The 3D era of Mortal Kombat took a lot of chances and tried a lot of new things, enough of which worked that the franchise continued, but many of which simply did not. Some of the series’ most disliked characters popped up during this period (roughly the 2000’s) many of whom haven’t been seen since.
The big news for Mortal Kombat 1 right now is the welcoming of the next DLC character, Ermac, who is bringing yet another character with him as a kameo fighter: Mavado. In their latest video Ketchup and Mustard introduce and offer us the history of Mavado to get us prepared for what’s hopefully a redeeming appearance for the character.
Mavado had and still has potential as a Mortal Kombat character. Introduced in 2002’s Deadly Alliance Mavado is the head of the Red Dragon criminal syndicate, a then-new clan introduced to clash and mix with the similar Black Dragon criminal syndicate.
His appearance was menacing, but it’s when he started fighting that fans took issue. First of all, he was introduced with a backstory that saw him kill fan favorite Kabal (meaning this was something of a Kabal replacement for DA) and steal his iconic hookswords.
Second, Mavado’s trademark weapons were a pair of spings that he could hook into the ground and use to propel himself about in admittedly interesting ways. The problem with these was the fact that they made a Looney Tunes like stretching noise just about every time they were utilized, and this could easily through players out of the seriousness of the action.
Things only got worse when Mavado went into his one and only Fatality which saw him use the springs to set himself up in an extremely cartoonish manner (he does the whole “gravity doesn’t work on me for a second” gimmick we often see toons go through before they realize they’re about to fall from a great distance) for a less than satisfying cleat impalement.
The thing about Kameos in MK1 is that their aimed at capturing the nostalgic essence of the characters chosen, and so it’ll be very interesting to see how NRS handles the Red Dragon returner.
Check out the full video here to hear all the important details about Mavado’s previous and coming appearance and let us know if you think he’ll be a hit in MK1.