Category: Entertainment & Lifestyle

There’s a strong case to be made that TM|Arslan Ash is the current top dog in Tekken 8, especially considering his prestigious victory at Evo 2024. He’s clearly the type of player that understands where Tekken 8’s meta game is right now.

As such, he recently released a new ordered tier list for Tekken 8. Characters have been divided into the S Tier, A+ Tier, A Tier, B Tier, and Trash Tier categories.

According to Arslan Ash, the top 5 combatants in Tekken 8 right now are Nina, Feng, Yoshimitsu, Jin, and Dragunov. Notably, these five fighters are often seen as top contenders on other players’ tier lists.

Alisa, Steve, Hwoarang, Law, Claudio, Shaheen, and Bryan have been labeled as being A+ tier characters. Though not as strong as the other five, these are stated to be viable picks for tournaments.

All the DLC characters have been positioned in the B tier group. This suggests that they’re struggling a little bit considering that they’re only a tier category away from being labeled as “trash.” Notably, Heihachi is the highest ranked among them, but Arslan Ash notes that “Heihachi is so bad without Warrior mode activated.”

The worst characters in the game are said to be Raven, Panda, Lars, Lee, Azucena, and Devil Jin. Players will have a difficult time making these sort of characters work in tournaments unless they get buffed in a future patch.

Check out the new tier list below:

Click images for larger versions

Back in May, Capcom revealed the “Giant Attack” event in Street Fighter 6’s Battle Hub. Through this event, players fought against a computer-controlled SiRN Akuma. This was a very difficult fight due to Akuma having access to extra attacks.

Of course, players are technically able to unlock Shin Akuma if they can fully complete their taunt animation, but this is completely impractical in a real match.

Capcom has recently revealed that Giant Attack will be making a return to Street Fighter 6 spanning from December 2 to December 16. With this upcoming event, players will fight against SiRN Bison.

Just like the relationship between SiRN Akuma and Shin Akuma, SiRN Bison will effectively act like Shin Bison in that he will have access to techniques that normally aren’t available to players.

As shown in the trailer, SiRN Bison will be able to teleport (which can be used defensively or offensively), explode Psycho Power around him as an invincible reversal, and perform Shin Bison’s super from the Alpha series.

Needless to say, this trailer is actually causing some fans to worry about M. Bison. In the short time that M. Bison has been released, he has ascended to a top tier position in Street Fighter 6’s meta.

However, M. Bison is not without weaknesses. Though he’s offensively a very powerful character, his intentional flaw of having bad defense does keep him in check somewhat.

The new moves being added to SiRN Bison will give the character access to new defensive maneuvers. It goes without saying that taking away M. Bison’s weaknesses would most certainly elevate the character’s position on tier lists to even higher heights.

Notably, Capcom has also recently announced a new balance patch coming to Street Fighter 6. This update won’t be as big as the Akuma update, but adjustments for every character will be included.

Fortunately, it’s unlikely that M. Bison will be buffed considering his impact on the tournament scene. Having said that, there’s a real possibility that Capcom might enable an Easter egg that gives M. Bison his Shin Bison toolkit, though it’ll likely be just as impractical as unlocking Shin Akuma.

Check out the trailer for the upcoming Giant Attack against SiRN Bison below:

Giant Attack is back, but this time with giant Bison!

Head to the Battle Hub from Dec. 2-16 to defeat M. Bison in all his digital glory and try your hand at the nightmarish SiRN Bison. pic.twitter.com/zdtHcXtGOi

— Street Fighter (@StreetFighter) November 29, 2024

Dragon Ball FighterZ introduced the world to a full-on competitive fighting game that looks and acts as close to the source material as we’ve ever seen. From the graphics style closely resembling the anime to the various uber powered techniques you can pull off, sometimes it can feel like you’re playing a scene right out of the show.

