Meh.

Motaro was fucking annoying to fight against in MK3.

While it was nice they introduced a natural enemy for the Shokan, creating some Outworld race tension, they've done very little with it, so I don't even care anymore.The explanation for his missing ass in Armageddon is downright laughable, and he's not particularly interesting.
But more relevant: Motaro's dead. I don't know how they planned to explain his survival/resurrection and frankly I don't care either. Leave him dead.

Pretty much the same deal as Goro, Kintaro, and Moloch. I don't want to see repeat sub-bosses, and these types of characters don't contribute to balanced gameplay. Motaro's worse off because they don't seem to be able to figure out how to make a quadriped work in 3D.
And like I mentioned earlier, if they really want to throw in an overpowered character as an unlockable bonus...use Kintaro.

Gone.

The good thing about Mortaro, to me, is that he is the only centaur in the series that we've seen. I'm kind of 50/50 about Motaro. I feel like we don't know much about him, which opens the door to do so much with him. If he does return, it would be nice to see him as a full centaur. Story wise, God knows where they could go with that. I may be in the minority for this, but I'm going to say stay.

I think Motaro is a really cool character.
It was kind of bittersweet to have him in MKA because it was good that we got him but with only 2 legs.
The ultimate goal for him I think would be to appear in an MK game with his back legs.
I would like to see him again. I say STAY.

Motaro used to be a cool character till he lost his legs for some reason. Also, they named his fighting style Horse, which is lame as well. At least call it Centaur.

Having said that, I did like the war paint on his alternate costume. I did like some of his moves. And having a four legged fighter was a nice touch to a fighting game. I haven't seen anyone else like that in any game I played until Ivysayur in Brawl.

However, I think he had his time, and time to retire. Sorry Motaro, but gone.

Wow, two lame characters, a lame character that used to be good, let's see who's next.....

~checks ahead~

Dammit!

gone. im tired of the big beast sub boss characters. they are never interesting story or gameplay wise.

Having a centaur character is pretty cool. If they can keep him as a proper centaur with distinct style and movement, balanced properly against everyone else. If not then don't bother.

Would be cool to see a lady Motaro too.

Ah, Motaro. He was a pain in the ass in MK3. Even cheaper in UMK3 and Trilogy. Sucked in MK Annihilation. Lost his most unique feature in Armagedon. I mean really, this guy has a bad track record.

Motaro: GONE

Most likely he came back the way every dead villain came back: Shinnok let them all out of Hell to bolster the evil army's ranks, as part of his master plan to deliberately cause Armageddon.
Anyway, I too hate when the dead return, and never liked Motaro or found the Centaurs interesting in the first place. Gone.

i would like to see Motaro return but as a whole with his back legs...the thing is he is suppose to be dead so i think that maybe if there was to be a centaur rivalry they should make a new centaur character...unfortunately i say gone.

Ugh, I always hated Motaro. He just looked like a hodge podge of ideas that never came together well. Does anyone know why he has a metal tail? Granted, this mediocre character was made all the more terrible by the second movie, though that flick obviously didn't do any MK characters any favors.

I actually didn't mind the story behind the change from four legs to two. I mean, clearly they would've had issues trying to get a 4 legged character to move around properly in 3D, so I was fine with his alteration and the whole "curse of the minotaur" thing. Even if it's nonsensical at best.

Still, he's dead, he's a sub boss which to me makes him a one-off character and honestly? I jsut never liked him to begin with.

VERDICT: GONE
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gone: 26, saved: 13

Saved thus far: Baraka, Drahmin, Ermac, Fujin, Hotaru, Kabal, Kai, Kano, Kenshi, Kira, Kung Lao and Liu Kang.

I actually liked the metal tail :p and the whole design of the character in MK3, I thought it was very unique and quite frightening.

Unfortunately, story-wise the character never kicked-off and his design was ruined in MKA, I didn't hate it, but it definitely wasn't as good as in MK3 and it ruined the whole scary feel about him.

I think on the gameplay aspect he could be quite cool, but unfortunately I'll say GONE.

