Fighting Games Friday: The Iron Fist of Kombat

It’s a testament to NetherRealm Studios’ ability to assemble great trailers, and the perpetual popularity of the franchise, that Mortal Kombat 1’s roster unveils have continued to be exciting for fans. The well-publicized leaked roster has circulated for months, but hasn’t halted anticipation for each showcase. The individual trailers themselves have also generated a massive number of hits on YouTube and Twitter after being posted to the official accounts.

The newest is the Rulers of Outworld trailer, which showed off two more returning characters. One is Sindel, Kitana’s mother, who lets every cast member (and the audience by extension) know that she’s still a Queen. Sindel has always used her hair for special attacks, but NetherRealm is demonstrating how much more power lies at their fingertips for animations by displaying the increased number of possibilities for her hair usage. This includes her fatality, equal amounts cheesy and gory.

The other character confirmed is General Shao, showing that he’s very much alive in the new timeline the Elder God Liu Kang has constructed, albeit in a lower position. There’s still plenty of potential for him to rise to the high position he attained in previous titles, so whether Liu made a mistake by leaving him alive at all remains to be answered through the game’s detailed story mode.

Motaro and Shunjuko were also confirmed as new Kameo fighters. This lowers the chance of them joining the main roster, in case anyone was holding out hope.

NetherRealm also provided details for the guest characters coming as part of the first Season Pass. Mortal Kombat co-creator Ed Boon promised that Omni-Man and Homelander, originating from Invincible and The Boys, respectively, will have different move sets despite having similar power sets in their own universes. JK Simmons, no stranger to video game voicework, will reprise the Omni-Man role here, as will John Cena as Peacemaker. This seemed like a foregone conclusion considering the characters already used their likenesses, but that’s no guarantee. The Terminator in Mortal Kombat 11 clearly used Arnold Schwarzenegger’s likeness, but Schwarzenegger himself wasn’t on tap to voice him. Whether Antony Starr will voice Homelander will be determined in due time.

Mortal Kombat 1 will arrive on September 19th, less than a month from now. There isn’t much time for NetherRealm to reveal the remaining characters for the starting roster, which means more cool trailers are coming soon.

Bandai Namco’s Tekken 8 is the other big AAA fighting game on the horizon, though a slightly more distant one. The development team either realized they should pick up the pace for character reveals, or the roster leak that occurred around Evo 2023 rattled them. Five returning characters were confirmed in this week’s new trailer, including Sergei Dragunov, Shaheen, Steve Fox, Leo Kliesen, Yoshimitsu, and Kuma (complete with a gi and headband inspired by Heihachi’s). The total roster will consist of 32 characters, which — in a funny coincidence — precisely matches the number on the leaked select screen image. Tekken series director Katsuhiro Harada claimed on Twitter that the leak wasn’t entirely accurate, in a post demonstrating his aggrievance. But I have my doubts.

The roster number matching the leaks also means that Kuma and Panda could occupy different positions on the select screen, instead of both being attached to one icon. If that’s the case, perhaps the development team could distinguish their move sets this time around, outside one or two techniques. It’s been long enough; it’s time.

The trailer also included the first sneak peek at the single-player Arcade Quest, a feature that fighting game developers fully know their titles need to have at launch. The mode involves players using avatars to progress through the quest, but in a much different art style compared to the main game — and anything in Tekken history. They resemble knock-off versions of Miis and the long-discarded Xbox Avatars, the kind seen in old shovelware games used in lieu of the real super-deformed models. They’re not pretty, in a surprising development from a team that tends to excel with art styles. They could have introduced a Soulcalibur-like character creator into Tekken for the avatars instead, if the former series is truly lost to the tides of history.

Not much of it was shown, but the glimpses suggest it might present an adventure similar to Street Fighter 6’s World Tour mode. The avatars could make it resemble an “at home” version of that mode, a potentially hilarious development considering the World Tour was itself Yakuza/Like a Dragon at home. Bandai Namco has hopefully put more effort into this than Tekken 7’s boring story mode.

A January 26th release date was revealed for Tekken 8 in the trailer, which shockingly also leaked beforehand. Harada, I can only imagine, must be running on Rage these days.

This week remarkably provided the first bit of fighting game-related news since Evo 2023 ended. It’s perhaps a nice little break from me providing my unvarnished nostalgic thoughts on old fighting games, or those I hope to see in the future. But those types of posts will return in due time. We’ll see if that time is next week.