Fuck the classics.

No offense to you TC, but there are many threads already as far as characters you want in the game go. There is no reason really to make a seperate thread just to get your point across on a topic that has been talked about several times. I'm not trying to attack you, I just needed to vent.

As far as the classics go, I say get rid of them all as well. I'm really hoping for a new beginning here. MK has become too much of a joke as of late. I'm hoping they get rid of basically everyone.

All new characters?! Then it's no longer characters. It's the new characters of MKDA-MKA and superheroes that have made mk a joke in my opinion.

classic characters play their part yes but you have to realize that unlike all the other fighting games out there MK evolves a lot more than usual and that is one thing that separates it from the rest...new characters is inevitable. this is why i really really like create a character features because you can atleast make characters close to the classic ones not in the game...but it also helps if the mode gives the classic moves in the proper manner and executed in the right way.

in anycase to some people...a few of the newer characters have already become iconic classic characters even though some of them are not favorites they are not forgetable. like for me Nitara and Ashrah...Sareena...Taven and Daegon...they all have potential to be just as classic as the others. i agree that it may stress the story a bit to add too many new faces to the story all at once and i agree to a limited amount but 3 is a bit low...i say maybe double that...6 or so would be good. even if a couple of them were just expendable characters that die after MK9 and are never to be seen again...that would be fresh and different.
i like the classics as much as the next person but new characters can be exciting if they are made well.

I think a lot of the classic characters cause problems for the newer ones. Call it the "Jay Leno/Conan O'Brien" effect. Instead of stepping out when their time comes, they stick around and make it harder for the new guys to get a start. Kabal and Mavado are a perfect example of this. Why did Kabal make Deception when Mavado did not? Horrible.

I generally agree that some classics should return, and that a lot of them are inevitable, and that it is smart to do so. But having said that, I hope we get some commitment to some completely new characters, or recent characters, and get them to the stage where they are also iconic.

Uh because Kabal looks cool and original and Mavado doesn't? It has nothing to do with classic characters over staying their welcome. Kung Lao, Sonya, Sub-Zero, Scorpion, Reptile, Shang Tsung... all the classic characters are way better than the new shit we started getting since MK4.

The only classic I could see returning is(if they do a reboot) Liu Kang as the Immortal MK Champion, maybe as the tourney master, ala Tsung in MK1.

Yeah, the problem is Kabal never should have been shoved off stage to begin with. I mean Kabal's an old classic coming back to usurp the position of the new characters who haven't been given a chance? Seriously? Yesterday Kabal WAS the new character who wasn't given a chance. We've been creating and scrapping new Red/Black Dragon characters every game since MK3. Take out the ninjas and they're practically half the frickin' population of Armageddon. ENOUGH already. Most of them aren't even that interesting!

[P.S. Mavado will never be cool as long as he insists on boing-boinging around the fighting arenas with his retarded bungee cord attacks. The dragon clans will never be able to claim a bigger stake in the overall mythos until they decide to stop being total caricatures of themselves]

[P.P.S. You know, fuck that. The Black and Red Dragon characters NEVER added anything worthwhile to the MK mythology and just take up space that could be occupied by better characters. Screw the dragon clans and I hope Sektor mechanizes the lot of them. That might actually make them interesting for a change.
Yes, you heard it here first: the Tekunin are the new Borg. May they live long and prosper.]

Sorry, this was a double-post. The classic characters are so overrated. They came from a simpler time.

Yeah, because that Star Wars movie came out so long after MK3. Kabal was such an original masterstroke. And that Mavado guy certainly had no potential. I mean, he only killed Kabal like a bitch, was hyped up as being Sonya's greatest enemy, did in his first appearance what she couldn't do in an entire saga and basically revealed himself to be the greatest internal threat to Earthrealm.

NOT! lulz, lets just hav kabal kill him becoz kabal is kewwwwwwwl!!!11 Explaimation marks look like hookswords! Kewl!

Sorry, but I just can't speak seriously to anyone who thinks Kabal returning instead of Mavado for MK: Deception was a productive idea. Yeah, Kabal perhaps should have been back for MK4. No doubt he got fucked over, too. But the whole point was meant to represent older characters in general and younger characters in general. Hell, Deception pretty much saw old characters return for the hell of it. Nightwolf, Sindel, Jade, Ermac, Tanya, Baraka and Mileena all came out of the blue. In an overcrowded game, wouldn't it have been better to focus on developing the personalities of characters with momentum? Including some fresh ones, and actually running forward with some of the guys from Deadly Alliance?

How you can expect these characters to be awesome when they have their balls cut off so consistently makes no sense to me.



The Red Dragon essentially had one proper game to make their presence worthwhile. The reason it may resemble an aborted fetus is because it was. Everything about Mavado's character said "stay tuned for this guy." Sub-Zero and Sonya were both put on notice. But nah, that was all we ever heard about that.