... ... ...

My verdicts so far:

STAY: 19

GONE: 20

We'll never again see him playable in an MK fighting game. I wanted him to have another shot at being a big name, but MKA ruined him for me. I've always loved the concept of Centaurs in the MK world though, and I do hope we'll see them again in a future Konquest mode, or adventure game. As a matter of fact, it's long past time we got a look at the Shokans' native subterranean territory, too.


Verdict: GONE.

Edit: My tally so far: 15 to stay, 24 to go. Much harsher than I originally thought I would be.

We need a hot centaur chick. Maybe Disney can lend one out from Fantasia.

Motaro: He's alright. I like Goro better so I willed rather have his return than Motaros.

Verdict: Gone

I know it;s Motaro now but since Moloch was just before him I'll do a summary for both.
So, Moloch an Motaro. Both have six letter names beginning with 'M'. Both are sub bosses. Both are incredibly broken gameplay wise and both are very disappointing characters.
Motaro arrived in MK3 and was an utter bastard to fight against. Multiple projectiles in a curved arc (up to 9 I believe) at once, teleport spamming and auto reflect on projectiles combined to piss many a person off. In comparison, Moloch was an utter suck fest. He had moments where the CPU would decide to be a bitch but otherwise you could own him easily. Props to Nitara for being able to do a full 100% damage to him without him even being able to block her assault. (Yes, she is that awesome!)
MKA arrives and these two are added along with everyone else but wait! Motaro has 2 legs! The story they gave to account for that was alright, I guess but still, it was pretty shocking. He was nerfed badly gameplay wise and wasn't that great anymore whereas Moloch became the most broken MK character in existent and as a result, the most powerful. In gameplay of course.
Storywise I never liked Motaro. He was just another of Shao Kahn's goons and he failed like Kintaro and Goro and wasn't anywhere near as remotely interesting.
Moloch on the other hand had potential. Along with his buddy Drahmin, they had a brilliant concept history. I still have the MKDA guide with it in. The story of the owl with Moloch's essence flying arounf with it and suddenly dropping on land which would then call forth Moloch to reign destruction on the land the essence ball fell. But no, such potential was shortlived. What we got instead was:
'ROAR! I am Moloch! I am big! Strong! I smash things with my friend Drahmin! ROAR! I chase enemy Scorpion and kill! KILL! SMASH! HUNT! HUNT! HUNT! KILL! SMASH! ROAR!!!!!!! Enemy Scorpion dead! ROAR! STOMP! STOMP! SMASH! Now I not have nothing to smash! Moloch sad! ROAR! Moloch not make MK sequel! Moloch forgotten by MK Team! Moloch mad! Moloch want to smash MK Team! ROAR!!!!! SMASH! SMASH! KILL HUNT! SMASH!! ROARRRRRRRR!!!!!!!' *Knocks self out with his orb in his rage*
Thanks very much for that Moloch. You were shit! Now goodbye and take Motaro with you!

The only reason I liked Motaro was because he was a centaur, but they even took that away from him in MKA. So due to that, along with just having a completely uninteresting story, he needs to go.

Get rid of him. He's a sub-boss. That's all he'll ever be.

Motaro was a cool and interesting character in MK3 and was a cool substitute for Kintaro and Goro at that time. I as a kid always wanted to see a rivalry spark between Motaro and Goro seeing as how the Shokan and Centaurian race are sworm enemies.

Motaro I feel had his moment during the invasion of Earthrealm and I hated him for his cheap gameplay and back when the story explained that Johnny Cage died by his raiding parties, but that was discluded in the official story.

I liked John Vogel's explanation of what happened to Motaro following MK3 that showed the cunning of Kano a mere mortal who outsmarted both Motaro and Sheeva. That I felt was a creative and great way to kill off the mighty Centaur. I say keep to that story and leave Motaro dead.