One of the cooler (no pun intended) mechanics that FighterZ offers is its Clash system that sees combatants essentially cancel each other out when two similar attacks make contact with each other at the same time, and this can lead to some crazy parry-like sequences. Master of combos and obscure fighting games, Desk, has released a video that shows that this idea apparently existed in another fighter that released a whopping 32 years ago.

Now, it’s not uncommon to see similar ideas across different fighting games, even when they are generations apart. Much of what we see in modern fighting games stems from past concepts that have been expanded upon, adjusted, and touched up for today’s audience.

However, this one is particularly interesting considering that the idea of clashing is also something found often in the Dragon Ball series itself. Characters fight it out and have points where they’re evenly matched, so punches and kicks just collide with each other and essentially do no damage all while the fighter doesn’t miss a beat in the slightest.

The fighting game Desk presents to us here is called World Heroes, and it came out in arcades all the way back in 1992. This title was developed by a company called ADK (who was originally called Alpha Denshi), with some help from SNK, and it released on the Neo Geo MVS arcade cabinet back in the day.

World Heroes is essentially a four button fighter that only uses three actual face buttons to play. Players have a punch, kick, and throw button, and both punch and kick have strong and weak variations that are performed depending on how briefly or how long you pressed the button.

As Desk demonstrates, this obscure fighter has its own Clash system that looks a ton like Dragon Ball FighterZ’s. Right from the jump, we see two character tossing fireballs at each other, then colliding with a punch and a kick that sends both sailing backward while still on their feet and losing no health.

It also features a cast of oddball misfits from a football player to a pirate to the obligatory Bruce Lee clone, which makes for an interesting watch for sure.

Check out Desk’s video demonstrating the power of clashes 32 years before Dragon Ball FighterZ below.

And if you’d like to see Dragon Ball FighterZ’s Clash system in action for comparison’s sake, you can check out the best example of it ever performed in tournament below.

Believe it or not, Street Fighter 6 is more than just raw Drive Rush and Perfect Parry. Capcom’s latest fighting game gives players a ton of things to consider all at once at any given point in a match (often referred to as “juggling pins), and when you really dive into the nitty gritty there are some truly galaxy brained tactics to be learned.

Pro player / prominent content creator Brian_F recently put together a video that delves into various tech that even melts the minds of the pros — and you really ought to know it.

Right off the bat, Brian jumps into a technique that you might have seen in passing, but its specifics aren’t quite as well known. This is the Drive Rush delayed overhead, and it’s an important tool for combat.

Now, you have probably done a Drive Rush overhead on your opponent’s wake up countless times that hits them right as they’re getting back on their feet and often hits as a counter hit. However, with this tech, the idea is instead to delay said overhead, and though this will certainly lose if the opponent decides to wake up with something like a jab, its actual use is very strong.

Drive Rush delayed overhead is meant to be a counter play for when you’re expecting the opponent to wake up with Perfect Parry. In a regular situation where a meaty normal from Drive Rush would get Perfect Parried, the delayed overhead instead makes it so that the opponent taps parry, then gets locked out of anything that isn’t block for a brief moment when it whiffs.

As Brian explains, this is strong because the opponent still has to choose which way to block, and most times people are holding down back in fear of a low. And thus, actually landing the overhead results in a punish counter and gives you a strong punish for players who overly resort to tapping parry in hopes of getting a perfect one.

Another bit of tech that some people definitely know about but flies under the radar more often than you think is using throw to stop your momentum during raw Drive Rush. As you might already know, hitting a normal immediately after firing off a raw Drive Rush will cut its travel short, but it also sees your character keep their trajectory for a bit as they slide forward.

If you cancel a raw Drive Rush into regular throw, however, it will stop you dead in your tracks and can be used to bait wake up reversals and other attacks very effectively.

There’s a lot more here, so be sure to check out Brian_F’s video below where he also explains the “looks dumb, but is actually smart” tech that we recently saw in tournament play.

The Street Fighter community was more than excited to hear on Wednesday that Capcom is planning to soon roll out a balance patch update for Street Fighter 6 on December 2, potentially bringing even finer tuning to the experience.

