Proce, who contributed to Midway’s final fighting game before being snapped up by Warner Bros, Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, wrote that the re-imagining of the MK franchise proposed “mixing modern muti-player and dismemberment game design with the original fighting mechanic.” The artist’s take on four Mortal Kombat mainstays—Raiden, Kano, Scorpion and Sony Blade—are more dramatic, grittier and certainly a welcome change.

Proce describes his Scorpion as “a wraith wearing the yellow blood of the demon” that resurrected him and his Kano as “half Japanese half US military bad arse.” His Sonya, which will likely draw the most criticism, was redesigned as “the daughter of a Texas Ranger who’s sex appeal weakens her opponents while her Special Forces training kicks their asses.” Finally, his Raiden pitch portrays “a god [whose] feet rarely touch the ground.”

We’re not sure what direction the Mortal Kombat team is taking the series at its new home, but I’m personally hoping it’s more along these lines—a darker, more dramatic, less comic book-like tone with a pared down cast—than what we got with Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe. I enjoyed that game as much as the next guy, but I like my MK with a little less Wonder Woman.

Here are the never before seen Mortal Kombat characters… [Vincent Proce Art Blog via GameSetWatch/SRK Forums]

Boon had hinted at appearances from characters like Kung Lao and Doomsday in interviews, showing designs for one MK Vs. DC character that was planned for release, Quan Chi, first introduced in Mortal Kombat 4. The MK team lead released a render of the Mortal Kombat character via his Twitter today.

Will we ever see characters like Lobo, Quan Chi and [insert your favourite MK/DC character] added to the crossover fighter? According to Boon, “right now I don’t see it happening,” despite the fact that he writes those additional downloadable characters were “just about done.”

With work progressing on Mortal Kombat 9 and Mortal Kombat Vs. DC Universe now eight months old, we’d guess that Midway and new owners Warner Bros. won’t see the value in dedicating more resources to such a thing. Shame.

Midway shipped more than 1.8 million copies of Mortal Kombat Vs. DC Universe worldwide for the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, the company announced today.

And the people who have purchased the game for the Playstation 3 (no number there) have played more than 3.6 million matches online, according to GameSpy tech, which hosts the games.

“Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe was the result of countless hours of hard work by many people, and seeing the game surpass the million-seller plateau makes it worth all the effort,” said Ed Boon, Mortal Kombat co-founder and creative director, Midway. “We’re already hard at work on our next version of Mortal Kombat, and look forward to being able to reveal more details in the future.”

By January of 2007, Mortal Kombat: Armageddon had shipped just 1 million copies. Of course, shipped isn’t sold, but apples to apples, that’s not bad.

Tonight from 10PM Eastern to midnight (just a couple of hours away, AU readers!), Ed Boon and a crack team of Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe developers and testers will be hosting a special MK room in game, where players will be able to challenge and be challenged by the people that created the game. Producer Hector Sanchez will be on hand as well, and sends his greetings.

The Mortal Kombat development team is proud to announce a first time opportunity for members of our Kommunity to come online and face us in Mortal Kombat! We’ve never done anything like this before, and we’re looking forward to facing some of the top Kombatants on PSN. Maybe we’ll learn a thing or two! ;)

Or maybe they will hand you your arse so hard they’ll get the voice over artist Hernan Sanchez to make jokes at your expense.

Finish Them! Mortal Kombat Devs Challenge You Tonight! [PlayStation Blog]

In an interview, Moral Kombat vs. DC Universe senior producer at developer Midway Hans Lo dishes, “Ed has always wanted to do a mash-up — that was one of his dreams. His dream is MK versus Street Fighter, that’s obviously the game he wants to make more than anything else in the world. For various reasons that’s obviously not going to happen anytime soon!”

MK vs. DCU came about thanks to someone senior in the Midway marketing department knew someone senior in business development at DC, and they “concocted” the game and viola, here we are today. Now, if only Ed Boon and his eyebrows could get Midway and Capcom together, his dream would be totally real.

Mortal Kombat VS DC: Midway Interview [Kikizo]

T. Atilla Ceranoglu, M.D. weighs in with his (or her) opinion on the latest Mortal Kombat, talking up the game’s decreased gore and parental control options. That and “the easy learning curve and easy to use controls make it quite manageable for those unfamiliar with video gaming.” Is Midway swimming in the seas of the Blue Ocean?!

Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe [AACAP]

Only one way to know for sure. Mortal Kombat Vs. DC Universe versus the game critics. Round one, fight!

G4 X-Play
The story concerns an interdimensional accident in which Mortal Kombat bigwig Shao Khan and DC tyrant Darkseid get fused into one bundle of bad attitude creatively named Dark Kahn. He’s also notable for having one of the most uninspired designs in fighting game boss history. You’ve got Shao Khan and Darkseid to work with and you come up with a big flamey skullfaced dude? C’mon, guys.

IGN
When things were 2D on your SEGA Genesis and Super Nintendo, Mortal Kombat was simple: up was jump, down was crouch, and left/right moved you left/right. Being an awesome fighter came down to timing your blocks and moves while dodging ranged attacks the best that you could with your limited movement options. However, when MK made the move to the 3D realm, things got sticky. Suddenly, characters could just walk deeper into the plane and watch Liu Kang’s fireballs float past them harmlessly. Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe blends both of these styles with a varied amount of success.

Gamervision
Fans of old-school Mortal Kombat action will delighted with the fighting engine in Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe. Gone are the weapons and multiple fighting styles from the last few iterations, as are the super-long chain combos, replaced with shorter chains that can be linked together with other attacks to form long juggle combos. The quick, twitchy combat action found in MK3 is back, and for the first time in years, Mortal Kombat feels like Mortal Kombat again.

PSX Extreme
As far as the DC characters, they’ve all been given the Mortal Kombat treatment, as each and every one of them boast the infamous MK uppercut, on top of a fatality. Yes, fatalities are still very much a part of the game, they cannot be done in the story mode for obvious reasons, but all bets are off when you’re playing the game’s arcade mode. In addition to uppercuts and fatalities, all of the DC fighters also boast their unique signature attacks straight out of the comic books, and while their fighting styles are more Mortal Kombat than anything else, it helps to seamlessly blend them with the MK fighters. Lastly, all fighters gain the ability to trigger “Rage Mode”, a temporary state of invulnerability that can be activated when your Rage bars fill up.

Giant Bomb
Personally, I didn’t find the lack of M-rated violence to be that big of a deal. Even when fatalities are present, they’re only really meaningful for the first month or so, when they’re fresh and new. After that, everyone’s seen them all, and they only serve to make the downtime between fights longer. But it all comes back to why you’re personally interested in Mortal Kombat. For some people, the action is the juice. For others, it’s all about the gory displays at the end of the fight. For what it’s worth, the game does have blood during fights, so hits to the face will result in a bit of splatter. Also, clothing gets ripped up as you get beaten, resulting in some great-looking scuffs and scrapes at the end of the fight.

Kotaku
Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe may have been knocked around for some of its design decisions, most notably the inclusion of DC characters and the toned down violence, but it’s still an enjoyable ride. The game looks damn good… from a distance, as things can get a little uglier up close. The most disappointing thing about MK vs. DCU, though, is its lasting value. The head-to-head fighting may offer near infinite replayability to the more dedicated MK fan, but the depth of content left us wanting more.

Not quite the best of both worlds, but a little good from each.

But how does it play? We’ve spent kountless hours… sorry, countless hours with the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe to see how well these two worlds collide.

Loved
Killer Kast Of Kharacters: Midway pares down the roster to a lean 22 combatants, of which there is very little filler — especially compared to the over-stuffed 60 character line up from Mortal Kombat Armageddon. There are a few notable absences — Kung Lao, Reptile, Lobo, Despero — but outside of personal preferences, the “greatest hits” selection of fighters is more than adequate. The Flash and Joker are tons of fun to play and MK mainstays like Sub-Zero and Scorpion remain fun despite their age.

A Flashy Fun Alternative: It may not have the deep fighting mechanics of its competitors — Street Fighter III: Third Strike and Virtual Fighter 5 snobs will likely turn their nose up at such fluff in between counting frames — but it’s still a hell of a lot of fun to play. Having given up any semblance of competing with the hardcore, it’s still enjoyable, personally, to play MK games against my more casual circle of friends. The Klose Kombat and Freefall Kombat modes add a fun, if occasionally imbalanced, diversion from straight up fighting.

