MK1 (2023) Holiday Fatality Bundle Update, Customization Additions Included [UPDATE]

[Roy Arkon]

As you know, Mortal Kombat 1 (2023) had a Halloween-themed Fatality added to the seasonal store a couple of two weeks ago, called Happy Halloween. This is part of a series of Holiday-themed Fatalities to be added to the store for every Holiday: Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas. The bundle is set to be coming next week in it's fullest.

The Halloween Fatality as a stand-alone Fatality, when it was out, costed 1200 Dragon Crystals, and since the best bundle that you could get for that price is the bundle of 1250 Dragon Crystals, which cost 10%, this means that unless you didn't have enough Dragon Crystals stored already, this Fatality itself would cost you 10$.

Understandably, some fans didn't like the price tag, and as a response, NetherRealm Studios and WB Games decided that anyone who already bought the Happy Halloween Fatality when it was out, will get the full bundle, along with the other two Fatalities, automatically for free.

Now since that yours truly did buy the Halloween Fatality when it was out, I already got the Thanksgiving Fatality and for free via a patch that came last night, as you can see in the video below from my channel, where I played Reptile in Invasions Mode and did the Fatality, called Thanksgiving Finisher, during my Invasions playthrough. And yes, this Fatality is deliciously good.


Now for those of you who also already got the Happy Halloween Fatality as well, as I got to see myself, every character can only have one Holiday Fatality at a time. Even though they both have different inputs (U,U, BL for Happy Halloween and D,D, BL for Thanksgiving Finisher), you can't have both of them available for you to use at the same time, as when you go to the Finishers section in the Kustomize Mode, both Seasonal Fatalities are now listed in sub-section titled "Seasonal Fatalities", and when you select the checkbox for Thanksgiving Finisher, the checkbox for Happy Halloween will disappear, and vice versa.

However, as I also got to see myself already, you can choose which character gets to have each of the Holiday Fatalities. This means that you can have, let's say Reptile, have the Happy Halloween Fatality, then let Scorpion have the Thanksgiving Finisher Fatality, and this means it will be the same for the Winter Fatality, which you could give to Sub-Zero for example. This adds a whole new element of customization for MK1, as you can basically customize the list of Finishers for the entire roster to your liking, and it's very likely that NRS/WB will add even more Fatalities for us to pick and choose for every character.

All of these are more signs of great things to come for MK1 (2023) as it gets more content on top of the already incredible package that it has. Stay tuned for more news as they arrive.

UPDATE:
Here are the full patch notes for the update, a very short list for this one. This patch is for all MK1 (2023) across all platforms.

• Thanksgiving Fatality added to Premium Store Rotation
• Added Seasonal Invasions content
• Support for DLC characters in player select
• General Gameplay Bug Fixes

For more information about Mortal Kombat 1 (2023), check out our section for the game right here.

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[Gambid]

Don't think that the other two are for FREE. The price of 400 was always the plan, given how Harpy Halloween was marked as bundle. This is a strategy that has been utilized sooooo many times. You come with a ridiculous prize that you are fully aware will cause a shock wave through media and community, actually getting you a much needed attention. And then you do "lower" the prize in "response" to that "feedback" to a price that is still ridiculously high but now everyone is happy because they "achieved" something.

Business 1-0-1, nothing is for FREE and I mean nothing. If a company doesn't get something out of it, they will never do it.

The future of Mortal Kombat 1 in terms of content does looks promising. We are all going to have to dig deep into our wallets if we want that content though. The game currently has a max amount of earn-able Dragon Krystals. This, combined with the ridiculous prizes of Premium Shop only items mean pay with real money. WB Discovery CEO even confirmed that this is their new strategy.

[Roy Arkon]

It does make sense, perhaps you have a point here. If this is indeed true, that goes to show that all the backlash was even more pointless than I thoughא, with how NRS/WB hooked all of the complainers by the rod.

I for one got no problem with the prices, as long as the price itself is reasonable enough and is for additional content that is cool and varied, that's fine by me, and what we got here is exactly that.

[Gambid]

Reasonable is a subjective thing. You might be looking from the perspective of someone who has money. What if you don't have as much and spend your last savings on the game, be extremely excited about it and then you realize you realize to complete game you need to start paying more and more and more.

A backlash is never pointless, the moment people stop stating their options is where we convert to what companies want us to be, a brainless wallets (this is already the case for so many).

