Though I somewhat agree, this is pretty much what they did in MKDA, which is the exact opposite of what people are begging for these days (a return to classic-styled MK).

I vote they take Capcom's method and implement "depth without complexity." Whether that means universal moves or not, I'll just take what I get. Or not buy the game. Whichever makes the most sense to me after seeing the finished product.

The only problem with not everyone having an uppercut in MKDA was Scorpion was one of the characters left without.

That's not Scorpion. Scorpion does uppercuts after the spear. That's his fighting style. It's a rule.

I played MK vs DC for the first time this week and one thing that I noticed was that there were less universal moves, like uppercuts.

I agree with said above, deepness without beeing too complex. Besides that ... games like UMK3 were deep..and you can find deepness in almost every fighting game if you play long enuff.

MK without uppercut is not a complete MK

uppercuts, like fatalities, belong in Mortal Kombat.

uppercuts..roundhouse kicks...sweeps...yes they belong to Mk games and need to be in them all :)

I wouldn't care if the moves were universal as long as they had different animations/styles of execution. The DA->Armageddon gen had this right. A lot of characters had sweep or uppercut moves but they were executed in different ways.

Tailor the way move is done to the character and it'll look less lazy.

I prefer to pull off a long ass combo after a spear actually. It's more effective.

But yeah, perhaps the universals moves can appear but animate and function differectly for everybody. , I can think of at least 4 fighters in Street Fighter 4 that have the haduken special move, but they all function slightly differently. Plus, everybody's focus attack animates differently, but there all essentially the same move I think.
But I still dont think everyone should have an uppercut in MK9. Assign some characters uppercuts that function differently, but then assign some other characters different roundhouse, and then sweeps and so on... It should be done in such a way that there is balance. It would make the game more interesting and make the characters more unique.

Well yes, a combo is more logical, but it's a style/personality thing that we've all come to understand the way Scorpion would fight is after the spear, he'd usually do an uppercut, so the OPTION to do an uppercut should ALWAYS be there for players using Scorpion. Whatever his fighting style is, it should always include uppercuts because that's one of Scorpion's most famous tactics.

My biggest problem with MK's fighting styles is that they didn't make sense for a lot of the characters...Scorpion with a Korean martial art, Sub-Zero with a very standard japanese form of Karate...none of that made sense.

my thought is if they mess up the controls anymore than i might actually consider the game not even a MK game at all. if only certain characters had them moves people will just swarm to using them and forget the others...especially the old school crowd.

I say keep the universals like the uppercut and just make the animations unique for each character.

uppercuts made MKD 10x better.

Sweeps, uppercuts, fatalities, roundhouse kicks and special moves is what makes MK.

id actually be really mad if they got rid of any of them.

The upper cut needs to stay. That is a staple to all of the MK game, and it makes it unique to all of the other fighters. Secondly, I'm tired of this universal moves make it crappy argument. So many people keep arguing about how capcom doesn't put universal moves in their fighters. Well guess what. It's been confirmed that characters in MvsC3 characters will have universal pop up attacks. Meaning the same button combonation will be the same for each characters pop up. I guess when Mk does it, it lacks depth. When capcom does it, it's genius.

I agree with this. I want uppercuts to stay, just different animations and ways of doing them. Maybe somebody does the standard one, somebody does a two handed type, or even the Down+HK Mortal Kombat 4 style one.

I don't mind one or two universal moves like uppercuts and roundhouses, as those are uniquely MK to me, but my issue with MK has traditionally been their over-reliance on universal moves. When fighting games went 3D and you had Virtua Fighter and Tekken and what not, alot of the moves had the same basic function, but characters developed styles and moves that were unique to those styles.

Yet when MK went 3D, the characters overall styles were very cut and paste in terms of what types of moves, the look of moves and what not. It all feels very last gen (or even two or three generations ago).

There was a complete absence of moves that were unique to given styles. And what's been nearly as bad, as others have said, is that with few exceptions (Shang Tsung using Snake style is the only one I can really think of), the stances used had nothing to do with the characters using them.

To me, a characters's fighting style should be reflective of their personality, look, story etc. A military character might use a very technical based style that involves counters and moves used to subdue an enemy such as strikes to vulnerable areas like the throat or the bridge of the nose for example.

Now I'm not saying that every character has to be super-authentic in that regard. It's MK, so there should be a touch of the fantastic when it comes to the fighting styles. It's why I said in another thread that it would be cool to see Sareena change in to a more demonic form and have moves that suit that form.