The excitement was cut a little short for some, however, as the ensuing revelation that the Capcom Pro Tour 2024 World Warrior: US-Canada West Regional Final event would be taking place just two days later on December 4. Such potentially drastic change just before a crucial, scheduled competition seems like an oversight, but looking at Capcom’s history in 2024 alone, it clearly is not.

Street Fighter 6 has seen a handful of significant updates this year, the majority of which were characterized by the release of new DLC fighters added to the game’s roster. Ed rolled out with a major season 2 adjustment patch just after Capcom Cup concluded, which is probably the most optimal time for such changes to be introduced.

Fast forward a few months to May and the release of the next DLC character: Akuma. Akuma dropped on May 22, just two days before the start of one of the biggest, longest-running, and most consistent major tournaments the FGC sees play out every May: Combo Breaker.

Combo Breaker was not a Pro Tour event this year, but as a household name tournament that draws international competition, the idea of launching a brand-new character (along with tons of balance tweaks for the rest of the cast) seemed peculiar, to say the least.

Those supposing this was a one-time oversight would be fooled twice just one month later when M. Bison was released with a character balance patch on June 26, just two days before the start of one of the few yearly majors that’s been running even longer than Combo Breaker: CEO 2024.

This December update marks the third instance this year that Capcom is making major changes to Street Fighter 6 just two days before the start of a significant event, and this time it’s one of their own that has been on the schedule for months. The writing seems clearly on the wall at this point: Capcom is not prioritizing the spirit of competition.

There has already been much concern expressed about the way this year’s Capcom Pro Tour is being executed. Compared to previous iterations of the Pro Tour, 2024’s has lacked the point systems and intuitive structure that encouraged fans to excitedly follow the action throughout the year.

It was BST|Daigo who noted how the lack of points disincentivizes top players from traveling as much as they have in the past, as you can only qualify for the Cup by winning first place (also second in the case of Super Premier events). This contrasts with previous approaches in that those offered some progress for placing in the final brackets thanks to the fact that even a top 32 finish would net you a few CPT points in the past.

There is a point system housed within the regional qualifiers, meaning there are 24 different point pools to keep track of, none of which are global to all participants across the Tour. If you’re already confused, you’re not alone, and we haven’t even gone into the questionable prize payout structure that encourages players to win and not return.

As far as the World Warrior Regional Finals that are now playing out, some have already completed while others have whittled down to top-8 brackets. The US/Canada finals will take place two days after the upcoming patch, though Germany’s will conclude the day before the patch.

China, Taiwan/HongKong, Macau, Mexico, Spain/Portugal, Europe Northeast, Middle East, and US Midwest will play out three days later on December 7, and then France/Monaco and Europe West will play out on December 8. Had Capcom delayed this patch by one week, all of these finals would be played across the same version of the game.

Capcom has clearly put massive effort into evolving both Street Fighter and the competitive atmosphere around it, moving through trying periods of exploration and growth, hopping along the stepping stones of failure en route to success.

Street Fighter 6 has seen a lot of that success come to fruition in ways its predecessor clearly did not, but perhaps this all came at the expense of attention and care for the Pro Tour.

Do we need patches and newcomers? Absolutely. Is a Pro Tour hard to plan, fund, balance, and execute? Of course. Is rolling out both things simultaneously and in constant harmony a challenge? No doubt. Still, one might hope this kind of thing won’t happen quite so frequently in the future.

Black Friday deals feel as though their pushed back earlier and earlier every year, but we’re now in the thick of the biggest sales now.

To help put together the best Black Friday shopping guide for fighting game fans, we’ve scoured the internet for retailers both large and small offering discounts on titles, arcade sticks and controllers.

It appears most major retailers in the United States like Walmart, Amazon and Best Buy are serving up largely the same deals when it comes to games.

Street Fighter 6, Mortal Kombat 1 and Tekken 8 on disc have all been marked down to $30, which means this is currently the cheapest way to pick up the latter 3D fighter over the digital sale offerings around.

Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero is also commonly discounted to $50 on PlayStation 5 and Xbox for the game’s first sale after a month on the market.

If you’re looking to get a new arcade stick or leverless controller, there are multiple deals floating around right now from most of the big names.

The premium Victrix PRO FS arcade and leverless sticks are discounted at multiple retailers for $320 instead of $400.

Razer’s leverless Kitsune and Hori’s Fighting Stick Alpha can also be picked up for less too. There’s of course some cheaper sticks you can find on places like Amazon on sale, but we can’t really vouch for their quality here.

Other specialty stores like Arcade Shock, Qanba USA and Thunderstick Studios are offering their own Black Friday deals and discount codes as well we’ve included below.

There are of course plenty of deals on PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo Switch consoles, controllers and the like, but our breakdown here is doing to be focused on fighting games.

We also won’t be going over all of the individual game platform sales in this story either, however, you can find the full lists for those in the links included.

You can check out the best Black Friday fighting game deals we’ve been able to find online right now, and let us know in the comments if you know more that aren’t yet featured here.

• PlayStation

• Xbox

• Steam Autumn Sale

• Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero – $50

• Mortal Kombat 1 – $30

• Arcade1UP Street Fighter 2 Turbo: Hyper Fighting cabinet plus riser – $400

• Tekken 8 – $30

• Victrix PRO FS 12 Leverless Arcade Fight Stick – $320

• Victrix PRO FS Arcade Fight Stick – $320

• Street Fighter 6 – $30

• Mortal Kombat 1 – $30

• Tekken 8 – $30

• Arcade1UP Mortal Kombat 2 cabinet – $400

• Arcade1Up Street Fighter 2 Champion Turbo Legacy cabinet plus riser – $400

• Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero – $50

• Street Fighter 6 – $30

• Mortal Kombat 1 – $30

• Tekken 8 – $30

• Razer Kitsune (Cammy or Chun-Li) – $280

• Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero – $50

• Street Fighter 6 – $30

• Mortal Kombat 1 – $29

• Tekken 8 – $30

• Arcade1UP Mortal Kombat 2 cabinet – $400

• Arcade1Up Street Fighter 2 Champion Turbo Legacy cabinet plus riser – $400

• Victrix PRO FS 12 Leverless Arcade Fight Stick – $320

• Victrix PRO FS Arcade Fight Stick – $320

• Hori Fighting Stick Alpha Xbox – $160

• Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero – $50

• Street Fighter 6 – $30

• Mortal Kombat 1 (PS5) – $32.80

• Tekken 8 – $30

• Arcade1UP Mortal Kombat 2 cabinet – $400

• Arcade1Up Street Fighter 2 Champion Turbo Legacy cabinet plus riser – $400

• Brook Wingman FGC Converter with Keychain (PS5/PC) – $48

• Brook Universal Fighting Board – $48

• Brook P5 Plus Fighting Board – $60

• Victrix PRO FS 12 Leverless Arcade Fight Stick – $320

• Victrix PRO FS Arcade Fight Stick – $320

• Qanba Q3 Obsidian Silent Arcade Joystick Multifunction Edition for PC – $135.20

• Razer Kitsune – $250

• Hori Fighting Stick Alpha (PS5) – $172

• Hori Fighting Commander OCTA (Cammy Edition) – $45

• Black Friday Week with daily themes. Save up to 15% using code: BF2024

• 30% off code: TMG30

• 25% off code: BLACKFRIDAY2024

• Razer Kitsune – $250

• Razer Wolverine V2 Pro – $180

• Tekken 8 Premium Collector’s Edition (PS5/Xbox/PC) – $100

• Tekken 8 – $30

It’s crazy to think that Ghostface is now part of the Mortal Kombat 1 roster. Ever since Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, the Mortal Kombat series has had some wild crossovers.

However, Ed Boon has been adamant that Scooby-Doo’s Shaggy will never be playable in a Mortal Kombat game, much to the disappointment of fans that seriously wanted him. Of course, fans can still dream of this someday becoming a reality.

