Mortal Kombat Remakes - What Happened?

[Music] [Applause] [Music] welcome back to another spine-ripping bone-crushing input reading episode of what happened the show that does the thing you should all know by now with that said do you know who doesn't do the thing well that would be wb games and the thing in question well that would be remaking mortal kombat thanks to morales down at the flophouse vip patreon it's time for us to talk about one of those understated but nonetheless incredibly messed up stories that have been going on for the past decade there's been not one not two but three mortal kombat projects that sought to remake the classic trilogy that for a variety of reasons were sent sailing into the spiky uncomfortableness that is the pit this is a truly baffling tale especially when you consider the incredible longevity of the mortal kombat franchise itself which has certainly had its ups and it's massive crippling downs what martial arts and this show has to present is all positive messages what sort of positive messages so grab your rope spear ninja mask and your little sheet of combat codes it's time to find out what happened to the mortal kombat remake it has begun it's 2010 and a mysterious listing for a new mortal kombat title popped up on the gamestop website with zero warning like it's a secret fighter in the living forest or some [ __ ] mortal kombat hd arcade collection was listed as a 40 dollar physical disk and its existence was news to pretty much everyone mortal kombat 9 had already been announced by wb games and netherrealm studios after midways collapsed just a year before and ever since then warner brothers has always gone out of its way to market the ever loving [ __ ] out of it it's then therefore especially weird for another totally different project to suddenly get leaked with no formal announcement to follow usually when a game gets outed via an online listing or korean ratings board entry which happens a lot the associated publisher is quick to put out a formal press release that's a mug you don't want to chug now for whatever reason mortal kombat hdrk collection never got that the entry was discovered that september and was pegged with a november 16th release day which is oddly specific so when that date came and went mk fans were left scratching their heads until they were raw and bloody was it a legit game some type of listing error or was this an elaborate troll from ed boon like we've seen so many times before since then though it's been revealed that other ocean was tasked with the daunting task of making three games all at the same time mortal kombat 1 2 and ultimate mk3 striker's police brutality defund striker now while specifics on the project were not known at the time what they were aiming for was built from the ground up remakes hiring new actors to portray every character and digitizing them with more modern techniques the plan was to bulk record each game's roster their movements special attacks and all their fatalities in one giant recording session so other ocean could take all that data and start putting together each game what you're seeing here is set picks of those recording sessions we've got mk2 and umk3 katana sonia liu kang literally everyone is here this was all going down during the bulk of 2010 but towards the end of the year the project went through some uh reorganization in a sense deleted blog posts by former other ocean ui artist john montenegro he stated that while he was excited to have been working on the project that eventually had its scope changed which 90 of the time translates to the [ __ ] is too expensive and it's taking too long now two things could have happened here either wb didn't want to foot the bill for a project they didn't have faith in to begin with or there were concrete technical and logistical hurdles other ocean were running into the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle as it so often does since its cancellation multiple other ocean staffers showed off work that never saw the light of day redrawn sprites for various animalities and other effects more actor set pictures various unused ui elements but all this really did was rub salt into the wound because it looked far better and more ambitious than what the final game wound up being what final game do you ask well that would be the infamous mortal kombat arcade collection minus the hd which was released august of 2011 just a few months after mk9 as you can all probably guess this is what the scope changed into since all the other work was scrapped likely because it was going to be too expensive and take too long other ocean and code mystics had to try to salvage the whole idea with a simple uprezing of the arcade roms with online play slapped on top with not a lot of time afforded to them like at all these were three extremely bare bones ports of the classic games there were move lists a filter or two and that's pretty much it now this collection was also being touted as arcade perfect and uh was it i don't think so there was enormous amounts of input lag even when playing offline just pausing and unpausing the game would cause a one to two second delay before you could control your character again there are various audio issues combat codes wouldn't work properly you couldn't fully remap controls the fonts and texts were too hard to read and to top it all off this collection was released the very same week as third strike online edition debatably one of the best examples of remastering an old fighting game for [ __ ] sake capcom just re-release that version anyway with all these issues reviews were not great as you'd expect but in a brilliant move someone thought man we can't charge a lot for this so arcade collection was priced at a cool 10 now if you liked fighting games what would you buy that week third strike with near flawless rollback netcode tons of unlockables challenge trials integrated youtube uploading and a bunch of visual options