Motaro is actually one of my favourite characters. MK3 brings back fond memories for me, and Motaro just struck a chord with me in those days. That being said, like all the sub-bosses, I just don't see an important role in MK's future for him to play. I'd only ever want to see him in some sort of exploration of the Netherrealm, perhaps. I imagine him being a bad-ass down there.

Verdict: GONE

Crazy. It looks like it's damn-near unanimous to get rid of Motaro. :D

It's strange, because in a way I agree with you about MK3 and in a way I couldn't disagree more.

I remember skipping out on the end of school to go with some buddies to a mall that had an awesome arcade and we'd play MK3 around the time it first arrived there. Of course, we'd all get owned at it because none of us knew the moves or combos and since none of us had the internet yet and no strategy guide had come out, you just kind of had to learn by asking people what the combos were and a rather expensive trial and error process.

There was nothing like trying to figure out Sheeva's 7 hitter while someone was just absolutely wailing on you with their own combos that they'd actually figured out already.

That was my main issue with MK3 though. Compared to the first two, it had zero accessability.

I'm always amazed by people that look back fondly on MK3 and remember it as one of their favorites in the series. Of course, you're absolutely entitled to your opinion and I'd never fault you for that, but the more I played MK3 back then, the more I grew to despise the MK team for making it the way they did:

Bear in mind that this comes from a diehard MK fan: I don't usually (okay, ever) care about fashion in games, but MK3 has some of the goofiest looking rejects I've ever seen in a video game. Sektor and Cyrax are wearing black spandex bicycle pants and what look like high tech catcher's chest protectors. Sub Zero and Kung Lao are both wearing... What th heck are they wearing? Tech vests? What do you call those? Oh and that's by far the worst that Sub Zero's EVER looked in this series. Just horrible.

Jax has metal arms (fail) and black and purple pants (also fail), Nightwolf and Stryker look like members of the Village People, Shang Tsung looks like he stole Sheeva's shirt/crotch outfit (along with a nice hair hat), Sindel and Sonya are clad entirely in spandex (seriously, it wasn't even popular back then and again, not a fashion expert by any means). Sindel also looked like the Bride of Frankenstein, which to me was lame.

The ninjas in UMK and Trilogy also looked like they were wearing tech vests of some sort. I thought the look of the ninjas in this era was by far the worst.

So just about the only characters that weren't totally messed up looking were Liu Kang because he looks exactly the same way he did in MK2, just with a different actor and Kabal, who looked awesome. Kano... I guess the best I could say was that I was mostly indifferent to his look.

So yeah, couple a collection of the worst looking characters in MK history with a gameplay system that basically amounted to memorizing long strings of dial-a-combos and trying to sucker someone in to one of those dial a combos and I can honestly say that of the MK fighting games, MK3 is by far the worst in my mind.

Of course, saying that... I still enjoyed the game to an extent. I still have UMK3 on the Saturn and I pull that out every now and then. I just always wonder how MK fans don't see that game as the sort of black sheep of the series given how great MK1 and MK2 were style-wise and what a drastic change from all that MK3 turned out to be.

I think it's partly because arguably UMK3 was, gameplay-wise, the best MK ever got. The cast was on the whole nicely balanced; sure there were a few powerhouses like Kabal, Ermac and Smoke, but most characters were capable of holding their own. It was out during a time when arcade play was still big, not during the dying days like MK4 was.

Another is the sense of escalation; this is one of the first times in gaming history, I think, where a villain comes out of nowhere after failing with a backup plan, says "screw the rules", and takes what he wants. I remember how amazed I was when I first saw that intro:

"Upon breaching the portal into Earth, Shao Kahn slowly transforms the planet into a part of the Outworld itself. Kahn strips the earth of all human life, claiming every soul as his own."

No question about it, it was dark and nasty, possibly among MK's darker moments. I was disappointed when I felt MK4 did not match up.

You're right about the overall style and mysticism taking a nosedive though; I have the feeling if they'd kept that intact from MKII without altering one bit of the core plot, MK3 would be standing tall and proud as the fans' overall favorite game, just edging out MKII.