BorgBunnie recently uploaded an interesting video that showcased Ghostface going up against Shaggy in a live action scene. These two end up having some interesting interactions together.

“You won’t be able to unmask me,” said Ghostface in the first intro dialogue. This is clearly in reference to how Mystery Incorporated is often unmasking criminals and revealing their schemes.

“Like, good thing that wasn’t the plan,” responds Shaggy. Funnily enough, this seems to be in reference to the “Ultra Instinct Shaggy” memes that depict the character as being a powerhouse that actually isn’t afraid of anything.

The actors portraying Ghostface and Shaggy in this scene do fantastic jobs of really making it seem like they’re in a fight in Mortal Kombat 1. While these two really clash in terms of their themes, it ends up being a pretty entertaining scene.

Check it all out below:

Uncertainty swirls about Mortal Kombat 1’s future this week as an alleged leak claim that NetherRealm Studios has put the kibosh on plans for the game’s next big bundle of DLC content.

Additional alleged details of said leak have been put forward by FateUnknown, the “verified insider” with a track record that inclines many in the MK community to offer their trust. Namely, the names of five of the six planned characters for Kombat Pack 3.

After rocking the realms on Tuesday with the aforementioned initial claims, FateUnknown followed up early Wednesday morning with another Reddit post listing Jade, Cassie Cage, Kung Jin, Sonya, Kano, and an unknown guest as the planned characters of Kombat Pack 3.

“Hello, you may have seen recently I gave the news that MK1 DLC has been canceled,” begins the statement pinned to the top of r/Mortalkombatleaks, “This has spread further than the MK community and I do not want the attention so I am stepping away from leaking. I was going to stay around until Conan and T1000 were done, but I am going to end it now. I will not have info on future NRS games,” continues FateUknown.

“For my final post, here is further info about the cancelled DLC. First, Khaos Reigns sales were not the only reason. There were multiple reasons the team was pushed to move on but the sales were just the big reason. The NRS team really wanted to do the DLC and are not happy about it but they have no choice.”

“Second, I do not know what the story stuff would have been. It did not make it far enough for me to learn anything about details. Sorry.”

“Third, the final Kombat Pack was meant to be 6 characters, 5 MK and 1 guest. Less guests due to a lot of reasons but mostly as a thank you to MK fans for sticking with the game. The MK characters were Jade, Cassie, Kung Jin, Sonya, and Kano. I do not know the guest but I am told they wanted to get a highly requested character. That is all. Good bye everyone,” finishes Fate.

For those wondering, both Sonya and Kano are currently available as Kameo characters in MK1, but neither of the commonplace characters are yet represented on the main roster.

NetherRealm Studios has made no official comment on any of this and so we take it all with a grain of salt, of course. We will point out that Mortal Kombat 1 has had a notably turbulent first year, and the fact that its recently-released Khaos Reigns expansion is already on sale does bode poorly for the game’s health.

There have been some very interesting developments on the Mortal Kombat 1 front lately. Following a rocky launch of its latest major expansion, Khaos Reigns, just a couple of months ago, a claim from a prominent leaker in the community has essentially flipped things on their heads.

This leaker, whose track record has been very strong for some time now, reports that further DLC plans beyond Mortal Kombat 1’s Kombat Pack 2 and the Khaos Reigns expansion have been cancelled due to poor performance. A lot of fans and players in the fighting game community and around the world are putting quite a bit of stock into these claims, which begs the question: Where does the Mortal Kombat franchise go after Mortal Kombat 1?

From the very beginning, Mortal Kombat 1 was a bit of an enigma in several ways. For starters, NetherRealm Studios had established an unspoken pattern of alternating between developing and releasing Mortal Kombat and Injustice games.

In 2011, the company released its flagship Mortal Kombat title in Mortal Kombat 9, which was followed by DC Comics fighting game Injustice: Gods Among Us in 2013. Mortal Kombat X came after that in 2015, then Injustice 2 in 2017, followed by Mortal Kombat 11 in 2019.

