News Archive - May 2005

If you pick Liu Kang or Kung Lao, the other character always shows up during the cut-scenes. This way, if you pick 2-Player Ko-Op Mode, the cut-scenes in between the fights are exactly the same. Now, regardless of which selection you choose – 1- or 2-Player Ko-Op – once you make your selection, the game begins. In the PS2 version, you can select your difficulty (Normal or Hard) as well. Once the game begins, you start out in Goro's Lair. It starts by showing you the yellow eyes in the background, and then revealing that those eyes belong to Oni-Demons. In MK: Shaolin Monks, there is a secret in every room, and in the first room that secret involves the skeleton hanging up. By throwing the Oni against the skeleton on the wall, you can actually shatter it and make the bones fly everywhere.
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There are some really cool details that will be noticeable already, such as the fact that the Oni will sometimes start to fight each other. There are also some torches around the lair that can burn you if you're not careful, but if you are good enough, you can use them to your advantage by knocking the Oni into them. If you can burn an Oni this way, he will run around and can even light the other Oni on fire as well.
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Now to talk about Versus Mode. It's not like a standard fighting game, it features full dynamic 3-D motion as in a standard 3-D platformer. If there's any game to even compare this mode to, it would be PowerStone on Sega Dreamcast. Three stages were available in the Demo: The Pit, The Portal, and The Ice Falls. These stages are pretty much identical to their action-adventure counterparts; the only real difference is the limitation on the camera to keep things simpler for this mode. The Portal actually attempts to suck both players into it, and it's also causing wooden chunks to float around in the air that you have to watch out for. There are boxes in this mode that contain items, such as skulls/weapons (just like the action/urldventure mode), power-ups that give you extra energy or cause you to do extra damage to your opponent, and more traps that can hurt you.

In this mode, only Kung Lao and Liu Kang were selectable, although in the PS2 version, we could see silhouettes for at least 6 more Kombatants. We can only speculate at this point who will be selectable, eg. Sub-Zero, Johnny Cage, etc. But seriously, who knows for sure?

We've been told that the PS2 version is farther along because they code for that system first, before porting it over. However, on the X-Box version, it's a lot easier to make the weapon trails. A demo of this game will be available to the public soon, available on the demo disc included with OPM and OXM magazines.