Nintendo Wii Fanboy

While this isn't as MORTAL KOMBAAAAAAAAAAT as, say, screenshots or video would be, we admit that we were pretty curious about how the moves in Mortal Kombat Armageddon were going to be pulled off (not curious enough to buy it, but certainly curious enough to read a thing on the Internet.) We knew waggling would be involved, but it's cool to learn what the specific waggles will be.

This totally reminds us of downloading Mortal Kombat FAQs from Compuserve and leaving them to print from our dot-matrix printer overnight. Sometimes we'd wake up in the morning only to find that our pet dinosaur had shredded all the pages, forcing us to start over.

[Via Joystiq]

It's a little weird to release new screens of a port that looks pretty much identical to the versions that have been out since October, but that's okay! We're following Mortal Kombat Armageddon with interest, just because of the waggle. We are very curious about trying a waggle-fortified fighting game.

One thing is certain from these screens: Nintendo is definitely not insisting on replacing the blood in this game with viscous grey sweat. Unless they're saying that in the Outworld, people sweat red-- by the gallon, out of gaping neck wounds. We've posted a gallery containing new screens-- FINISH THEM! Uh, by which we mean LOOK AT THEM!

Is it okay to get nostalgic about Mortal Kombat? We know the series isn't that old, and, in fact, still exists. But, for example, we can't help but reference the old "PREPARE YOURSELF" slogan from the 1993 print ads when we're talking about any MK game. We miss the old games, and it took the new one to put us in that state.

Looking at the big, empty environments of the new Wii version of Mortal Kombat Armageddon makes us long for the detail-filled stages of the old games, and the sort-of-plain character models remind us of how amusingly hokey the digitized sprites used to be. Those were the days, when we didn't need fancy polygons to enjoy virtually ripping some dude's spine out. We had Claymation bosses and we liked it. It was a simpler time-- a TOASTY!! time.

Screens, with obligatory Wii-gesture diagrams, after the break.

So, now US Senators aren't the only people known for flip-flopping?

Ed Boon, the man behind the kombat of mortals, spoke with gaming site 1up about the recent announcement of Mortal Kombat Armageddon coming to the Wii. First, he was quick to dash away all his earlier comments, stating he thought that Mortal Kombat could not work with the Wii's controller, as opposed to just plain negativity about the console in general.

"Actually, my comments in the past were not "less than enthusiastic" -- rather they were responses to questions that I was asked about how Mortal Kombat could be done (with the traditional play mechanic) on a new controller. Since the Wii controller has fewer buttons than a traditional PlayStation or Xbox controller I was wondering at the time what we would be able to substitute for the missing buttons. Remember, at the time of the original interview, I hadn't even touched a Wii controller."

Well then, good thing you're bringing your game to a console that has a controller lacking enough buttons to successfully play said game, eh? The rest of the interview has Ed defending past comments some more, along with his take on the announcement of Super Smash Bros. Brawl leaving out some of the console's features, as well as discussing the possibility for shells to be used with Mortal Kombat: Armageddon.

Game Informer's Billy Berghammer recently interviewed the master of Mortal Kombat, Ed Boon, mostly about the upcoming Armageddon, which aims to achieve the lofty goal of having every Mortal Kombatant available for play in one game, but did make a point to inquire about the next generation consoles. When asked if he would be willing to do a fighting game with the Revolution's remote, Ed had this to say:

"You know, I don’t know how you could. One of the things about the Revolution controller is that you don’t have immediate access to a whole bunch of buttons. It’s like your holding a television remote and you have that directional pad and you have a big A button next to it. But there’s not five or six buttons to give you all of these functions, so maybe they will compensate but tilting one way for blocking or another way for attack. But that is so dramatically different. So it will either be one of the biggest hits in the world or a big failure. I certainly hope it does well."

This brings up an interesting question; will Nintendo have to lay the first stones down to create the path of innovation before third-party developers can change gameplay through the unique mechanics of the Revolution's remote? Do third-party developers need to see the ideas executed first before feeling comfortable attempting them? 

[Via QJ Net]