I think this is a great idea! In addition to that, you can also throw emotional responses when fighting someone the character really hates (Sonya versus Kano for example). When winning in a closely fought battle,and NOT perfroming a finisher, It would be cool to see some emotional response from the winner. And maybe a little beg for mercy from the loser.

Anyway, great idea dude!

I like this idea too.

They could even play around with the points/money system with this. Like winning with lots of health gives us extra points, while winning all fucked up and exhausted gives us less.

Thats a brilliant idea!

It's amazing something so simple could give the game so much more realism.

Showing wounds is one thing but showing their reactions and feelings to their wounds would take it to the next level.
Rather then someone with gaping holes in them dancing around with all the strength in the world.

Loves it!

Characters in the last game showed emotion. Any time Green Lantern grabs somebody they looked suprised or scared. For the Mk team to go into even more detail for each character and situation would be a nice touch, but I'd rather have them spending more time on other gameplay mechanics.

Yes that is true , bus at soon as they are released they go back to there nomal animations with no reaction to whats going on.
I know it may take some time to do it, but if they did it would be amazing.

And if they made it "damage" specific then that would be even better.
like if goro somehow managed to weaken her leg in the battle and then in the "SONYA.....WINS" screen she could attempt to take a step to walk away , only to have her leg bend and snap causing her to scream in pain and fall to the ground, having to crawl away instead

Or if goro tears off her arm mid battle (if dismemberments are featured in the game) then in the "SONYA.....WINS" screen she could fall on her knees again but this time pick up her severd arm and looks at both it and her bloddy stump with fear and disbelief whie she says something like "My arm! He tore off my arm!".

ORRRRRRR if she gets sliced in the stomach by and her guts start to fall out then again in the "SONYA.....WINS" she could stumble back against a wall or something and observe her guts oozing out of her body while she places her hand over them (if she still has it lol) to stop them from spilling even more while she chokes on blood or moans in pain.

I got soooooo many more ideas for this, but i would be here forever writing them up lol. I need to work with Boon man...

I think it's a great idea for the more human people. Others can just be tired/breathing heavily, and the REAL badasses could like.. not be affected at all.

Could be good tidbits but this should only be tertiary.

I think it'd be cool.. but it should never end in the character on the ground throwing up blood or crying or something. It's just not satisfying.

If the person is really beat up, they should be clutching their injured areas, but still standing, and still badass.

I agree, that would be cool. But at this point I would want most of their time and effort put towards good fighting, and replay value rather than character animations.

I had this idea a while ago but I kind of took it a bit further to the realism side by getting rid of the health bar. The character IS the health bar - depending on how beaten they look is how low their health is.

I also thought about only being able to do finishers on someone when they are beaten to the point of being stunned, down on one knee, etc. I know this idea isn't that original (is used in Wrestling games - or at least the old ones that I actually played).
If they don't get finished while stunned then they recover some health so that they can continue to fight.

This would make the fights longer and therefore more intense, and interesting. Personally the fights in most fighting games are too short and are over way to quick. But that's not to say I wouldn't include an option to lower the health of the characters if people wanted a quick fight. More options means the game can appeal to a wider audience.

As for the fighting engine I was thinking of something more fluid, smooth, realistic, and brutal. A game that does this well is the fist fight at the end of MGS4. Only I would like to see a more in-depth version of that engine.

ACTUALLY, HI remember me, im the one who originally started the idea of the health bar bein takin away in the next mk game. But some people didnt like the idea because they said it would be to real remember, NOW LOOK, people are now agreein. People just kills me sometimes.


but il be glad when they finally release the first piece of MK9 info.

Yeah, since MK came out in 1992, you're clearly the first one to have that idea lol. I know that the thought at least crossed my mind probably 6 years ago or thereabouts when MK:DA came out and they really started going with the facial/body damage. I'm sure that someone thought of it before me too.

So let's not get to carried away over who thought of what idea first. No offense to anyone, but unless your idea is something earth shattering or game changing in terms of the genre, chances are, on a fan message board related to a fighting game, someone has probably thought of it already.