Silly though they may have been, U/MK3 did give us a host of great new fighters. Remember that it gave Smoke and Jade plot and purpose, began setting Scorpion and Sub-Zero apart (even if Sub didn't look all that great), and for every forgettable character like Stryker, we got someone like Kabal. Most MK3-era folks have really gone on in the series to cement their place. Some people say that a lot of folks from MKI and II get a free popularity pass for being classic characters, but whenever future storyline prospects are debated amongst the cast, I seem to see more people putting forward ideas for the likes of Sindel, Sektor and Kabal than, say, Jarek, Reiko or Shinnok. They may have looked goofy, but they've become loved - if not universally, then by the majority.

What's really unfortunate that they chose to set practically the entire game in what was pretty much Chicago. This is where the series' style fell flat on its face and didn't recover for years. They could have done a lot better in terms of the backgrounds and atmosphere; while I liked the Graveyard, the Temple and the Soul Chamber, I still scratch my head at such "amazing" concepts as the Street, The Bridge, and The Bank. Those places should have shown more directly the type of carnage and destruction that would realistically happen if every soul on earth dropped dead at once (this alone I feel, if done correctly, would have made for one hell of a sequel to Shaolin Monks set during MK3). Not only that, but come on - if Outworld and all of Earth are merged, for cripes' sakes show us more of that. Let me see the Serengeti plains fused with the Wastelands, or something equally mind-boggling and horrifying - don't limit us to Kahn's tower in downtown Chi Town.

Another problem I had was that the whole Kombat Kode system made it tracking down secrets a monotonous process. Fighting Reptile in MKI, and Smoke Jade & Noob in II were fun challenges. Tapping in a code to fight and unlock U/MK3's hidden cast - of which only Ermac was a new secret character - was not .

It was a great big treat seeing him made manifest in a game though - this big insane EGM April Fool's joke turned myth turned real. It felt like the MK staff was throwing the fans a bone, bless 'em for it. I think he's my favorite part of UMK3, along with unlocking Human Smoke - I completely threw someone off their game and beat them badly with him the day after that code became public knowledge, they'd never seen him before (he went "WTF?!" when the round started, lol). And the wacky obviously fake Rain joke, and all the people who insisted they knew how to unlock him but "wanted to keep the secret to themselves" was hilarious. Those things particularly endear UMK3 to me. Good times.

U/MK3's main problem, I feel is all the ingredients for greatness are there, but they're all flawed in one way or another. Better fatalities, better background and atmosphere, and it could have very possibly been the best. Even the Bride of Frankenstein could be forgiven. Remember, they were gonna call her "Muchacha" at one point. I don't think things turned out so bad.

Despite all that, I honestly see MK4 as the black sheep; It was this halfhearted attempt into 3D territory with a horrid weapons system, horrible video endings, the same basic combos for everyone, and a host of uninspired new characters, minus maybe Quan Chi and Fujin. I didn't like Tanya until MKD, and even now I'm kind of ambivalent to her presence in future games. And god, how glitchy and bugged-out MK Gold was.

I expect him to return

Thanks for remembering my thread Icebaby! I couldn't believe how many great ideas came from that thread too. I really enjoyed that, so maybe I'll take another look at it again in a little bit.

Anyways, so Nightwolf...

I honestly never liked him. His moves were decent, his story was always decent, but his look has always been horrendous to me. Overall, in both MK3 and Deception, I saw him as an extremely average character.

Honestly, I wish that I had more to say about him. Usually I can ramble on about a character for what feels like an hour at least, but Nightwolf just never captured my imagination like many other characters. Perhaps it's because his plotlines are very singular in focus and also never seem to come true.

I dunno, maybe because of all of that it feels like he's just...There. Taking up space. He's one of the few characters that I can honestly say I'd have no reaction whatsoever if he were in the next game or if he were never in another MK game again. Because of that:

VERDICT: GONE
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gone: 27, saved: 13

Saved thus far: Baraka, Drahmin, Ermac, Fujin, Hotaru, Kabal, Kai, Kano, Kenshi, Kira, Kung Lao and Liu Kang.