ummm look at Resident Evil. They did a Remake and it diddnt reboot the series. They just remade the first game and changed some thing sbut still applied ot the main canon story.

there is a difference. Reboot can be in more than one form. Starting froms cratch disregarding all canon story OR. Taking the existing story and having something happen to completely break it down and start with fresh material within the existing canon universe.

Same, but I wouldn't mind if they went back to MKDA (which was good), and starting building up more from there. I liked Deception alot but some characters and story twists were kinda cheesy Imo.

Now that I think about it, they should fix up alot of things in the story...even back from MK4 (hated that shit). Armageddon though.....can't stand it. Blaze, Taven, Daegon, Shujinko; alot others were all horrible Imo.

A proper deadly alliance continuation is fine with me. I don't completely HATE the idea of a sequel, I just fear the chances of their being shitty characters and fuck the whole armageddon crap being cannon.

I always thought btw, that they should explore the 9 mortal kombat tournaments between Goro's first win and Liu Kang defeating him. It'd be kind of interesting to see people from different time periods taking part in Mortal Kombat.

I hadn't considered bringing things back to pre-MK1...I imagine they could really build off of the early days of the tournament. My only question is how are they going to incorporate characters like Sub-Zero and Scorpion, who will likely make a return? This being MK, I have a feeling that if they go this route or build off of MKA, portals will come into play to justify how people survived, arrived at a particular time, etc.

Well, to do that they'd have to slip into the horse crap that the TV series MK Conquest created.

Sub-Zero IVIVXX and all this other garbage.

Pre MK1 should really not be MK9. Maybe MKX/10.
That should be the reboot of the series and a way for them to start with a whole new batch of characters. Only thing is, Earthrealm loses each tournmanet... so yeah.

The only PRE MK1 thing I think would work is how Outworld took over Edenia. We'd still have classics like Shao Kahn, Sindel, Kitana, Jade, and probably Rain.

Pretty much what XiaoDun84 said. The topper, though, is that basically Armageddon was too shitty to be the climax to the MK series. I want to see it get the send-off it deserves...after that, I wouldn't be opposed to a reboot/relaunch/reinvention, provided things are kept fresh and the story isn't just told all over again.

Sequel please....

Even considering that it's been almost 2 decades since MK1, and alot of MK fans now were toddlers back then (or not even born yet, ha!). Still. They can replicate the allure that the old games had without trashing the progress that the series has made.

?Question?:

Has anyone considered that they may have to start all over? Midway vs WB? They may not be able to use, or reference anything from the old stuff considering the switch... That could contractually mean that literally nothing really did happen before MK9's time. Simply because it'd be a violation of some sort for them to do so.

Saying that, there's still alot of creative ways to write and continue from MKA. For instance, take Sub-Zero and his lineage as a small testament to my point. Step a few years forward from MKA and a new Subz could have little to no recollection of who or what Noob is.... or Scorpion....or anything else, really. And, could in fact be motivated by his own objectives and goals. Some of these characters automatically become irrelevant that way, and make way for new characters and so on...idk.

Just sayin'.....but I want a sequel though. I feel about the same as Xia, and all those who are in agreement with him. Why waste (or regurgitate, whichever way you wanna take it...)? Just recreate the allure that the old games had, make the thing play as good or better than MKvsDC, and write like an obsessive madman.

Predator might have touched on this somewhat, but here's my take given the definitions provided of remake versus reboot:

"Reboot -a discarding of much or even all previous continuity‚ in the series, to start anew. Effectively, all previously known fictive history is declared by the writer(s) to be null and void, or at least irrelevant to the current storyline, and the series starts over.

Remake -generally used in reference to a movie which uses an earlier movie as the main source material, rather than in reference to a second, later movie based on the same source."

First and foremost, I think that a remake of MK1 and MK2, using modern technology would be AWESOME. That said, I simply don't want that game. I still have MK1 and MK2 on various systems in some form or another and I love them just the way they are. Would it be cool to see them remade with Unreal Engine bells and whistles and what not? Sure, but it's simply not necessary and not something I'd need to see over the next real iteration of MK.

But looking at that definition of Reboot, I see an idea that to me allows for a compromise.

In other words, why can't it be both a sequel AND a reboot?