And that goes for "let's have a MK vs SF game," "let's have a four player fighting game," "Let's have super brutal fatalities," "let's have more realism," "let's scrap the whole roster," "let's have the game be 2D again," "let's have a deeper gameplay experience," and about a million other ideas.

As for the idea as the thread starter proposed it, I think it's a great idea!

I also like the imagery with the characters spitting blood (maybe at the camera if they're a rugged bad ass type) after they win. But I'd want these to not only be limb specific (again, nice touch), gender specific, damage specifc (ie how much damage they take, really nice touch), but also character specific.

Maybe if Sub Zero takes a ton of damge, maybe because he's older, he drops to one knee, takes his mask off and you can hear his age coming through in his gasps for air.

Or if you have more of a badass character like say, Jax, maybe he resets his dislocated arm and flexes it a little.

Or maybe you have, Sektor... For example, do something more robot related. Maybe he spots an oil leak in his leg. He says "Scanning" and then you see some metal folding in his leg as he self repairs his injury. Follwed by a "Status Check LK 9T9. Status Check Complete. Continuing Mission."

All of this has to be done the right way though, or else it would just look comical. Sonya walking away, her leg snapping, followed by her crawling away... I dunno. The pain doesn't really come through for me on that. It seems a tad bit silly.

But I definitely get where you're going with this and I like the idea a lot.

I also like the idea of wearing down an opponent to the point where instead of doing the whole "dizzy, waiting for death" maybe they fall to their knees, eyes wide in fright because they know they're about to get killed and yet they can't do anything about it because their body is beaten and battered beyond repair. Maybe they even beg a little.

Again, the whole idea of specific finishing scenes is great.

If you have, say a rivalry, as you said, like Kano and Sonya, maybe Sonya kicks Kano in the head while he's down when she wins. Maybe Kano pulls out one of his knives, pulls her head up by it's hair and then says something like "smile pretty, love." and then the scene goes to black, followed by a scream.

You know, something that's sort of like an auto-fatality, since it's a rivalry, only it's censored, because you didn't input an actual fatality.

I'd say have a tiered system:

1) Flawless Victory: This should be slightly special. Jax might pump his chest, Kano might trash talk, Liu Kang might do a few speedy kicks etc. Just a small thing that accompanies the Flawless Victory notification on the screen.

2) Standard Victory: Your character has taken damage, just not much. You get the now standard pose that is UNIQUE to each character. No more of the whole... Characters borrowing from other characters thing. Baraka does his bow, Sub Zero puts a fist up in the air etc.

3) Injured Victory: Your character has taken limb specific damage and they now cradle that injury or try to patch themselves up or maybe rip part of their shirt to cover a wound etc.

4) The Agony Victory: This is where your character wins by just a sliver of health. This is where they should fall to their knees. A more religion type character might pray and give thanks (ie Rayden, Fujin etc), Sonya might double over and scream in pain. Another character might spit blood, snap a broken bone back into place before screaming etc.

Again, alot of these could be character specific, if not all of them.

For me, it's always been the little touches for MK that have made me like the series more than a sterile, by the numbers fighter like Virtua Fighter which has almost no story and nothing that really gives subtle gifts to the fans of the game.

For MK, what drew me in was the story, the characters, the unique setting and the overall sense of mystery. It was the first series to have hidden characters that you could fight. It had characters that seemed to be doing one thing while doing another. It had the manipulators and the manipulated. The villains and their lackeys.

But it was also the little things that really kept me coming back. Unlocking a new uniform in the krypt before the info on where to find all of that stuff was plastered all over the internet.

Something as simple as unique victory poses that tell me "this is a well rounded character, their personality is easy to discern from the others in the game" is always a good thing in my mind.

Anything that gives characters more to differentiate themselves is a good thing. If Ed Boon and the MK team still refuse to give each character thier own completely unique list of moves (because you know, that would make this not a series that's stuck in the 90's), then to me it makes the other little things like victory poses all the more important.

Great thread!