It's so funny, now that we are reaching the end of this (ultimately irrelevant) tournament, people are coming clean. I have nothing to come clean about, but rather I think it's time to explain my stance, as I've been hilariously targeted by a certain few people on here in the last few votes who've been feelin' that hurt in the butt.

Mortal Kombat has been in my life for almost 25 years. I first discovered it when it released in arcades when I was 10 years old...back when arcades were awesome and all had those sweet games that you'd probably never be able to play on consoles. MK always drew me in with its dark violence, lifelike characters, music and "chinese martial arts cinema" appeal. The first game was amazing in many respects because of the grounded mysticism. Even MK2, as I look back on it, was a drastically huge departure from MK1's identity, but the iconic characters rung true throughout the series.

Yes, I hated the 3d era. It's a well known fact. The story became a jumbled mess. The majority of the 3d characters were uninteresting garbage throwaways. The silliness outweighed the darkness that was the core of MK's identity. Deadly Alliance was an unfinished, clunky and poorly designed game. Deception was a remarkable improvement on Deadly Alliance with better fatalities and visuals, but also marks the point when the story went COMPLETELY off the rails.

Armageddon...let's just say Special Forces and Armageddon, to me, are equally crappy and I hate them both equally.

I've been called out on a few things, but let's clarify

Armageddon - yes, it "counted". The new timeline occurred because Armageddon occurred. BUT - as the Tekken Tag of MK games, the "all characters ever showcase", there was no character development, or relevance for any character that was in the game. Every primary character in the series got sidelined in favor of Taven and Daegon. Hence, when I say things like "Sareena has NEVER had a legit game appearance" I mean it - Armageddon had her, sure, but like half the characters in the game, she had recycled movesets and no story. That was not a Sareena appearance - it was essentially the same as "create a character" that looked like Sareena, using borrowed movesets. Like every other character, her story was "Sareena is here because Armageddon" and her ending was "She beat Blaze, got his power, died and blew up all the realms" - narrated while she breakdances on top of a pyramid - the same as EVERY other character in the damn game. The fact she was there at all was fan service.

Fujin, Tremor and "The Irrelevants" - Yeah, those characters. The one game wonders. The poorly designed characters. The mistakes. Each character in "The Irrelevants" had their own schtick that made them irrelevant in some way. Fujin was a one-game-wonder who garnered a HUGE following. I agree that he should've been in subsequent games...ESPECIALLY MKX. Tremor was minor character in the worst game ever to carry the MK license, popular ONLY because ninja, and with such a loudmouthed following that Ed finally caved and said "FINE! HERE'S YOUR F*CKING TREMOR! NOW SHUT UP!" and yet the beloved Tremor didn't even make it past round 2 of this little tournament. Drahmin, who had a novel's worth of conceptual backstory, and who wound up as nothing more than a skinless African tribal stereotype, complete with borderline offensive "tribal babble".

Yeah...the almighty Tremor...who has had more individual topics devoted to him than any character in the series since 2010...who has a "huge" fan following... lost to what might be the most loathed "ninja" in the series, Ermac...who because of his departure from his ninja roots, is probably both one of the best redesigned and most disliked characters in the series. I actually liked Tremor in MKX.

Where am I going with this? I don't particularly hate any characters. I hate the whining fickleness of this fan base. It's that simple. I speak 100% truth - if Fujin had made it into MKX, he never would've gotten past round 1 of this tournament. If Sareena had made it into MKX, she never would've gotten past round 1 of this tournament? Why?

Because the MK fan base bitches, moans, cries, whines, screams, shouts, complains, begs, nags and pouts until they FINALLY get what they want (*cough TREMOR *cough) and then they don't give a damn. It doesn't matter. They complain even more. They bitch more than ever. They whine even louder. "Not good enough". "Design sucks." "Character sucks." Again, I draw the almighty Tremor as an example - he didn't even beat Ermac, who I see people complain about more than any other character since his redesign.

So in short - yes, Fujin should've been in MKX. Fujin, Sareena, Noob, Reiko and even friggin' Drahmin should've been in MKX. Ashrah too. They all could've occupied slots that were WASTED on dead characters like Kung Lao, Liu Kang and Kitana (put into the game to appease tournament players), and the paywall slot occupied by Goro. That's 4 slots on the roster occupied by characters who weren't even playable in storymode, or by Goro who was entirely absent from the game, and should've just been a separate DLC in a Kombat Pack. Instead, a spot on the primary roster was locked behind a paywall.