Sure, a reboot throws out much of the previous stuff, and let's face it, with 72 characters or whatever, the easiest way to do this is to say that about 90% of them died in Armageddon. They're gone and they're never coming back.

See, this is what's unique about post Armageddon. The MK team can now mold this series in to exactly what they want going forward. They don't have to "unmake" history in order to reboot the franchise. They simply don't have to acknowledge it.

Why did this, that or the other thing happen? Who cares, they're all dead. To me, this is the chance for a new begining, but everyone seems to think that a reboot implies that this has to be MK1 all over again. I don't think that's the case at all.

Think of it as wiping the slate virtually clean. Sure, you have some characters from the past, maybe they're even altered somewhat by Armageddon or the events that took place etc. But the MK team still has the freedom right now, at this point, to recreate those characters as they see fit. They can tack any story on to one of those characters and say that's them because it happened to them during Armageddon.

They can use this moment in time to reboot the series in the sense that they can take the series back to the Shaolin tournament. They return to that STYLE of MK1 in terms of the mechanism that the plot revolves around, but they don't have to use MK1 characters and "remake" MK1.

Again, they're still discarding much of the history of MK simply by killing most of it off by either killing the characters that the history pertained to or simply by not mentioning that history. You do this by having an elaborate intro that basically explains what happened in Armageddon and what lead to the current plot location.

Okay, fine... But from that point on, it's a new Mortal Kombat. You put in a few characters that people identify like Sub Zero and Scorpion, but you do what Ed Boon should've done and said he was going to do years ago and you wipe the slate clean. You finally use what Armageddon seems to have been intended for beyond simply MK Anthology or whatever:

You use it to wipe the effed up stories, the overused and/or mediocre chracters away and you while you certainly don't go as far as to negate your own history or say that it never happened, you acknowledge it and then you start fresh from a new "MK1" place, so to speak.

To me, this is the absolute best of both worlds. You get to find out "what happens next" and in that sense, it's a true sequel, but at the same time, it takes the series back to its roots (aka, the tournament), and in many ways we start over with a new set of characters, new stories that will play out like you'd see in a reboot.

People keep saying "you can't go anywhere from Armageddon." Well, why the hell not? Armageddon, to me, as I read Ed Boon's interviews back when that game was in development, was meant to be the ending of that story and the end of the road for a VAST majority of the characters in the series.

I remember his exact quote in a magazine basically saying that "Scorpion and Sub Zero are safe, but after that, all bets are off." See? To me, this is the type of game he wanted to do back then before MK vs DC. It's just a guess on my part of course, but to me it makes a ton of sense.

So if he always intended to do it this way anyways, clearly there's an idea, a way to advance the story. You use this cataclysmic event, where so many people die, as a springboard to the new MK, and yes, there are plenty of ways to create valid threats that are on par with Armageddon.

How about the Gods themselves deciding that Earth isn't worth saving or that THEY want to destroy it and remake it? Or what if the One Being becomes capable of manifesting itself as a human being?

My point is that there are new threats out there, new stories to tell. So my opinion, after all of my yammering here, is that MK should in fact be both a reboot and a sequel. Continue the story of MK, while taking it back to its roots and starting over in THAT sense.

I definitely like your take on what a reboot means and what it can do for Mortal Kombat.

You're right, reboot doesn't mean they have to retell the story of MK1-MK#.
Retelling the same tales but using newer technologoy and throwing in a few new characters would be closer to a remake for me. That's something I DON'T want.

To have a reboot and see the MK story evolve into a completely different tangent we haven't seen before sounds really awesome now that you've put your two cents in.

Thanks Sinister!

Yeah, I don't quite get where people think that a reboot has to be a retelling of MK1, just taken in a different direction. Xia said that no one wants to see Cage prove he's a legit fighter and Liu Kang win the tournament etc and I agree whole heartedly. It's unnecessary.

But you can go back to a similar atmosphere, with a secretive tournament with the same kind of ambience etc and take MK in a whole new direction with a roster that's 90+% new. When I said that 90% of the MK universe should be killed off, I mean exactly that.

If there are 72 characters in MK, I'm saying seven of them should survive, but I don't believe that all seven should return in one game. You bring back Scorpion and Sub Zero. They're the givens that have to be in every game (in my opinion). You then maybe bring back one or two more characters (maybe that 4th character is hidden) in the next game and leave the other three for subsequent games.

