By Louis Bedigian
GameZone.com
Buyouts are a scary thing. Gamers despise them, developers don’t like to talk about them, and publishers see them as a good way to acquire talent they couldn’t foster on their own. With all the bad games and studio closures that have followed these asinine acquisitions, isn’t it about time we encountered a buyout that actually improved a video game franchise?
When WB Games began to take the Mortal Kombat license from Midway, fans feared the worst.
Midway was the studio that gave birth to fatalities, blood and guts, obnoxious attack moves, and everything else that made Mortal Kombat a monumental franchise. If WB Games – who seemed to support the idea of replacing gore with comic book characters – was going to be the new owner, what would that mean for the series’ future?
Let’s not kid ourselves. Midway screwed the Mortal Kombat franchise the moment the fourth installment was released in 1997. Depth and character individuality were thrown out the window, and in a few short years the series had fallen behind Tekken and the new kid on the block, Soul Calibur. Midway dug itself into a hole, and though it tried to climb its way out with a little Deception and a lot of Armageddon, the publisher was not completely successful.
Still, our love for Mortal Kombat never faded. We bought millions of copies of the PS2 and Xbox sequels, even though they were barely a replacement for the fighting games we already had.
The situation worsened after the release of Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, a fighting game that was considered a decent addition to the genre, but was by no means a great Mortal Kombat sequel. I haven’t touched it in a year, but I still play Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3.
If nothing else, WB Games clearly had an appreciation for the series’ highly devoted fan base. After months of speculation, the company acquired the majority of Midway’s assets for $49 million – up $16 million from the initial $33 million bid.
Since it is unlikely that the smaller assets will turn a profit, Warner Bros. essentially paid all that money to gain control of one of the biggest fighting games in history.
This summer, we finally found out why. Warner Bros. did not purchase Mortal Kombat to expand DC Comics or to exploit the fighting franchise as a cash cow. The studio acquired this beloved series because it saw an opportunity to support the developer’s return to its roots – and make a hefty profit in the process.
Led by Ed Boon and other series veterans at NetherRealm Studios (formerly WB Games Chicago), the new Mortal Kombat looks and sounds like the game we have been waiting for. It offers the intense combos of MK3, the classic juggles of MK2, and introduces a ton of new moves for the game’s 26 characters. When it comes to blood and gore, the developers aren’t holding back. If you haven’t seen the trailer, watch it now.
Character individuality, an element that can make or break a fighting game’s success, is being stressed with the new Mortal Kombat. In a nutshell, it’s the sequel we should have gotten in 1997. Better 14 years later than never, eh?
The buzz has been huge. Even before E3, fans were going crazy at the prospect of a new Mortal Kombat, which many of us hoped would return the series to its bloody roots. The MK Rebirth short – filmed as an unofficial pitch for a full-length feature – made the pre-E3 buzz even stronger.
I first watched it one week before E3; at that time, the video hadn’t even garnered 100,000 views. But as of this writing, more than four million people have watched it on YouTube. Any bets on how many of them are eager to play the new game?
While there’s always room for disappointment, I’m confident that Mortal Kombat is finally in good hands. In fact, I’m so confident that I plan to do something I’ve never done before: purchase the game’s DLC. Sometime after the game is released, WB Games will begin selling character DLC that will expand the game’s lineup beyond its initial 26 character offering.
If the finished game turns out to be even half of what it appears to be, Mortal Kombat will become a legend among gamers and game publishers alike. We will cherish it as the game that returned the series to glory, while publishers will finally have a game to argue in favor of their acquisition dreams.