So that's "my schtick". I call out the laughable hypocrisy of the fan base. It's nothing personal - in general I hate most gaming communities and gamers. I just happen to love MK.
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Oh and...this was a tough call, but I voted Ermac. I really had to decide between him and Fujin, especially since Ermac's development in MKX was lacking following his bombshell MK9 ending that revealed King Jerrod's soul being a part of his soul menagerie.

Fujin's bad ass appearance at the temple and his sorely lacking presence in MKX is a sore spot. He really should've been in MKX, much more so than Kitana, Goro and the monks.

I don't even like using Ermac...he's my least used character, and I find him too complex to use.

Voted for the one that isn't a novelty character

And this is why you're my favorite poster on the board.

As for Tremor, at least they went for a little humor aspect with him in MKX by being a fan of Cage's movies. Fujin, aside from his throwdown in the temple...nothing.

you're gunna love my schtick-y

Gotta say... I don't agree with particularly every single thing you said but I gotta give you props for saying it, takes quite a lot of balls.

Yes, a minority of this fanbase can be incredibly obnoxious about wanting shit - Tremor and Khrome fans inserted here - and those fans do tend to drop the ball and stop caring once they get what they want, or just start bitching about something else entirely, however I disagree about the one-off characters losing their appeal if used. There have been certain characters that have excelled after being only one-off's for a time;

Ermac - Look at his reception and appearance in Deception, it completely revitalized that character and took him from yet another forgettable ninja into something all his own, something fantastic and inspired.

Rain - Exact same thing. Armageddon made him royalty of which MK9 and MKX later expanded on, but they gave his design and story a complete overhaul, made him unique, and thus is garnered him many more adoring fans and turned a once joke character into someone who became incredibly interesting for the lore and a fun as hell character to play.

Tanya - Her Deception appearance is when I really, really started to vibe with her. I loved the design of her and I played as her constantly, found her incredibly satisfying to use. The fact they took her from a Kitana clone to something, in my eyes, that was so cool was great was something I didn't expect to see.

Sindel & Jade (Playable) - What the team managed to accomplish with these two for Deception was magical. I was always just so-so about Sindel until Deception, and the designs in Deception for characters like Jade, Mileena, Tanya, ect were simply magnificent. I think still to date this is my favorite appearance of Jade, it's just so memorable to me.

The exact same thing could be said of the Fujin's, Sareena's, ect. The simple fact is that we won't know until we know, that's that. They'll have to give some of them another shot at some point as they always have with certain characters (like Deception's roster) and that's when we'll find out. Am I saying every single one-off character has the chance of becoming that popular due to an overhaul or reemergence? No, that's silly to expect such a thing but I'm saying it's entirely in the realm of possibility that if executed well, it could turn the characters and their role / importance in the franchise completely upside down as it did for those I wrote about above.

The major problem with these one-off's back then was the limitation of memory, budget and development time. Nowadays we don't have that same problem anymore so yes, I think it's incredibly and highly possible some of these characters could turn around and go from worthless rock to priceless gem if given the time. Some of these characters, they know the appeal is there.... after all, you don't see Boon throwing in Hsu Hao references in MKX like he does with Fujin. So we'll see in the years ahead, but I stand by the opinion I still think a good portion of these underused, one-off characters could be turned into fan-favorites if given the proper love and care they'd need in a 4 year development cycle.

And the fanboys are striking once again, as the lead keeps increasing. Sigh. Hopefully Noob will take the crown when all is said and done.

What kind of parallel universe is this in which a one-game nobody with no story takes out three of the series' most developed (and far superior) characters in the past year alone?

Ayyy, that one's to me. Let me start by saying, if you were offended by me calling you out on that, I do apologize. That certainly wasn't my intention.

With that said, the conversation about Armageddon just came around at a weird time(Sareena's match) and I just couldn't see the logic about the game not "counting". Especially the part about Sareena's appearance not being legit when she was one of the very few that received a post game bio from Vogel...

