First off, ASI is the new name for ACME. ACME is one of two major arcade videogame shows in North America, the other is AMOA. Anyway, there have been rumors spreading that Mortal Kombat 4 would be shown in some shape or form at the show. In past years, Mortal Kombat 2 and Mortal Kombat 3 have debuted at this show in early "Alpha" form. In a recent e-mail from Dave Michicich, here is what he has to say:

The answer is ABSOLUTELY NOT. There seems to be a popular misconception of the games release date. I can't say exactly when I expect to "show" MK4 to the general public, but I consider us in "early" development still.

As you have noticed, the past few days I have been slow on the updates. Please forgive me, cause I'm devoting my time in developing new technology to incorporate into this site. First off, I've gotten my own personal server and I have been working on this machine for the last two weeks. Special thanks to muggles / d. o. a. for his extraordinary help and countless hours of IBC downing. :-) This server will become the new host of this site, and also give me freedom to create a more interactive site. (drub0y rox!) Second, I've been assembling a crew with tons of CGI expertise in order to bring this interactivity to the fellow websurfer, while staying on top of the news scene. As soon as I get the machine on the new address, I'll shift all of the web data to the new machine and redirect everyone to the new domain address. Once, again I would like to thank everyone for putting up with me during this time of mass chaos. It will benefit greatly in the long run.

Ed Boon updated last night with new frontpage graphics and a new MK4 vote section. This vote is e-mail based, so if you have access to e-mail GO VOTE

Greg B. who runs COP-DN sends along a clarification on when and where the previous MKs have been publically debuted.

MK1 debuted fully completed (except for Reptile's absence, version 2.0) at AMOA '91. MK2 debuted at AMOA '93 as a release version 1.1. Yes, even though the game was nowhere near done, Midway called it a release version. Had it been a beta or alpha, the version number would have read P9 or P5, etc. MK3, was released at ACME '95...the only game game to debut at ACME.

Drub0y, site maintainer of ActiveMK4, sends along word that his server is down due to missing software. He makes this one request: "Haff j0o seen muh Visewal Stewdioh CD's!@!#?!@"

So, if you know who has Drub0y's cd's, please e-mail him and tell him where they are. :P

New Line Cinema recently released a trailer movie to the public. This is the first sneak peek that has been made available to the general public. The movie trailer (link now works) is approximately 4 megs and is in QuickTime format. You can view this movie file if you have the Netscape Quick Time plugin (which is built-in current versions of Netscape) or the ActiveMovie add-on to Internet Explorer. Thanks to Pat McCarron for the site

Ed Boon updated
Volume 12 of his Frequently Asked Questions page. It contains a couple of tidbits about MK4. The backgrounds will be interactive, as in characters can knock over things and possibly break away costumes. (knock off scorpion's mask maybe?)

In the current issue of EGM, #93, Ed Boon and Pat Fitzgerald answer
questions from the big hotshot media press privileged mofo's Sushi X and Mark Hain. :-) The interview reveals many things about MK4.

"New Proprietary hardware cranks out over 1 million polygons a second" "Same microprocessor (DSP) as Cruis'n USA" "[A hard drive] is not in MK4" "We've got characters that are over 3,000 polygons" "We're going to steer away from humor" "I don't think that we're going to have friendships or babalities in this one" "More on hidden stuff, big time."

Damn, I thought I would have access to a computer on my vacation so that I could update with the latest news. Anyway, here's the news I should have had three or four days ago :