You build up a new MK storyline with new characters and you don't say that the previous MK's never existed, you just simply move on from them. Others might hate that stories will be abandoned etc, but with seven characters returning at various points, you can continue the good stories and lets face it, most of the other ones... Did you really need to see concrete conclusions to those anyways beyond some small mention in the intro?

So yeah, this is the kind of reboot that I can get behind and because of Armageddon, I really think that this is a point in time where the MK team has a very unique opportunity to scrap alot, start over with a fresh, clean slate and write the next, new chapter in MK.

I honestly think that this is what Ed Boon wanted to do before when he was doing interviews about Armageddon and I hope that he gets that chance now. I sincerely doubt it, but who knows...

So let's say MK9 is a reboot.
Would you want them to be called MK: Some Cheesey Title?

I'd prefer, that if it's a reboot, we start the numbering sequence over again, and leave all titles off ALL sequels... using roman numerals of course.

MK9 = Mortal Kombat
MK10 = Mortal Kombat II
etc...

But then I wonder how fans would be able to distinguish between MKII and the reboot version of MKII.

Baraka...in fiction a reboot means starting from the beginning ruling out previous events as non-canon. You can't change the meaning of the term reboot...that's it's definition. What you speak of would be more of a relaunch.

I don't like the "nix Armageddon" ideas for a reboot there were so many awful ideas in deception, like Scorpion champion of the elder Gods, Raiden gradually showing signs of being the next Shao Kahn, and Liu Kang as a zombie.

I don't mind character changes, but look at sub-zero: he gradually evolved over the course of five games. Raiden, Scorpion, and Liu Kang all just changed at the snap of the fingers.

On the other side of things, every time Midway started to take the story in a new direction (the red dragon for instance) fans whined because it wasn't what they were used to. Compelling story changes were constantly shut down due to a fear of leaving status quo. Characters were resurrected 2 and 3 times, instead of letting new villains and heroes rise to prominence.

In addition to all this, a sequel would involve 45-50 year old characters. That's not very exciting, and Midway hasn't been able to create a great cast of characters since 1993 with MK2. Every other cast has at least half sucked, with maybe 3-4 great characters in the whole lot...So they are incapable of replacing the cast with a new one.

The only answer is a reboot.

Well, partly. It would rule out all previous events as non-canon as far as they are relevant to newly attempted story arc. But the original Mortal Kombat Line, by itself, would still be considered the official Mortal Kombat storyline with the reboot being considered a spin-off.

"Spin-off" may be seen as a dirty word, but in essence, that's what all reboots are.

It's worth noting WB owns DC who are notorious in the comic industry for rebooting their characters every ten years and massive retcons. That could have a bearing on the next Mortal Kombat.

Granted but that is the movies/comics whatever. We are talking video games. As for your earlier debate...remake,reboot,relaunch whatever you want to call it...the idea sucks. It would not be MK anymore...you might as well give it a new logo...put a new name on the cover like "Immortal Combat" and make it a alternate type clone or something. The best thing that they can do is to just make the game in the future after Armageddon,it would not be starting over but it could Renew the franchise. All you want a reboot for is so your favorite characters can have a perfect story and that is BS. That is like rebooting Hannibal to be a lawyer or the ninja turtles remade as females...come on man lol.
I was making it an issue to make a new MK as a 2D game but i would rather have a 2D Sequel rather than an all out reboot/remake.

As for what Baraka was saying...I might be able to handle that idea because the past story would be a bit different but the characters would all be there just with new faces and looks. I could deal with that as long as the moves were not altered too much and the characters don't lose the characteristics that made them icons.
For me,the only way I could handle it being a reboot is to do it legit through the original story itself. A perfect example being...pick one of the previous games to start from...(I would choose Deception) and make the opening story as if one of the main characters was dreaming about Armageddons outcome. In other words make the whole MK:A storyline a dream of one of the characters...maybe Raiden? Raiden seems like the type to daydream scenarios...or maybe even Nightwolf? To me that would be the best way to make it a sequel and a reboot in one.