for fifteen dollars or the first three mortal kombats with terrible netcode tons of bugs and that's it for five dollars less not exactly sophie's choice the mk arcade collection was released on the ps3 and 360 but never got ported to anything else now there was a steam version released in 2012 but that was originally released under games for windows live that's a nightmare frontier no one wants to revisit but what that meant was when geful was abandoned by microsoft warner brothers didn't even bother to bring it over to steamworks thus arcade collection's mortal coil vanished from this world he's about to get his soul sucked now normally this is where our story would end but let's rewind a bit back to 2015 where ed beezy himself tweeted hi-res combat one of these days i'll post an article explaining how the mkhd edition never came to be 2015 he wrote that so i i guess that article is still being written the screenshot ed posted is rather interesting and extremely confusing it most likely isn't a screenshot at all but instead a quickly made mock-up if we zoom in right here we have what looks like fonts and ui from mk9 mk2 liu kang facing off with mk3 sonia in an mk1 background and finally versus screen art of two classic mk actors yo what's up carrie hoskins you're a national treasure appreciate you queen that last little detail is the dead giveaway that this screenshot isn't a behind-the-scenes sneak peek of the game at all but yeah it was clear ed seemed to greatly lament what went down or what didn't go down with this remake and it's with ed we're going to stay because this was just the first round of this tragically troubled tournament around 2017 a group of fan modders named eyeballistic were in the middle of their own project known as mortal kombat hd slash mortal kombat returns which was an attempt to pick up where other ocean were forced to leave off now obviously being a small team of fans they opted for detailed rendered models instead of paying actors to bicycle kick in front of a green screen one of those character modelers was contacted by a rep at warner brothers who said they had been following the project with interest but they would need to take down the website and to not distribute any further builds as warner brothers simply couldn't abide having such a game exists without their consent now there's lots of fan games based on mortal kombat like like literally thousands i've even played quite a few on this channel so you may be asking why was this one getting targeted well sometimes the reason is because [ __ ] you that's why but then there's the times where the ip holder actually has an interest in the idea so what did the team do well they decided to take this venture more seriously and began registering and trademarking the original work they were putting into the game some art assets music and sound effects as their own which is not an attempt to claim ownership of mk imagery mind you but to take steps to legitimize what they were doing and to pitch the project officially to wb the team started finalizing a polished mugen build of the game and eventually were able to get it in front of ed boon who reportedly was so impressed with the team had done he set up an official meeting with wb producers in the hopes that the project would get a green light the playable build was presented and those wb higher-ups were actually impressed but to get a green light there was going to be a big caveat since the team were inexperienced modders wb mandated they would need to find an official studio with a business license to help them develop the game unfortunately they were not going to assist in this process and thus was up to eyeballistic to choose their destiny and after three months of searching they did just that in a follow-up meeting they presented the game again a rough estimate of how much it would cost to develop it with their new partner and that's when wb happily said yeah no thanks whatever the estimated cost of this remake was it was apparently a barrier wb simply weren't willing to break bit of context here not sure how many of you have realized but the brothers warner actually owned quite a few midway properties outside immortal combat but you'll be excused if you didn't this is because they do precisely two things of all these ips jack and [ __ ] and jack left town this is a subtle reference to ash williams never come in mk 11 despite there being a mountain of evidence he was at one point well that's just what we call pillow talk baby aside from one bad rampage arcade game and that uninspired gauntlet reboot from like seven years ago they routinely leave all these ips on the shelf to gather dust no remasters re-releases reboots just anything of the re nature this bias against the old seems to be a sticking point for the higher ups at wb even when it comes to mortal kombat a franchise whose last three entries have sold more units than the populations of a lot of countries regardless the team were told if they could re-pitch the project in another year with a lower price tag wb would consider using it to co-promote the then upcoming mk11 much like how the original other ocean version was meant to coincide with mk9 despite the setback eyeballistic persevered switching over to another more professional engine ditching mugen and hiring a smaller studio to help them cross the finish line with an even better build this resulted in the game you're looking at right now initially the team were focused on nailing down an mk1 remake with the intent to do the first three games after the green light was granted so one year later they were back in front of ed boon and wb pitching the game once again and things went even better ed enthusiastically gave his blessing and after literally doing everything they asked wb were inclined to agree eyeballistic were allegedly told your project is heading towards a green light which i can't even imagine how good it must have felt to here so without being the