Mortal Kombat VS DC: Midway Interview

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

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Kikizo: And there are things like parries, counter moves, and so on?

Lo: Yeah, certain characters have certain parry moves - Sub-Zero has his ice clone move where he freezes himself, and if you hit him he attacks the other person. Joker has his hand buzzer, where he holds his hand out and if you attack him he freezes you. We also have the Breaker system which is where you build up your Rage and earn Breakers... we've had Breakers in the last few Mortal Kombats, but now you have to earn them versus just being granted them at the beginning of the match, and that gives you another ability to break up somebody else's combos.

Kikizo: To finish with I'd like to ask another IP question - you mentioned that Ed Boon's dream was to put Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter in the same box, but what about within the realm of comics? Would it be possible to get DC and Marvel in the same universe? I don't know what the politics are between those guys, but is that something you'd like to work on?

Lo: You know, we actually had that discussion - one of those four-a-clock in the morning, super-late nights where everyone's just fried and it's like, let's all go to the conference room, eat doughnuts and drink coffee, and we totally got into how it would be awesome to make a Marvel versus DC comic book.

And then it went to the next level, where Ed says it's Marvel versus Capcom, and it's MK versus DC - why don't we do Marvel versus DC versus Street Fighter versus MK! [laughs] Who knows. That's a business development question - from a creative standpoint we'd love to do it, absolutely. From a business standpoint, can we get it to work? I don't know, I don't have an MBA, and I'm not privy to the licensing fees that are associated...

Kikizo: But even taking that into account, everybody's sort of letting their hair down more with the game industry these days, whether it's the music industry or whatever... I suppose it's a question of whether two rival comic book publishers want to work together.

Lo: From experience of working with DC, they're definitely going to protect their brand. There were a couple of instances of "You can't do that," or "Why does this move..." or "That would be stronger" - they're definitely trying to protect their brand. But we're trying to make a game, and they have to understand that we're trying to do the gameplay balancing - we can't just have Superman be invulnerable to everything and all of his moves... that wouldn't be fun! Everybody would pick Superman all the time.

So it's getting them to understand gameplay mechanics whereas these are brand managers who think differently, they just want to protect the image of their character versus trying to make a good game. The headaches involved in trying to get a Marvel versus DC game - who knows how deep those could go.

Kikizo: It would certainly be a challenge...

Lo: Yeah it would be a challenge, and God bless whoever gets that to happen! But it's definitely possible.

Kikizo: Did you use Marvel versus Capcom and similar cross-over titles as a point of reference?

Lo: We definitely have a few copies floating around the office, so we can look at how they did certain things, but this is its own game and it stands up on its own. One thing we realised from those games was that there was no story, and we definitely wanted to have a story with our game.

Kikizo: Thanks for your time.

Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe is available right this very moment for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

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