Granted, I too was a bit bothered that there was suddenly a second "Dragon" clan, but the way they completely and methodically destroyed the Black Dragon was so cool. But instead of following through with the calculating suave force of Mavado, the MK Team decides to kill him off and bring back Kabal -- leading the BLACK DRAGON! They were just destroyed!

The MKT cast was definitely the best, but lack of novelty is why the last 2 games sucked.

We need new characters.

thats right. keep the classic characters. you dont have to put all of them into one game, but always keep them around. mk4-mka characters SUCKEDDDDDD. quan chi was basically the only fighter who is good to go without having to be revamped or changed in someway. thats why i said they need to fire those creative guys or light a fire under their ass because they got LAZY.

and the reason they are always welcome is the keyword CLASSIC. classic never goes out of style. example:70's,80's rock is classic. you still can listen to it and enjoys many years later after it was first created.

GET IT!!! naww lol

Sorry You-Know-Who, but if you want to talk seriously about something you can't be a fanboy because then you're being biased.
Mavado was never hyped as Sonya's greatest enemy or made to look awesome. Killed Kabal like a bitch? Who the hell remembers that?

Kabal was only a part of MK3. The same Kabal design and moves and story were used for MK3, UMK3 and MKT, so it's not like he was given a ton of chances to get over and evolve into a proper character. He was just cooler than Mavado right off the bat.

You can act like an asshole saying Kabal is just a rip off of Darth Vader, but I had never seen hook swords until I saw Kabal, and what's Mavado's weapons? Hookswords, wow that's creative. And red, cartoony elastic ropes or whatever the hell they were.

I never said creating a new character was a better idea than bringing in Kabal, I was just pointing out that Kabal's more popular than Mavado because he's just way cooler, not because he's been around for ages while Mavado wasn't ''given a chance''.

Personally, I think that both Kabal and Mavado should've been in MK:D. I think the MK team REALLY dropped the ball by creating Kobra (snore) and Kira (not a horrid design, but her moves blatantly ripped from other characters held her down a bit) instead of just having Kabal and Mavado go at it.

I personally saw a TON of potential for Mavado after MK:DA. His moves were somewhat unique, even if there were too few. How much better would it have been if Kabal, BELIEVED to have been killed by Mavado, had come back to claim his weapon and destroy the man that destroyed the Black Dragon?

Then Mavado, upon gloating over his victory and murder of Kano, must now go to the next MK tournament upon hearing rumors that Kabal is still alive. Not wanting to believe it, he goes forward to finish what he started in stamping out the group that splintered the Red Dragon.

As far as new characters in MK:DA, I thought that Mavado had the most potential. As far as MK3 new characters go, I thought that Kabal easily had the most potential. Yet the MK team brought neither of them back in the next game. Arg.

Well, here's my only real problem with this approach...

What story can you possibly tell now with all of these same old characters? I know that MK vs DC was basically a mash up of the best on each side, but the actual plot was horrendous.

I mean sure, any MK game is going to have Scorpion and Sub Zero. That's just a given. Maybe Rayden as well, but I don't think that he's an absolute requirement.

But the rest?

You might not care about the story, but to me, the idea of continually putting these same people in a tournament where they're fighting for their lives... I dunno, after 7 games it just seems like it's time to retire alot of them.

I mean, take Liu Kang for example... He won MK1. Great! Then he won MK2. Okay, a little repetetive, but he's the chosen one. No problem. Then in MK4 he kinda starts to get stale. You know this because his bio starts out by saying "Still the immortal champion of Mortal Kombat..."

It's almost like they're saying "Yep, he's still here..."

Okay, so then they killed the guy before MK:DA. Shocking! He should be dead.

Then they bring him back as a ZOMBIE!? Awful. Then then, to make matters even worse (if that's possible), they have this whole thing where his soul is battling his body, or something along those lines.

See? This is the type of garbage you get when a character's run its' course.

Now. Look at the other sacred cows of Mortal Kombat. Johnny Cage, Kano, Sonya, Jax, Kung Lao, Reptile, Kitana, Mileena, Shang Tsung etc...

Couldn't you run through their past exploits, their recent exploits and their most recent direction and come up with a similar realization that maybe those characters have run their course? I know that I can.

I'm certainly not bashing them by any means. Not even Liu Kang. But in a game that's as story driven as MK, continuously bringing back these characters who's plotlines and even move lists etc have gone stale after several games seems to me to be a bit counter productive.

I mean, if MK9 is going to be a truly new experience in the series, should they really be bringing back a TON of old faces to begin with? Personally, I'd say no.

New characters simply can't get off the ground until most of the old ones are gone. I see the wisdom in keeping Sub Zero and Scorpion, as they are the anchors of the series. The mascots, if you will. But do we really need to see Baraka doing his same moves now for the 5th time? And what's he going to do storywise? Serve the big bad guy AGAIN?