high let's take it down low real low one week later the team were contacted by wb once again but the conversation was decidedly different sorry we've decided to go in a different direction and won't be needing your team we can't trust the development of such an important project to a team without any completed game titles and that was the end of that sadly despite all the hoops eyeballistic jumped through getting ed's approval finding a professional partner bringing the cost down it simply wasn't enough to please the brutal emperor that was warner khan and it is glorious but what was that new direction they alluded to well if you guessed absolutely nothing you'd be right kinda here is where the third and final cancelled remake enters the tournament another remake that was being pitched to wb at the exact same time now to be fair this is a common practice the studios know a particular publisher or rights holder is down to [ __ ] they'll all start knocking at the door at the same time for example both double helix and iron galaxy were pitching their own unique versions of a killer instinct reboot to microsoft who then went with the double helix version in the end so who was this other developer this other direction that wb was so smitten with well that would be blind squirrel games the studio behind the recent mass effect remasters and of course sonic colors ultimate god i love doing the show this game mortal kombat collection online was officially greenlit as confirmed by several blind squirrel employees wb obviously sided with blind squirrel because they had shipped a few games in a professional capacity which seemed to be really important to them for some reason in the end though it didn't seem to matter all that much because try to be shocked here this collection then took a dip into the deadpool the only surviving shreds of this project are the following screens that show off menus and some ui elements and if you squint really hard you can see how scorpion sub-zero might have looked blind squirrel employees further confirmed that this collection was indeed canceled sometime in 2019 the same year that mk 11 was released but as of this writing no one has cited a reason as to why but the story only gets weirder in january of 2020 a new european ratings listing suddenly popped up god bless you peggy revealing that mk collection online was slash is real and even had an official logo to go with it as well as target platforms now i have a few theories just spitballing here it's very possible that wb might have cut ties with blind squirrel and moved the project elsewhere because for a listing to silently appear in january of 2020 well someone at wb had to click a button this date is important for another reason as it was right on the cusp of kovid mania messing up the entire planet it's a pretty reasonable leap to assume that this might have delayed the development of such a collection either a brand new one or whatever the blind squirrel version wound up being now i realize it's currently november 2021 and any news of a remake is as silent or as inactive as a sue howe fan it's page to be hated but if you examine this situation from a marketing perspective it starts making a weird sort of sense wb wanted mk 11 to fully run its course which culminated in the release of the movie skins pack at the end of 2020 the last major piece of dlc then in june of this year netherrealm announced that mk 11's post-launch content was finished and that they're moving on to another project now we don't have confirmation as of yet what that's going to entail it could be anything from injustice 3 mk12 or the marvel fighting game that max really wants but is probably not gonna get but is probably gonna get future viewers ignore whichever one of those statements winds up being wrong the reason why i bring this all up is simple 2022 marks mortal kombat's 30th anniversary as the first game released back in 1992. having a bit of insight into how marketing execs think it's not hard to imagine that with all the delays throughout 2020 and into 2021 someone said oh hey wait it's going to be the 30th anniversary pretty soon let's tap into that synergy now i'm not 100 for sure saying this will be the case but the fact that the peggy listing existed the 30th anniversary is coming up and mk fans are gonna want some new content pretty soon it's within another realm of possibility that there could be something in the works to celebrate 30 years of this legendary franchise or it could be cancelled for a fourth time i wouldn't be [ __ ] surprised at this point thanks again to morales for nominating mk remakes for this week's episode and if you'd like to do much the same head on over to the temples of the flophouse vip patreon and become a big boss and nominate what you'd like to see in the future see you next combat time and and thanks for watching [Music] foreign [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Matt McMuscles

Views: 430,980

Keywords: Matt McMuscles, What Happened?, Wha Happun?, Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat Remake, Cancelled Mortal Kombat games, Cancelled Mortal Kombat Remakes, Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection

Id: 29pNd-i4ykM

Length: 19min 23sec (1163 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 20 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/The_Draigg]

It's a bummer that Warner Bros. just won't stop being such shits about older games, whether it be Mortal Kombat remakes or sitting on the rights to a bunch of Midway IPs but not doing anything with them. Like, if they weren't being Atlus-level dinosaurs, we could probably get some good games from older franchises out there.

[u/Shrekt115]

Fun fact, Rebel from AEW worked as a makeup artist for these games, the same pic is actually used in this vid too at around 4:26

That Army of Darkness quote tho, still sad about no Ash in MK11 :(

[u/LammasuRex]

Why am I like the only person that likes Stryker?