Probably your 2nd guest or they just didn't have enough memory in the arcade boards or cartridges to have him and they wanted to bring out new characters. I also noticed that Scorpion wasn't in MK3 either. I was annoyed by that too.

I don't know of any legal trouble, but they had to follow the storyline. When the realms merge he loses his power. But they left out Raiden, Scorpion, Johnny Cage, Mileena, Baraka, Kitana and Reptile from MK2 - maybe why MK3 isn't most fans fav?

Storyline wise, he was around, but he wasn't in the game because they wanted to introduce a new cast, and save him if they wanted to make money later, which they did.

Matt

on vacation probably

I don't think Raiden didn't appear in MK3 just because of memory since arcades can have pretty much have all the memory as it wants, nor legal trouble putting Raiden in since Radien was created by Midway. The main reason why Raiden wasn't in MK3 plot wise because unlike so many Mortal Kombats Raiden did no choose to fight along side (pyshically) Earth. He didn't choose to fight till MKT. Also the real life reason that Raiden wasn't in MK3 was because Midway pressed the MK team to put out MK3 before they wanted to. UMK3 was there orginal vison, that was of course that was later put into arcades. MKT was somesome thing that added to finalize MK3 storyline and plot wise to set up MK4 ( see Noob Saibot ending).

Since the Outworld, and Earth merge together, Raiden doesn't exactly loose his powers all together. If you remember in MKII, Raiden was playable, and had full use of his powers, so he wasn't around in MK3 due to that fact. Here is what he saud at the demo of MK3

"You have been chosen to represent the Earth in Mortal Kombat. Be Warned! Althought your souls are protected against Shao Kahn, your lives are not. I cannot interfere any longer as Earth is now ruled by the Outworld Gods!"

That's his reason from his own words. Since the Outworld gods then controlled Earth, Raiden, being a god himself could not interfere. Yet of course he appeared in MKt. Howevere, those are the exact words that were shown during the Demo of MK3 taken from a picture out of a Stragety Guide I still own to this day. Make of it what you will.

Arcade games still have a limit as to the amount of memory they can hold depending on the hardware.

Raiden is in the credits, storyline, an ending, and a friendship, he's part of the game even though he's not a playable character.

Matt

In MKDA there's a photo of Carlos Pesina sitting around watching the motion caspture of MK3. And I might add that he's quite chunky in the pictures. Maybe he got too fat to be Raiden and they didn't have the heart to hire someone else?

I personally think that the MK Team wanted to do something unique with a fighting game and that is overhaul the cast dramatically. I like the fact that Mk3 had so many new characters and I really don't believe that UMK3 was their true vision. I think their true vision for MK3 was to have a game of new characters, but fans couldn't stand it.

I love the idea of it. Look at other fighters, like Street Fighter, where the same characters are always around. MK3 had some returns but the fact that they sacrificed some of the bigger fan favorites, I thought, was an interesting risk to take to innovate the series.

Slugunner1023 Wrote: Probably your 2nd guest or they just didn't have enough memory in the arcade boards or cartridges to have him and they wanted to bring out new characters. I also noticed that Scorpion wasn't in MK3 either. I was annoyed by that too.

Scorpion was in the game sort of, did you not see the spear? I thought playing smoke was kinda like playing with scorpion in MK3...