I dunno man, I get why you like the classic characters. I like them too. But when you service nostalgia that much, usually it's not for the best. MK:D gave fans many of the old characters that they wanted to see again and the results of that, in my opinion, were mixed at best.

In Sonya's Konquest, she had to face her greatest enemy while passing through the portal into Outworld. She faced Mavado, whom she had never met before. I'd say that this is confirmation that he was her greatest threat. And you can ask "Who the hell remembers that?" until the cows come home; the fact is that it happened, and it was pretty much stupidly retconned.

No, Kabal did not get many chances. That sucks for him. Said that. But it doesn't mean he needs to be brought back post-death. He served his part in the story and served it well. And I was referring to the Sand People, not Darth Vader -- but there's another borrowed influence for Kabal from the Star Wars universe.

Mavado using the Hookswords was about as creative as Kabal using the Sai, but at least Mavado got a cool backstory behind them: He killed Kabal and took them.

And no, Mavado was not given a chance. Nor was Kabal. It's long been a problem in Mortal Kombat. My point was that Kabal should not have been back for Deception in place of Mavado, and I stand by that. Kabal's time was MK4 or MK:DA. We don't need him replacing characters who replace him. It's just a messy way to do things, and part of the reason the MK universe is so cluttered -- and that in turn is part of the reason why a lot of the new characters don't get a chance to develop. You need to drop some oldies to make way for some fresh faces.

Just classics like SF IV?

No sir. I say throw in a group of inevitable classics (we all know Sub Zero and Scorpion are in there, somewhere) and a bunch of new ones. I'd say 40% classic characters and 60% new ones.

When you eliminate so many of the old characters....you're inevitably going to piss off many fans that loved the classic. E.g Street fighter 3 wasnt so popular, because there were very few returning characters.

MK3 left a bad taste because they eliminated scorpion. MKD left out so many of the classics which I and I'm sure others didnt like.

Yes, I know there is that issue with storyline....and frankly i dont give a damn. A fighting game should be played for the fighting. Story shouldnt limit which fighters can go in a game. If you want a story, go play an rpg or something.

And seriously, when was the last time MK's storyline impressed you? For me...never.

I liked MK's story in the first few games, and I also thought that MK:DA had a solid story. I mean c'mon, Liu Kang and Shao Khan get killed in the opening cinema, two sorcerers who have no reason to trust one another except for their shared greed... I thought that story was good.

As far as MKD leaving out many of the classics, I actually thought the opposite was true and that they were really trying to give some fan service by having Mileena, Baraka, Nightwolf, Jade, Mileena, Tanya, Noob, Smoke, Kabal, Sindel and a returning Liu Kang to go with the traditional Rayden, Sub Zero and Scorpion.

If you look at that list, that's a LOT of names of characters that people really wanted to see get a second chance, especially the returning MK3 characters. So yeah, as I've said before, simply having a giant amount of nostalgia in an MK game doesn't always lead to good things.

Yeah, I've heard the Street Fighter 3 argument before, but you know what? When SF3 came out, it had a few things going against it. One, 3D fighting games were REALLY hitting their stride, so people weren't nearly as interested in playing 2D fighters anymore. Capcom had basically saturated their own market on 2D fighters with the vs games as well as it's MANY reiterations of SF2.

Of course, that also worked against SF3. Why? Well, think about it. They had the exact same roster with a few additions for several games. Then they release a game in the dying arcade market with very few familiar faces.

MK wouldn't have that problem because MK has a cast of about 70 characters. Yet the ones that everyone identify with, Scorpion, Sub Zero and Rayden will most likely be in every MK game going forward.

I know, you might not see the difference, but think abou it, MK has so many characters, that they've been shuffling fighters in and out of their rosters for years. Baraka missed MK3 and MK4, but came back in MK Gold. Rayden missed MK3 and UMK3 but came back for Trilogy and MK4.

So yeah, I think that the MK team could phase characters back in over time, but they need to build a new roster of characters because the current roster, especially the sacred cows, have become stale. Let most of them take a breather so fans will actually WANT to see Kung Lao again after he's been in MK2, 3, Gold, DA and D and A.

I'm not even talking about just the story, although to me it's important. Yes, you can in fact have a fighting game with a good story. Just because Tekken, Dead or Alive, Virtua Fighter and every Capcom fighter have all had godawful stories, that doesn't mean story and fighting have to go together like oil and water.

It might be cliched now, but Enter the Dragon has always been one of my favorite movies and the story was part of the reason why.

Again though, it's not just the story... These characters, with almost the exact same moves they've had since the very begining are now, for the most part, in the 5th, 6th, 7th or even 8th games... You're telling me their moves aren't a bit stale by now?