But in that vein, I was also saying that the "moves" associated with that demonic form shouldn't just be special moves, but regular moves as well.

Players should have more of a choice when it comes to characters. Should you use a fast character that's weak? Maybe a character with a lot of counters and defensive maneuvers. How about a throw expert? An evasive character that's great at dodging? A strong but slow character?

There are so many types of characters that can be made and it's not all that hard to make characters that are different from one another, yet MK has held on to this 2D idea (from the 90's I should say, not now) that it's okay to simply throw in a bunch of standard punches and kicks because it's the combos and the special moves that should take center stage.

Why? In doing that, in taking away everyone's style and making them all interchangeable, you're taking away a third of what makes a character's move arsenal his or hers. You have the special moves, the combos, and the regular moves. If you just give everyone the same or similar regular moves, without giving them anything really unique in those regular moves (Johnny Cage's double flip kick in MK:DA is the only real unique move I can think of), you're basically abandoning that part of the game, the strategy etc.

So yeah, when I say that I hate having too many universal moves, I'm not just talking about everyone having a sweep move, I'm talking about everyone having regular moves that are basically the same for the most part. It's an old, antiquated idea who's time came and went a LONG time ago. Back then, call it memory constraints, call it what you want, today it's just LAZY.

This guy knows what he's talking abut. I completely agree. I do however think the moves/stances in MK vs DC suited the characters alot better than the MKDA-MKA era.

I actually think that the stances in MK vs. DC were lackluster. About universal moves, I'd have to agree more with DarzieP. There should at least be different animations and executions for uppercuts, sweeps, roundhouse kicks, etc. though I don't necessarily think that every character needs to have all of those moves.

Uppercuts needs to be in each MK games. What MK9 needs to have is unique fighting style for each character and this time, make the styles actually look like what they are. MKDA-D taekwondo didn't looked like tae kwon do, Liu Kang's Jun fan didn't really looked like JKD. Hire some REAL martial artists like they did for tekken games.

They actually do hire real martial artists. If I have time, I can try to find the youtube vids of the 2 real martial artists they used for MK vs DC.

I think the blame should be placed on the animators instead.

There is definitely some authenticity in the martial arts presented in the MK games. Some are portrayed better than others, but ultimately, you're not really going to get a full accuracy. I did want the accuracy to be a lot better, and I didn't like some of the style choices given to characters (e.g. Kano using Aikido).

Some people feel that the characters shouldn't use martial arts styles and should go back to more of the old school way of fighting. I actually think incorporating martial arts styles fits perfectly in the series. I just feel that they need to be implemented differently.

What I mean is that there should be martial arts styles used as bases for each character's fighting style, but they shouldn't be limited to the moves from just those styles. For example, with Scorpion, it would make sense to base his fighting style largely off of the Ninpo Taijutsu (Ninjutsu) arts like Togakure Ryu and Kumogakure Ryu.

However, he doesn't have to be restricted to moves from just those styles. I was actually thinking of an idea of him having Shotokan influences since he comes off as a more linear, aggressive fighter who hits hard with strikes and kicks.

Co-sign. I prefer martial arts to universal moves.

They should have some characters do uppercuts with their feet.

"Here comes the double foot!" *pow*

"Smell it...smell it...now take it." *pow* "That's for you."

Baraka407 said:



That can definitely be done. However, with certain styles, you will see similarities. For example, Tae Kwon Do is going to be similar to Shotokan since Tae Kwon Do is derived from Shotokan. Then again, if you look at games such as Tekken 5, you have more than one character use the same style differently. For example, Baek Doo San and Hwoarang use Tae Kwon Do yet their movesets are different. The same can be done for Mortal Kombat, especially if the characters use moves from multiple martial arts styles.



I'd like to see more throws as well. I think there should at least be two throws per character instead of one. I watched some videos of gameplay from Tobal, and I like how they do the grappling system. I think that such a system could especially work for styles like Muay Thai, Judo, and various forms of wrestling.

I was thinking that instead of having a throw button, there should be a grab button that could go into a clinch and could lead to strikes, kicks, knee attacks, throws, takedowns, etc. It would be sort of like MK vs. DC's close combat system yet have a free flow to it in that you don't have the button guessing game nonsense. It would be more of a strategy-based system in which you have to decide which moves are best to use in a certain situation. There could be more than one option involved.