A large part of the excitement stemming out of Mortal Kombat 1’s recently announced Khaos Reigns update is the fact that after 28 years Ed Boon and his team are bringing back Animalities.
In their latest video PNDKM take us through a history lesson on animal-based finishing move as they discuss origins, trivia, misconceptions, and more, including why we haven’t seen Animalities since 1996’s Mortal Kombat Trilogy.
Our Kombat content creators take us on a journey that begins (like a surprising amount of now-trademark Mortal Kombat content) with fan-based rumors. They go into how Animalities were brought to fruition in the Mortal Kombat 3 days, the multiple hoops players had to jump through to perform them, and how some of them peculiarly varied in style.
At one point John Vogel, one of the four initial creators of Mortal Kombat, explains in a behind the scenes bit of bonus content from Armageddon that developers were widely turned off to the idea of continuing to include Animalities after MK3 because of how intense 3D model transformations tended to be.
It’s one thing for a rough transition to simply be obscured behind a puff of smoke (which is how they handled “Scorp Morph” in Mortal Kombat 4), but creating a smooth transition as a character becomes an animal before our eyes required more effort and time than they were willing to commit.
Of course, developers at Midway and later NetherRealm Studios would include transformations here and there, and technology has evolved in such a way that such transformations are likely not viewed as so out of the ordinary for games in modern times, but committing to giving every single roster member one of these kill moves was just not viewed as worth it.
There’s plenty more Animality history to learn in the video, and you can give it a watch here:
For more on Animalities check out our story looking back at the often bizarre Animalities existing MK1 characters had and let us know in the comments how hype you are for this old school finisher to finally return.