Even Ed Boon, before MK vs DC, recognized this issue when he said that the next game would be a drastic departure in the series, where only Sub Zero and Scorpion were safe bets to return.

I'm not sure why you'd want to keep playing the old games/characters after so many games. Oh well, your opinion, I guess.

MK vs. DC actually made me embarrassed to be a Mortal Kombat fan.....and it wasn't because of the DC characters.

Whenever I see people wax on about how the MK characters of over a decade ago were so much better and cooler than the ones we get now...I don't know about anyone else...but I usually stop and actually think back & remember what it was like back then and really look at the characters we had back then.

Then I ask myself...
How many of those characters really were that great, even by those standards? And of the ones that were, how many have actually maintained or improved over time?
And once I looked past the rosy colored glow of my nostalgia glasses, I realized......

Not really.

I don't remember people lining around the block to play as the turkey boy who was the only character with a fatality that didn't kill anybody. I don't remember anyone missing Sonya or Kano in MK2 and I don't remember anyone caring when they came back. I remember indifference to Johnny Cage's death. Scorpion's a joke now. Kitana's becoming a joke. Shang Tsung's gone stale. Reptile's gone stale. Goro's become a joke.

The list goes on.


And as for the whole "classic" thing....personally, I hate the term. Because it's bullshit.

When I first came to this website...this was shortly before MK:DA...the ONLY characters that were dubbed "classics" were the MK1 characters and maybe a few MK2 characters.
Then...slowly but surely, it became all MK1 characters and all MK2 characters; except for maybe Jade, Smoke, Noob Saibot, & Kintaro.
Ah, but then, it became all MK1 & MK2 characters, and a few MK3 ones.

By the time Deception came out, everyone from MK1 to Trilogy was labeled a "classic." All the more amusing because I remember when MK3 came out, everyone hated those new characters.

And what's this...

Yep.

Slowly but surely, I'm noticing more and more a few MK4 characters sliding in. Quan Chi....soon Shinnok. I expect Reiko and Tanya won't be far behind.


If you don't like the more recent addtions from MK:DA and Deception, here's a solution:

Wait.

Just want to add a little post script to that, because it came out very harsh:

I'm not saying no one should like the older characters. I mean, Kintaro is one of my favorite characters and let's face it...he's just a jacked up Goro clone.

But that's exactly my point. The reason the sacred cows of way-back-when seem to great and special is because we had no standard to compare. They were objectively no better than most of the characters we get now, but because we had no standards back then, the oldies seem like some kind high pinacle of quality.

The best example of this is Kobra. One of the most reviled characters of recent years.

Kobra was created as a homage to the Karate Kid....no different than Liu Kang being a homage to Enter the Dragon or Raiden to Big Trouble in Little China. Yet, we praise Liu & Raiden as "classics" while Kobra gets shit on as some kind of insult to the fans.
He's no different than Liu or Johnny Cage or Raiden.

Had he been created in MK1, he'd be called a "classic" too.

Think about that.

Hey now, don't be painting everyone with the same brush here, XD. I actually quite enjoyed MK3 when it came out (yes, MK3, not UMK3 or MKT, though I of course enjoyed those, too). A big part of that was the well-developed characters and holy shit storyline. In fact, no joke, I honestly didn't realize Scorpion wasn't in the game for the longest time. That's how much he was missed (I like the spear, and we got that with Smoke, so I was happy. And we got Cyrax's net, which was even better). Of course, it would have been nice to see Mileena and Kitana again, but, lo and behold, they were just around the corner.

I think what makes characters "classics" isn't time so much as accrued development. I never saw much appeal in Reiko, for instance, until he made his brief appearance in Conquest and actually had some life breathed into him, and I bet a lot of people weren't screaming to have Ermac back, but now can't wait to see him again after he was so wonderfully reenvisioned in Deception. Which brings me to another point I've been meaning to make: I believe that there are no stale characters, just stale writers. With a heavy dose of creativity, a long term plan, and a willingness to take chances, any MK character can be awesome again. Scrapping the old just to make a couple new Mary Sues with practically the exact same moveset every game is the lazy way out. A character with new moves I can understand, but I don't want to see anymore Kiras and Kobras JUST because nobody could think of anything to do with Sonya, Kano, and Liu Kang anymore. If originality is your problem, hire a creative consultant for chrissakes.

if kobra had been created back then he would be classic.....NOOOO. classic is something that was created along time ago, PLUS it has to be good. kobra aint good at all. and he was more of a street fighter rip off, looked liked ken and has the fire.....

EXAMPLE:just because 80's rock was created along time ago does not make it good. what makes it classic is that it is quality music. its a lot of rock songs thats was created back then but do people consider every old rock song as a classic. NOO and every mk1-mk3 fighter is not classic, some are bad,good,great,classic,icons.

but mkda-mka has NO great-classic fighters. mk4 has quans chi, he is great.