I just snagged this from Wikipedia, but it's basically the same definition I used before: "The term reboot, in media dealing with serial fiction, means to discard MUCH or even all previous continuity in the series and start anew with fresh ideas.[1] Effectively, all established fictive history is declared by the writer(s) to be null and void, or at least irrelevant to the new storyline, and the series starts over as if brand-new.[1]"

Look at that definition again. You would discard MUCH of the continuity, but by no means are you restricted to HAVING to discard all of it. I'd argue that you don't have to discard any of it simply because of the fact that while the writer CAN declare the history to be null and void, they can also simply declare it irrelevant to the new storyline.

If you read my proposal again, my idea wasn't for a reboot in the strict sense of the word (even by the loose definition that I just provided). I think you may have read my post incorrectly. My proposal was for a compromise between reboot and sequel. If you want to go by strict labels, you could call it a "spiritual reboot" if you like.

In the sense that I meant "reboot," I don't believe that a reboot HAS to mean that EVERYTHING in the story is non-canon. I think that you can simply use the intro to end the previous chapter (which then declares it completely irrelevant going forward, it's broken away from, not to be mentioned again), while rebooting in the sense of going back to the original themes, motifs, styles, similar settings etc.

Are you basically saying that a reboot, to you, is a remake, only with a new story? So you would basically want them to go back to the begining and start over with the characters from MK1 and MK2? That's the impression that I get from your last paragraph when you say that Midway hasn't been able to create a great cast of characters since 93.

You also say that people whined whenever the MK team tried to change things up, so are you someone that wants the MK team to create new heroes and villains or are you someone that wants to see them go back to the past? Just curious.

Again, I don't believe that, even by definition, you HAVE to rule out the previous events as non-canon for it to get the designation "reboot." You simply break with the past events and characters while taking the series back to the themes of the origin. So again, in that sense, it's a spiritual reboot since you're not starting from the begining again literally, just figuratively, but moving forward like you would in a sequel.

Relaunch? You could probably call it that too, but I still think that the term reboot applies, just as I think that sequel applies.

If you read my post..."Renew" is a better word to use.

As for your saying reboot being exceptable in this or that way is still making it not a sequel. It still leaves MK:A hanging without reason...I know that many of people hated MK:A but some people actually liked it. (I raise my hand here) There are only a few logical ways to "Renew" a franchise without starting over. Lets see a few examples; we have my previous idea of "it was all a dream scenario",we have the time portal idea that was posted previously (your basic time machine ordeal which can be done in many of ways) or maybe Armageddon could just be a story told by a character (like lets say one of the characters are telling a campfire story or maybe the whole thing was an image of Johnny Cages imagination while reading a script for a movie...just to throw some ideas around).
Anyway,there are ways to have a fresh start without restarting the whole story again. I would rather them just give the original games a face lift and put them up as DLC on PC and console stores (PSN and Live). The only fair way a reboot could actually work right is if another team remade the game and I don't care what anyone says...whoever is the first to try that has some big shoes to fill because regardless of all the messy plots and whatever MK is still a staple in gaming and if not done right would seal the fate of the franchise for whom ever's company does it lol.

I'd like to see a prequel, myself. And that allows for some characters to still show up, like Kitana, Shang Tsung, Goro, etc. It'd be an interesting game, I think.

Yes...I want a reboot...in the sense of Batman Begins, The Daniel Craig Bond films or the 2009 Star Trek film. I want them to start from the first game, but redefine/ change things that didn't work the first time....basically use the first seven games as a rough draft. Keep what works, change what doesn't.

To be honest, every fan idea I've seen for an MK9 storyline has been pretty piss weak. People are all trying to promote their favorite bad guy to boss status and their favorite good guy to top hero status, and it's just lame. You can't top the war to end all wars, and go back to a small tournament. Also almost all of the most popular characters have had their stories ruined, Sub-Zero and Kitana aside. Liu Kang, Johnny Cage, Jax, Scorpion and Raiden have all had random, incredibly contrived an unnatural character shifts. Meanwhile, other popular characters like Sonya, Reptile, and Kung Lao refuse to evolve...getting stuck in the same trap.

Also unless they changed up the timeline we'd be stuck with a bunch of middle age to elderly characters. That would get a little old (pardon the pun).

So yes, I want basically the MK equivalent of Ultimate Spider-Man. Start from the beginning, keep what works, and update what doesn't for a new generation.

This dude makes a good point...