Sareena Armageddon bio

I get the Armageddon hate, and agree with a lot of it(as I said before) and certainly wasn't trying to call you out about the quality of the game. But, it happened. I'm sure most Metallica fans would love to act like St. Anger didn't count...but at the end of the day, Metallica, like NRS, learned from it, and ended up in a better place despite it.


Now, I vote Ermac. Not because I hate Fujin, but because I love Ermac.

I really don't get how someone can "hate" a fictitious character.

You stay putting Ermac on a pedestal. The most important thing he's done in 20 years, is save the heroes from mind control in a non-canon ending.

You must really love hearing yourself talk.
Since my being an Ermac fan continues to fill you with more salt than a Morton factory, it's been worth it.

Not at all - I actually regretted that I wasn't able to elaborate on my Armageddon stance when I initially made the comment, so I took the opportunity in this thread to get to that. No offense taken whatsoever.



Appreciate that. I've been around this community since it was a Gamers.com message board in the late 90's (under a different name), so I've seen my share of stupid shit that this community is capable of. It's amazing how much it has dwindled...I think most of the long time veterans of the community moved on years ago. Shang-Heihachi is a personal friend hence why I refer to him every so often. FatSatan, dominojr, etc....when they were all here, this site had discussions going constantly, there were hundreds of active users. It speaks worlds that MKO's userbase has dwindled to nothing, and the majority of it is just complaining and whining, of which everyone is guilty of at some point.

You pointed out great examples from Deception - I definitely enjoyed seeing the one-game wonders from MK3/UMK3 get their time in the limelight, even if it was at the questionable expense of all the series regulars up to that point. With a roster as robust as MK's, characters need to disappear once in a while to make room for others to shine. MKX was a poor example of that - again, wasting roster space on characters meant to appease tourney players or act as paywall...and those spots could've been used for relevant characters...MKX was the perfect opportunity for Fujin, Ashrah, Sareena, Drahmin, Noob Saibot, Reiko, Havik and Rain to shine, not to mention that all were active in the MK4/DA era. Almost all of them Netherrealm denizens or allies. They all were sidelined entirely...a damn shame.

Otherwise I felt Deception really strayed too far from MK's mythos with the multiple realms. But I digress.

Yeah, that's basically where I stand. It doesn't win me any friends, but I don't really care. I think most of the veteran players feel at least somewhat the same when it comes to the fickle hypocrisy of the fan base, finding it aggravating.

Holy fuck is this tournament done yet? This thread is the worst fuckin' thing

I hope Fujin never appears in a game again. At this point I'd take Mokap over him.

Vote for the dumb mummy or the overrated clown of the series?

Dumb mummy it is.

Well, with him about to make the final round for the second straight year, the tourney has officially devolved into self-parody. Ermac over Kenshi was a legit upset, but Raiden Lite over Johnny Cage was a joke.


I actually thought MK:D had the best cast of characters in any of the games, IMO. They even decided to go the political route with the Order/Chaos angle, which was interesting. Too bad Midway gave up on it in the blink of an eye because the MK fanbase is deathly afraid of change.


And yet you're continuing to post here. Go figure.

"The next hero of MK after Cassie."
- KenshiMaster16, July 2016

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On that we agree.

Noob Saibot.

I don't mind if Fujin wins though.

Fujin.
Every argument against Fujin also stands against Noob Saibot. 1 game wonder? What's Noob if not a 2-game wonder? Wasn't in MKX? Neither was Noob. And people must understand not all MK is about MKX. We like older characters, we don't care that the makers of the game didn't use them last time, we aren't compelled to agree with that decision.

The Heavens fight the Netherrealm, Light fights Shadow, a 3D character fights an original trilogy one.
I find Fujin more interesting. I loved MK4 moves, weapons and fatalities more than MKTrilogy's, so.......Fujin for me.

This i disagree with to an extent. It's impossible to say what would have happened, but I think a playable inclusion in MKX might have generated more attention to Fujin & Sareena in this tourney (and almost guaranteed a win for Fujin). Who knows?

Realistically this tournament isn't the best way to determine who is better than whom, it is more of a numbers game. I value anecdotal evidence more, and on that I haven't seen Tremor backlash whining (but evidently you must have, or you wouldn't have included it) and in fact i have seen the opposite: sceptics turned around after giving the "new" revamped guy a try.

Noob Saibot. So a winner doesn't repeat and the fact that I like Noob Saibot slightly more.