Right from the get-go, things already start to look a little strange when we see that Mortal Kombat 1 would ultimately be released back-to-back after Mortal Kombat 11 instead of the much expected Injustice 3. Even stranger still is that all of NetherRealm’s fighting games here were released about two years apart from each other, but there was an abnormally long wait of four years between MK11 and MK1.

There is speculation to this day that a potential Injustice 3 was in the works after MK11, but that NetherRealm was forced to pivot by parent company Warner Bros. Games somewhere during development in an attempt to put their best foot forward and make another game in their highest selling franchise as a means of generating better revenue.

This theory is certainly interesting when you look more closely at things like Mortal Kombat 1’s pre-fight intros that feature very similar arm-to-arm clashes between characters that originated in the Injustice series, as well as the game’s first Kombat Pack being 50% “guest” characters that all happen to be super heroes/villains. But, of course, this is merely speculation and nothing is confirmed.

Beyond that, though, Mortal Kombat 1 was also a bit confusing for fans to grasp on a foundational level. Not only is the name “Mortal Kombat 1” certainly odd for a 2023 game and essentially made searching for the original 1992 Mortal Kombat title much harder over night, but it also promised to reshape the franchise’s entire world with a brand new timeline that supposedly had nothing to do with the events of Mortal Kombat 11.

Spoiler alert, Mortal Kombat 1’s story does have ties to MK11 in that Fire God Liu Kang — who lived through the events of the previous title — literally created this new timeline, but we also later learn that threats from back in Mortal Kombat 11’s timeline return in MK1 to mess things up once again.

A new timeline means endless possibilities, but despite this we saw smaller, seemingly “changes for the sake of making changes” made to the 32-year legacy of beloved, fan-favorite characters that end up being more head scratcher than something that makes any real impact in the game’s story.

Scorpion is no longer Hanzo Hasashi in Mortal Kombat 1 because… new timeline, Cyrax and Sektor are no longer cyborgs but humans (and both female) in Iron Man-style power suits, and Raiden is no longer a thunder god, but instead gets his electrical powers from an amulet.

We also see a gameplay system that revolves around assists in the Kameo Fighters, who are largely comprised of classic, retro versions of fan favorite characters who do not appear on the actual playable cast. Fans of Sonya Blade, Kano, Jax, and Goro get to pick them as assists, but cannot actually play as these iconic characters, and that rubbed some people the wrong way.

Add into this witch’s brew bugs and unintentional behaviors consistently sprouting up with seemingly every update (the game’s latest DLC fighter, Ghostface, came equipped with inescapable, unblockable touch-of-death set ups that has already resulted in tournament bans), aggressive pricing on additional content offerings, and overall gameplay that, while currently might be in its best spot yet, hasn’t been all that well received by fans, and you start to get an idea of why many are believing the leaker’s claims about DLC cancellations and ending support.

Mortal Kombat co-creator and Chief Creative Officer at NetherRealm Studios, Ed Boon, famously said back in September that “NetherRealm is still fully committed to supporting Mortal Kombat 1 for a long time to come,” and back around when Khaos Reigns was first revealed in July, he also mentioned that the development team was “pretty sure when we launched Mortal Kombat 1 that we were going to be doing years of content, and this is year two.” But things can change and sometimes it’s out of the developers’ control.

So, if these leaker’s claims are indeed true, it sounds like Mortal Kombat 1 might be suffering a similar premature content support conclusion fate that Mortal Kombat 11 did. And with this, we go back to… what’s next?

Since Mortal Kombat X, NetherRealm has been experimenting with ways of adding more to the series’ combat system. In Mortal Kombat X and Mortal Kombat 11 there were variations of each fighter that players could choose from which would ultimately change the tools a fighter has at their disposal in a match, and it made things a bit complicated at times.