Now imagine no backlash. The person who came up with the strategy sees this and thinks huh... perhaps we could get away with 10 - 12 dollars prize point for a Fatality. How happy would you be then to pay 30 dollars for 3 Fatalities. How about afterwards when they come up with a Fatality of the month for that prize, would you have a problem then? May be a Special Move, a combo, an intro sequence? May be fighter of the month for 10 000 Dragon Krystals? Where is your breaking point? Because for some people it has already been reached.

Everyone needs to be very careful when dealing with big companies in every single aspect. Because there is only one thing they care about, money. If tomorrow they find someone who can do Mortal Kombat games the same successful way NRS can but cheaper, what do you think is going to happen to NRS then?

I was optimistic and naive before, that changed when I started experiencing it on my personal shoulders.

[Roy Arkon]

Firstly you don't have to buy these. MK1 is a complete game at launch, all of these Skins and Fatalities are additions to the game. There's a reason why there are complete editions for various games, including NRS/WB games. There are people who wait for the complete editions to come out and understandably so. And yes, WB cares about money, so if you think something is overpriced, all you have to do is vote with your wallet and not by it, either an item in-game or a full game.

Yes you can express yourself verbally as well, but all of that doesn't matter if you keep buying the items or even full games anyway. That's what a lot of these complainers do, they complain about everything (pricing, practices, in-game modes etc) but yet they still keep buying the games anyway, and that's after they complained about games from the same franchises for multiple sequels. I myself didn't buy almost any Japanese fighting game over the last 8 years with the exception of DBFZ and SC6, and even for them I regret buying them because they don't hold a candle to the quality and production value that NRS/WB games do. Even SF6, with all the content it has, still has so many issues with the direction of these content pieces and even bugs as well.

And then you have to take into account the level of the backlash. There are more and more cases, especially in recent years, that the complainers take these backlashes way too far, from spreading misinformation (like how people said that the Halloween Fatality was 12$ instead of 10$) to harassing the developers non-stop, to even say vile and cancerous stuff, like with Pokemon Sword and Shield, after Nintendo/GameFreak/Pokemon Company announced the National Dex cut, there were people on X (Twitter back then) who literarily compared it to the Holocaust, as if the cut Pokemon are Jews who were killed in the Holocaust. This is especially offensive for me, being Jewish myself, born and raised in Israel.

And it's not a coincidence that all of this happens. Because there were some cases in which backlashes were truly deserved, like with the Xbox One Fiasco back in 2013, a lot of people now take anything, ANYTHING, that can be translated even by the slighted hint as something that is not good and take advantages of these situations, not to help the franchises and IP's to become better and stop companies from ruin them just for money, but to just help themselves, whatever it is to just having a good laugh out of drama, to make a product to go in a certain direction that benefits only them (like changing a certain mechanic or buff/nerf a character) or even worse, help their own popularity on the interent, and in the case of content creators on YouTube, help them get more views, so they will get money from the ad revenue thanks to all the clicks and watch-time they get. There are way too many people on YouTube who do this right now, spreading misinformation and take things out or proportions on purpose for their own benefit, not the IP's or the fanbases. So while you may complain about companies taking advantage of us for money, it is content creators to take advantage of us for money just as much if not even more.

Just look at Mr.apchem, the guy who made the video about the supposed "player-1 advantage" bug a few weeks ago. Not only he made the bug to be a lot bigger than it actually was (as it ended being only just specific combo for only 6 characters in the entire roster, unlike player advantage bugs in MK Armageddon or MK9 that affected the entire roster), even after multiple people corrected him on it and called him out on it, but he said that the long list of bugs that is on the WB support site shows that MK1 was rushed, and this how the "MK1 was rushed" bandwagon started. Except that what Mr.apchem doesn't realize is that all of these bugs were only insanely minor or even one-time only (unlike some of the bugs in SF6 which were truly crucial, like the input reading bug that affects the whole roster and is still in the game as we speak). As someone who worked in QA in the past, I can tell you from experience that this list of bugs is the norm, this doesn't indicate a software being rushed. And why he did it? Internet popularity and clout. Simple as that. And now, MK1 is getting an undeserving bandwagon yet again, all because one guy took things too far to benefit himself and his ego. Yes it was a bug it should've been fixed, but Mr.apchem shouldn't have done what he did. And yes he doesn't make money from his videos, but doing this just for interent clout is still bad enough.

And finally, regarding WB, there's a reason why the kept Ed Boon and NRS to work on MK and also IJ, because they understand that Ed Boon understands MK better than anyone. Yes WB want money, but they also understand who is the right man for the job, on top of having the proper approach for their games in terms of content, gameplay and game-feel.

So like I said, if you don't wanna pay for micro-based items in game, or even full games, vote with your wallet. Simple as that.