If you have followed this page since it's beginnings, you would
remember me giving out Windows tips and Internet pointers. Since,
absolutely nothing is in the news on MK, I'm gonna share a cool,
probably a classic, Windows95 / Internet tip: Remember when you
bought (borrowed) Windows95 two years ago? You installed and setup
Dial-Up Networking (DUN), and got annoyed by that darn DUN box in
the taskbar taking up valuable space? Well, if you have a friend
that recently bought a new computer and you watched him dial into
the Internet using DUN right after he connected, the program would
minimize itself into the System Tray (the area with the clock)
leaving his task bar totally free of any program. You screamed
and yelled: "Why doesn't mine do that?!%@#$#$" It was because your
friend bought his new computer and the company installed Windows95
OSR2 (4.00.950 B), which includes a new version of DUN. You
pleaded, "Damn. I'm gonna buy a new computer just for that nifty
new DUN!" Well, anyways... Here is my tip that will give you the
new version of DUN without having to install the new OSR2 version
of Win95. Microsoft released ISDN Accelerator Pack 1.1 almost a
year ago and in this pack it includes dual band ISDN support and
the new version of Dial-Up Networking. (That's why I called this a
classic. I can't believe that I didn't know about this earlier.)
Anyways, don't worry if you don't have ISDN. You can uninstall the
ISDN support and still keep the new version of DUN. Go ahead and
download the
ISDN
Accelerator Pack 1.1 at Microsoft's website. If you want to
remove the ISDN support, and still want to keep the DUN enhancements
go under Control Panel | Add/Remove Programs | Windows Setup |
Communications | and uncheck the ISDN Accelerator Option. The new
version also includes DUN Server, which is included in Plus!, so you
get even more free stuff! If you're still convinced to buy a new
computer go to the
Win95
OSR2 Downloadable Components Page.

According to sources at Midway, Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero is not going to be a "role playing game." In fact, the game is heading towards more of a Final Fight-ish horizontal scrolling game, taking full advantage of polygon rotating and scaling. Code named
'Pesudo 3D', the MKM: S-Z engine will allow characters to be able to move into or out of the screen. The setting of the MKM:S-Z game will be before the Shao Lin Tournament, MK1's plot, resulting in building more background information for each character. This will
develop characters more deeply and explain possibly why they have entered into each tournment or why some are bitter enemies (i.e. why Sub-Zero and Scorpion are such evil adversaries).

Thursday the world's largest name resolving service, InterNiC, totally screwed me over. They put the hotweird.com domain on hold saying that they haven't recieved their payment of $100 which is way too inflated, in my opinion. We already paid the amount and their records still didn't show us paying them. Anyway, that's why you could not reach the page nor e-mail me. I lost all the e-mail from Thursday and Friday. Please send the messages again, if necessary. Sorry for any inconvenience, it was out of my hands.

DVD is the future! DVD (Digital Video Disc) is the biggest innovation since the CD. DVD features true Dolby Surround sound decoding, better video quality than lazer disc, up to 8 diffrent language audio tracks and up to 32 subtitle tracks, and can hold up 15.9 GigaBytes. (cd's can hold only 640 MegaBytes) Currently DVD can be played by DVD Players (available NOW!), and in the near future
DVD will come to your computer. On Tuesday, March 25, 30 DVD current and classic movies will debut at $19.95 each and Mortal Kombat will be one of those 30. Experience Mortal Kombat the movie in true digital video and awesome Dolby Surround Sound. Go to Gamecenter learn more about DVD.

I've created a cool MK4 throbber, the little animated logo in your browser, and I've released it. What this does is it replaces the current animated logo, whether it be Navigator or Explorer. From the reactions of the people I let beta test, it is worth the download. You can either click on the link in the header, or you can click right here.

Well, here it is. http://mk.hotweird.com. There is gonna be a lot of cool stuff going on over here. For example, the counter is now a local cgi program and will load faster, and the last modified date is now handled by the server and not by javascript. However, there will be a short outage on Sunday from 6:00PM to 10:00PM CST. The network will be down for repairs so the server will not be online. Sorry for any inconvenience, again. :(

In an earlier update, I rambled on about Digital Video/Versatile Disc (DVD). Some of my interpretations were incorrect. DVD's audio is recorded in Dolby Digital Surround Sound, not just Dolby Surround Sound like I had previously thought. Obviously, Dolby Surround Sound has been around for a long time and is nothing to get all excited about. Thanks to Greg B. for the clear up.