As mentioned previously, Mortal Kombat 1 goes for more depth with the Kameo Fighters system. The meta revolves around finding not only a strong main roster character, but also a strong assist to supplement their abilities, and picking a combination that synergizes well is key and adds more layers to the gameplay.

For the next Mortal Kombat game, which we can deduce is coming again after MK1 due to Warner Bros. making it one of the four main franchises the company is focusing on going forward, it might be time for NetherRealm to go back to the basics and make the next title a 1v1 experience with just a single fighter to select and no gimmicks.

Mortal Kombat 9 is still revered as one of the best fighting games the franchise has ever produced and is considered one of the best fighting games of all time for some, and it stuck with the traditional formula of just 1-on-1 kombat. It might be time for the franchise to steer back in that direction, while also putting a heavy focus on the other things the franchise does well in blockbuster story modes and character customization.

All of the aforementioned fighting games that NetherRealm Studios has released have been 2.5D fighting games, and with back-to-back Mortal Kombat games having been released in recent years with potentially another on the way (again, if support for MK1 is truly nearly at its end), then another potential direction for the franchise could be a return to the 3D landscape.

Though fans typically prefer the 2D battleground for Mortal Kombat games and the series’ most successful competitive entries have all been that, there are several 3D entries that are still widely appreciated by fans.

It has been a long time since we’ve seen a 3D fighter version of Mortal Kombat, and if NetherRealm really wants to shake things up after Mortal Kombat 1, that is certainly a strong way of doing so. Funny enough, we haven’t seen a proper 3D Mortal Kombat game since 2008’s Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe (which was produced by the now defunct Midway Games), which brings us to our next potential direction…

MK vs. DC was a game that could best be described as “lukewarm.” People don’t hate it, but they certainly don’t love it, and a large part of why comes down to the main concern you might be thinking of when you hear the game’s title — it’s a Mortal Kombat game without its trademark blood and gore.

While Mortal Kombat characters can definitely exist in a world without the excessive violence the series is known for, which has been proven by several fighters from the franchise appearing as guests in the Injustice games, having an entire game where that’s the case just doesn’t feel quite right and lacks one of the main attributes that makes Mortal Kombat memorable and unique.

NetherRealm could make another attempt at this endeavor here in the modern era and potentially attempt to garner interest both from Mortal Kombat fans and those who love the DC Comics characters, but the same issue would very likely still remain as the likes of Batman and Wonder Woman simply cannot be seen getting ripped apart limb from limb by an undead sorcerer.

What could be very interesting is another Mortal Kombat vs. DC game that instead shifts over to 2D from its original 3D and basically combines some of the ideas from recent Mortal Kombat games and the Injustice series. We have already seen tastes of this with the aforementioned MK guests in Injustice and seeing characters like Homelander, Omni-Man, and Peacemaker taking on the likes of Sub-Zero, Scorpion, and Kitana in MK1.

Warner Bros. stated that Mortal Kombat is among the four main franchises they will be focusing on for video games going forward, but that does not explicitly mean fighting games.

Fans have been clamoring for a sequel to the highly renowned PlayStation 2/original Xbox classic Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks for so many years now. This title originally released in 2005 and instead of being a standard fighting game deviated away and acted as an action-adventure beat ’em up that starred Liu Kang and Kung Lao.

This game could be played single player or as co-op with each player controlling one of the main protagonists, and Shaolin Monks was essentially a retelling of the events of Mortal Kombat 2 as Liu Kang and Kung Lao fight to protect Earthrealm from the threats of Outworld.

The demand for a sequel to this game has been there for years now, so it might be time to finally give it another shot and release an action adventure title that could either be a true sequel or a brand new game with a similar style.

Though, releasing something like this might be a big risk here in this day and age as it would deviate away from Mortal Kombat’s core at a time where the competitive fighting game scene and pro tournament circuits are still a major part of its identity.

If Mortal Kombat 1’s content support is actually ending with Khaos Reigns and Kombat Pack 2, where would you like to see the franchise go next? Let us know in the comments below.