We all remember those Mortal Kombat rumors: Ermac in the original Mortal Kombat, the Living Forest stage fatality in Mortal Kombat II, the blood-red ninja Scarlett in MKII and so on. In the upcoming reboot of Mortal Kombat, the developers sought to turn those old-school rumors into reality.
"The fans imagined and made rumors up of things that weren’t actually there for stage fatalities [among other elements]," said NetherRealm Lead Designer John Edwards in a recent conference call with PlayStation Universe. "In a lot of cases, we fed off of those old-school rumors and turned them into realities this time around."
In the arcade version of Mortal Kombat II, a glitch would occasionally transform the female ninja character costume blood-red. There was no official name for this character, but fans dubbed her Scarlett. In NetherRealm’s Mortal Kombat, Scarlett returns as a fully-realized (downloadable) character.
"With the retelling of Mortal Kombat I, II, and III, it wasn’t a necessity to create a new character and try to shoehorn them into that lore — we really wanted to make sure we focused on the history that the fans knew about the franchise," said Mortal Kombat Producer Hector Sanchez. "But with DLC, not being held to the confines of the story and creating a new character is something the team really sunk its teeth into, and we think that people are really going to be happy when they see it."
"All the stuff we like to do is based on the rumor mill from back in the arcade days," elaborated NetherRealm’s John Edwards. "As much as she is a new character, Scarlett is a rumored character from the past, fully fleshed out and realized for this new generation."
Scarlett is not the only inclusion from old Mortal Kombat days, but when pressed for specifics, the NetherRealm team remained relatively coy. Stage fatalities will feature prominently, however.
"We want to have stage fatalities in as many stages as possible," said MK Lead Designer Paulo Garcia, "and in this game we started planning from the get-go for the stages to have stage fatalities."
Mortal Kombat is set to launch next Tuesday, April 19, in North America, and two days later, April 21, in Europe.