Campy Story Mode: Both sides of the core story line are a blast to play through, giving you about six hours of single-player fun when you don’t feel like getting your hat handed to you online. The cinematic sequences blend in surprisingly well with the action, all of which is held together by the barest of storytelling. It’s occasionally (unintentionally?) hilarious to see the Mortal Kombat and DC universes intertwine. There’s solid fan service with respectable production quality helping to put some extra shine on the campy package.

It’s The Best DC Fighting Game Since Blizzard’s Justice League Task Force: I may have grown up a Marvel man, but it’s still fun to see Batman, Green Lantern and Superman go at it. With the exception of Wonder Woman’s bizarre moveset, the DC side translates to the fighting genre beautifully. We’re hoping there’s a sequel or spin-off, so we can see how, say, Martian Manhunter or Plastic Man fight.

Hated
Short On Features: When you’re done with the story mode and you’ve completed the Kombo Challenge — the latter, no small feat — there’s not much else to do beyond one-on-one fighting. That may be enough for fans desperate for more Mortal Kombat, but given the depth of features seen in previous games in the series, not to mention the feature set of the current-gen competition, the whole package feels lacking. Character specific endings in Arcade mode consist of nothing more than a piece of character artwork with narration. With no create-a-fighter mode and very little to unlock — there are no alternate costumes — we’ve braced ourselves for a flood of downloadable content.

Aggravating, Inconsistent AI: The MK series has always struggled to provide a computer controlled opponent that feels believable in its skill level. Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe’s artificial intelligence is all over the place, pulling off some combinations that will have your eyes rolling wildly. The next round, they may simply take a boot to the face after boot to the face without ever blocking.

Lame Fatalities: Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe is a T-rated game in an M-rated series. While a few seconds of gore and sadism should never be the deciding factor in whether you’re dropping sixty bucks on a fighting game, it’s still deflating to see how tepid the finishing moves have become.

Online Works, But Where’s The Chat Server? The one-on-one fighting is functional, even if the lag can be painfully noticeable and we’ve been endlessly ground-pounded by Jax more often that we’d like (once was quite enough). Unfortunately, the reliability of the chat server has made getting into a room, where more than one-on-one fighting can be done, spotty. The PlayStation 3 version wasn’t suffering the same performance issues as the Xbox 360 version, possibly due to recent Xbox Live downtime, but it soured the initial experience.

Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe may have been knocked around for some of its design decisions, most notably the inclusion of DC characters and the toned down violence, but it’s still an enjoyable ride. The game looks damn good… from a distance, as things can get a little uglier up close. The most disappointing thing about MK vs. DCU, though, is its lasting value. The head-to-head fighting may offer near infinite replayability to the more dedicated MK fan, but the depth of content left us wanting more.

MK vs. DCU is a capable fighter, full of camp and silliness, that does a good job of rebooting the franchise — even if this is just a one-off — and giving lapsed fans something to latch onto. It can’t compete with the robust offerings from other established fighting game franchises, but its a raucous and fun alternative.

Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe was developed and published by Midway, released in Australia on Nov. 20 for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Retails for $119.95. Completed single-player story modes on Xbox 360, played through arcade mode, and tested online multiplayer modes on both platforms.

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The majority of Midway’s earnings came from the Xbox 360, on which it released Unreal Tournament III and TNA iMPACT! (emphasis Midway’s). The quarter’s second biggest earner, Nintendo’s Wii, has given Midway the most money for the full year, with almost $US30 million YTD in revenue.

Unsurprisingly, Midway is pinning its hopes on the upcoming Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe to help pull it out of its financial funk next quarter. Midway CEO Matt Booty said something about “align” and “brand” and Mortal Kombat but we can’t recall it all because we started thinking how Booty is a funny name.

MIDWAY REPORTS 2008 Q3 RESULTS (PDF) [Midway]

Here are three more Fatality moves from Mortal Kombat Vs DC Universe for your viewing pleasure – none of which are as good as the now-excised Joker finishing move but all of which involve Kombat and Mortality, so job done.

Of the three, Catwoman’s is the most straightforward (although somewhat out of character – she is one of the less murderiffic DC villains) and Sonya Blade’s is one of those that would require the victim to stand still while she gets in the right position. Sub-Zero’s is cool. Ho ho.

Please feel free to write in explaining that Catwoman’s recent demeanour is due to Zatanna editing her memory and blah blah Worst. Trailer. Blurb. Ever. etc.