Some characters are gods so therefore are ageless so the time line ordeal is not too big of a problem. Some of the characters I would agree would be either way too old or dead to go too far in the future. But...don't being in certain realms grant immortality or what not though?
Anyways,you place value on the new generations wants but what about all the last generation people and older generations that made the game what it is today?
People talk about roots and than throw out notions and statements like crazy...talk about hypocritical lol. As far as fan story ideas go...I don't read them unless they are for created characters. Why worry about what fans write? Some of it might be cool and it can be fun to read but that has nothing to do with MK9 or any other official MK game for that matter.
As for your statement about promoting favorites...that happens in every game and you have to get use to it.
Your words on war,that is just un-thought out ranting right there because in some way shape or form...there is always some form of war going on. Also when one war ends another is bound to start sooner or later...that is if one is not already brewing in the midst of the current war(s). There will always be good and evil...without one or the other...neither would exist so war is inevitable.
I think it is funny how some people seem like they are preaching notions (reboots or sequels/2D or 3D)and trying to convert others into wanting what they want so that the numbers will go in favor and give them the higher chance of it to actually happen...which in reality it does not work that way lol.
I am not attacking you Ermac or anyone else...I am just saying this because it is how it is. We all get that way at some point because of frustration towards other posters...amongst other reasons.
For me...at this point I really do not care about stories...I just want a solid,fun,competitive,addicting and creative fighting game with tons of options and a good size roster of characters that we all enjoy. Its a fighting game not a novel. At least not yet lol.

I agree with this.

It's also not fair to throw away newer characters and fresher stories (like Ashrah, or the new "dark" Raiden story) only to give another chance AGAIN via a reboot/remake/re-whatever for some of the classic characters to finally start developing. Liu, Johnny, Sonya and some other classics, they all appeared in numerous games, they all had their chances to shine, but they failed (at least that's how I see them). So, why should those characters be given another chance again? No, no, no. They should be buried for good. Give us more of Kenshi, Ashrah, Nitara, Ermac, Noob Saibot etc., keep Sub-Zero, Kitana, Raiden and bring in some new characters...

Sequel!

I really do hope its a sequel that takes place after MKA...I for one am dying to know who lived and who died..I enjoyed the stories that were told and while most the endings probably didn't count for much anyway seeing how MK 9 was either going to happen or not... really I would love to see the story go the way it probably was..and follow scorpions if not sub-zeros ending

The only ending they should follow imo is Taven. I'd also put Taven in MK9, perhaps as a new God Protectorate/ leader character, as he's much more developed, and more powerful than Fujin, who always felt like a piecemeal of elements of Raiden and Kung Lao to me.

until boon and company can come up with more compelling story lines, i say less is more. i think the early games showed that, especially in how they've aged, almost anyone that has played one of the early mk games can reference a character and give a pretty decent synopsis of their story. but with newer games there are many people, while even owning the game have very little knowledge of characters and their stories.

the game isn't as compelling when you fill in all the blanks, leaves no room for imagination. Just for reference i re-watched several mka endings, now i know their are trying to wrap up loose ends, but my god, there is some serious bullshit in there, if some of you people really want a sequel to that horrid game, you are out of your minds. why would the mk team take the time to rehash all the bull from the past game, not to mention suffer the backlash from die hard fan boys, bitching about who's endings should have counted, or which characters are even mentioned. (yes i know this will happen regardless, but at least each character's absenteeism could be explained will the same answer, "this is a new take on mk, forget what you knew before.")

after mkda the new characters were just uninspired, and that includes most characters that returned for mka. Ed has been talking about wiping the slate clean for along time, personally i think that could mean all new characters, except the obvious scorp and sub, or simply starting the characters stories over again. i just find a sequel so unlikely at this point, WB must be encouraging the mk team to return to the source, how could they not want mk to be the cash cow it once was?

i think continuing on this story line you are alienating a huge audience, and by that i mean, mk has obviously lost followers over the years, the community has shrunk. each iteration that progresses in story farther from the original game separates any previous fan father from what they know and love about the game and its characters. it would be like seeing the first episode of a show that had a running story line, then not watching again until the fifth season, and being completely isolated from the characters motives. are they good, bad etc. so basically even if someone wanted to give mk a try again, not only would that person find it difficult to understand and relate the story of returning characters, but the new characters leave little to be desired, in terms of originality, thus garnering them little popularity.