The new trend with the rebooted Mortal Kombat timeline is for publisher WB to put in guest fighters from their many film franchises. For the most part we’ve seen ‘80’s horror film characters. I’ve never been a huge horror fan, especially of some of the classic franchises like Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th. I know that diminishes some of my cred, but for some reason it’s a genre that doesn’t do it for me. So when Freddy Krueger made his way onto MK9 and Jason was the first DLC character on MKX, I was rather disappointed (Although not by Predator... because c'mon, he's the freakin' Predator!).
Then Nether Realm did something for us die-hard fans of Mortal Kombat lore; they announced two original characters to go along with the two guest fighters. Tanya released last month and immediately became a bit of a fan favorite. Tanya originally debuted in Mortal Kombat 4 and was often known as the "yellow Kitana" back in the arcade days. For me, it was her fast fighting style in Mortal Kombat: Deception that really matched the way I like to play, so she was one of my go-to returning characters in that PS2 era title. When I heard she was going to be one of the MK Original DLC characters, I was understandably stoked.
Following Tanya was a much less well-known character, Tremor. I am so many crazy levels of stoked for Tremor to release, as this will be his first game as a fully-fledged playable character. Tremor's first appearance was in the lesser known and somewhat widely hated Mortal Kombat: Special Forces. I really, REALLY liked that game. It was a fun change of pace to see an inside look of some lesser known Mortal Kombat characters. Tremor was one of the bosses in this 3-D beat 'em up, dungeon crawler-esque adventure game. He was skinned as the "brown ninja," I believe even using the same character model as Sub Zero from MK4 but colored brown. His moves were all Earth-based and included throwing rocks and causing a shock-wave with his fist. Ever since playing this old-school PlayStation title I've been wanting to see Tremor and some of his other Black Dragon compatriots in full fledged Mortal Kombat titles.
I understand other players' desire for more WB tie-in characters, and honestly there are a few I'm interested in seeing too. But the lore of Mortal Kombat is so rich and unbelievably deep that we should be seeing more of these less explored characters making their way into the spotlight. Some of these characters even appeared in the MKX story mode as background characters, such as Frost, whom I've always loved as a character. Others had fully fledged, fightable counterparts that just needed to be tweaked to include more fighting styles, like Baraka. So while I am content with my season pass purchase, I'd be absolutely ecstatic if I got to see even more obscure characters make a comeback! It was a trend that started in MK9 with Rain and the up to that point fan rumor character Skarlet. Bringing in lesser known characters and creating others off rumors is what made this franchise so amazing, why not continue that trend?
