Mortal Kombat VS DC: Midway Interview

Midway's Senior Producer Hans Lo reveals the secrets of the DC Universe tie-in.

Page: 1  2  3  4 

Page 2

Kikizo: Where did the move to team up with DC come from? Did you think Mortal Kombat wouldn't have been enough on its own? Did you look at a stand-alone DC fighting game, even?

Lo: Ed has always wanted to do a mash-up - that was one of his dreams. His dream is MK versus Street Fighter, that's obviously the game he wants to make more than anything else in the world. For various reasons that's obviously not going to happen anytime soon! [laughs] So somebody in our marketing department actually knew somebody in business development at DC, and they kind of concocted this idea and brought it up...

Kikizo: How senior were those people?

Lo: Pretty senior, they were pretty high up. And they came and they presented and said, "Hey, we have the opportunity to license these characters - how would you guys feel about putting them in the universe?" And everybody kind of jumped on it, thought it was a cool idea. Just the novelty of having Scorpion and Batman on the screen at the same time... And it allows us to open up a new generation of kids' eyes to the Mortal Kombat franchise, because kids who are 11 or 12 right now have no idea who any of these people are.

They don't know who Scorpion is, they don't know who Sub-Zero is, they haven't seen the Mortal Kombat movies... I don't want to say it's dated, but it definitely has its niche core audience that's not as mainstream as Batman and Superman. So I think people will be intrigued by the fact that Batman and Superman are in this game, and as they play it they'll see these character models, and they'll be like "Who's this yellow ninja in the back? Who is that guy? What's his story?" And as they play it they'll be like "Oh yeah this guy's pretty cool." And it'll give us a lot of exposure.

Kikizo: It does make good strategic sense I guess. And even if you're a DC fan, this is the first time you can go one-on-one with a DC fighter...

Lo: Exactly, exactly. And we've made of point of making sure all the characters are balanced. So even if you don't like Mortal Kombat, you can come in and play this game and there's still enough variety that you'll be able to play Green Lantern versus Flash, Batman versus Superman, Catwoman versus Wonderwoman, those kinds of things. We actually have an option in our single player where you do the traditional arcade style of Mortal Kombat - you just pick a character and try to fight up the ladder. But we actually have it so you can pick a character, and choose which ladder you want to play. You can play a mixed ladder, or just Mortal Kombat, or all DC characters. It's up to you.

Kikizo: Is the order you fight them in randomised?

Lo: Yes, it's not always the same. The final two bosses will always be the same - there will be the final end boss, and then on the DC side the sub-boss will always be Darkseid, just like Goro was the sub-boss and then Shang Tsung in the first MK. For the Mortal Kombat side the sub-boss is Shao Khan and then the ultimate boss is Dark Khan.

Kikizo: You've got a story mode. How have you managed to get the DC guys working with the Mortal Kombat crew in one narrative?

Lo: We had to make it make sense. We didn't want it to be like Marvel versus Capcom where it was just a bunch of random... The Hulk and Akuma fighting each other, and you're like, "Why are they fighting each other? I don't know, but it looks cool. Just go ahead and do it." We really wanted there to be a reason why Scorpion is in Gotham City, why Superman is in hell.

So we contracted the DC writers Justin Gray and Palmiotti to help us craft the story of what could possibly happen in these two universes that's causing them to interpolate and transpose characters from each realm. So the story mode basically tells that story - when you go into story mode you'll be able to choose which side you want to play... And what it is, is a series of events that are happening simultaneously in both worlds, but by choosing which side you want to play as you see it from that side's perspective.

So if you pick the MK side you're going to start off in the MK universe... when you beat the MK side you'll be able to go back to the DC side and see what was happening in the other universe. So, all of a sudden Scorpion disappeared and nobody knew where he went, everybody spent a chapter looking for him... but when you play DC all of a sudden Scorpion's the enemy and everybody's like "Who is this guy?" He's just trying to figure out what the hell's happening. So it's very cool, very robust...

Page: 1  2  3  4 

NEXT PAGE >>