinder in his arms and cools him down to the point that Cinder will finally get the sweet death he’s been craving. For the first page, this is a fantastic death scene. Cinder’s face becomes more human, he smiles a bit and says how he can feel the fire dying. His word bubbles begin to lose the orange gradient and go back to normal white. Then his eyes close, his head goes limp and he somehow sheds a tear. Really nice.

Only on the next page, he then flies upwards, yelling, “I AM FREE!” Uh… okay.

With Cinder gone, Glacius says, “In the next few minutes, the humans will meet my people… and the next few minutes will seal all our fates.” Meanwhile, more military vehicles show up, as do news vans. It looks as if the battle between Earth and the ice aliens is about to continue with a huge climax… but it doesn’t. It just ends. No conclusion whatsoever.

The final issue looks beautiful, especially in terms of the panel layouts, but feels as if the writer was in a massive rush to get it done. The main character is Chief Thunder, which fits pretty well. What I mean is that this is the last issue before cancellation and it centers on the guy so unpopular that he didn’t even make the game’s sequel. He doesn’t even get to be on the cover for this issue.

Chief Thunder had originally entered the Killer Instinct tournament to get answers on the disappearance of his brother, Black Eagle. As shown via flashback, Black Eagle won the previous year’s tournament. When flashing back to that tournament, it shows Orchid fighting Jago. How do they screw up continuity this badly when they only have six issues to go on?

Eagle wins, does a moving “corporations suck” speech and is never heard from again. Thunder figured he could find him and bring him back home, but now thinks that he’s gotten too into the fighting. He has a tribe to lead and a hot wife to go back home to, so he needs some closure quick. With Orchid’s help, he meditates and calls upon the great spirits to give him answers.

What he gets is a vision where he fights Fulgore, who seems a bit different for reasons he can’t comprehend. The two hit each other at the same time, causing Fulgore to fall and Thunder to become so distraught that he too falls to the ground. An eagle flies down and lands between the two.

There’s a lot to laugh about with this panel. The unnatural dialogue exchange, the completely unnecessary emphasis in Orchid’s word bubble, Thunder looking to have the same facial scars as Heath Ledger Joker. I’m glad this is the last one of these I have to review.

The Chairman is finally getting yelled at by the stockholders, meaning he has to cut back on some of his projects. To keep the Fulgore project under budget, he’s had to make some adjustments. He and his assistant Kara will have a control box to shift the new Fulgore’s power during the match. At a crucial moment, they’ll drop the power completely so that Thunder can easily destroy it. For the reader, it’s pretty obvious by this point that Black Eagle is inside the Fulgore costume, tying in with Thunder’s vision. That just goes to show what a really awful villain this Chairman guy is. He’s going to deface and discredit his top moneymaker for the sake of ruining one guy’s day. I liked it better when Eyedol was around.

The fight happens and it’s mostly what you’d expect. They turn the power down on Fulgore and Thunder smacks him around. Black Eagle breaks through the programming and talks to his brother. Thunder removes the Fulgore helmet, showing Eagle to look like post-cyborg Anakin Skywalker, and they both leave the arena. That’s it.

This comic is just a series of badly-written endings. Even when we get a semblance of closure, they don’t even give it space for a real conclusion. It just ends.

It looks to me that the writer took the three issue arc somewhat seriously, but decided he didn’t give much of a damn after that and phoned it in for the remainder.

On the upside, it did have this scene.

“Mortal Kombat: Armageddon marks a significant milestone in the franchise as it’s the final Mortal Kombat title to be released on current generation systems,” said Steve Allison, chief marketing officer, Midway. “Mortal Kombat: Armageddon also contains gameplay features that series co–creator Ed Boon and team have always wanted to implement, such as create–a–fighter and create–a–fatality modes, and the option to choose from over 60 of the most popular Mortal Kombat fighters.”