A special opportunity is coming soon for all you Mortal Kombat fans out there next week. You fans will have a once in a lifetime opportunity to play against the development team of Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe on Xbox LIVE and the PlayStation Network this Friday, January 23rd, 2009. So fire up your copies of Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe on Friday and look for one of the following gamertags playing online and send them a challenge notification.

We are currently unsure what times they will be available, so we're assuming they will be doing this all day long. We just got word that they will be playing starting around 6PM Central Time (CT) and playing until around 10PM CT. They will switch between each system giving a total of about two hours to each console. So from the schedule they appear to be starting at 6PM CT on the PlayStation 3 and then they'll switch to the Xbox 360 at around 8PM CT. This schedule matches with what is on the Xbox Game With Developers informational page.


Also before Friday, you should send a private message to the above gamertags indicating that you are a "member of TRMK" so that the developers make sure to play first. This is important because Midway will be keeping tabs of which websites' community has the most wins against the developers, and will be awarding something special that will be given to the community who gets the most wins. The member with the most wins against the developers for TRMK will also get a special award from us, and we'll have more details on this before Friday.

The following members of the development team will be the ones playing that day.

Ed Boon - Creative Director/Team Lead
Paulo Garcia - Senior Designer
Brian Lebaron - Designer
Ryan Rosenberg - Environment Artist
Eddie Ferrier - Designer
Adam Hernandez - Design Support
Hector Sanchez - Producer
Dave Bulvan - Lead Software Tester
Derek Kirtzic - Gameplay Tester
Shaun Himmerick - Producer
Hans Lo – Producer

I recommend everyone get some practice rounds in online before this, and wish everyone the best of luck. On Friday we will setup a special news thread where people can post their experiences and results as the day goes on. Leave any questions you have on the event in the comments, and we'll try to get you an answer. Until then, stayed tuned for any other updates on this exciting opportunity as the week goes on!

UPDATE: I just finally got confirmation from Midway about the start times for the event, sorry for the delay. I had seen to many times posted all over the place and wanted to make sure we got it right.

Ever since fighting games began to be ported to home game consoles, one important question of the port is always "What arcade sticks are available to me on that system?" Lots of arcade sticks "could be better" and the best ones are usually way too expensive for most consumers. MadCatz is appearing to try to end that by putting together the upcoming MadCatz FightSticks and FightPads for both the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

Because of all the hype building in the fighting game community around these offerings from MadCatz, we decided to take a look at their features in this Featured Preview of the FightSticks and FightPads. Here is a snippet of the piece:

Finally a major player has stepped up to the plate to offer what we hope is going to fill this void with an affordable option for a great and flexible fighting stick. MadCatz recently showed off their upcoming line of fighting sticks for Street Fighter IV at CES last week. The main difference between MadCatz' fighting sticks and other mass produced sticks on the market, is that MadCatz is trying to solve all the problems of game incompatibility, despite the massive Street Fighter IV graphics plastered all over the stick itself.

We are currently working to get a review of the products before their release date of February 20th, so check back in later next month as we will announce once the Review itself is coming. You can also pre-order them today by visiting the new The Realm of Mortal Kombat Store's Recommended Hardware section. Sadly, MK fans wont have these available in time for Friday's Fight the MK Developers as us fans could use any tools we can get our hands on to even the playing field a bit.

This week's episode of Major Nelson's podcast features Mortal Kombat Creative Director, Ed Boon. For whose who don't know, Major Nelson is the nickname of Larry Hryb who is the Xbox Live Director of Programming at Microsoft's Games Division. You can listen to the podcast directly from MajorNelson.com or via iTunes as well. The portion of the show with Ed Boon starts from 24 minutes in.

Larry and Ed discuss a lot about how Ed got started in the industry over 15 years ago. Ed discusses how he started programming pinball games for Midway in assembly language on the 8 bit Motorola 6800 processor. Then in 1990 he moved over to the video game side of the company. He did programming work, this time doing programming on the High Impact Football series of games before doing the first Mortal Kombat game in 1992. The rest is history.

Ed touches the differences between game development back then, with a small team of four people compared to the massive effort that goes into current generation games these days. For instance, the core team on Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe was 45 people. If you include all the cinematic team along with those who assisted in development it accounts for almost 100 people involved.

Some good news was also mentioned. Ed teases that they are just now finalizing the announcements for the upcoming Downloadable Content (DLC) for Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe. Ed said they are trying to make fans of both universes happy by giving them each the most desired character. So we expect that news to land sometime in the next month or so, and the DLC itself to follow quite closely.

The main point of Ed's visit was to plug the upcoming Game With Developers that is this Friday. So be sure to remember to practice and prepare, as it's just a few days away now.

Reminder, tonight is your opportunity to play against the development team of Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe on Xbox LIVE. They will switch between each system giving a total of two hours to each console, the times you can see below in the table..



So you should send a private message to the above gamertags indicating that you are a "member of TRMK" so that the developers make sure to play first. This is important because Midway will be keeping tabs of which websites' community has the most wins against the developers, and will be awarding something special that will be given to the community who gets the most wins. We made this easy on you for the Xbox by allowing you to do it right from the web here, so just click on their names and you'll be brought over to Xbox.com to send the messages.

So fire up your copies of Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe tonight and look for one of the following gamertags playing online and send them a challenge notification. Post all your experiences as a comment to this news thread as the night goes on, we'd love to hear your stories.

Midway announced today that the latest fighting game in the Mortal Kombat franchise, Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe, has surpassed 1.8 million copies shipped. The milestone includes both Microsoft Xbox 360 and Sony PLAYSTATION 3 versions, Kollectors Edition and standard, across the entire world.

"Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe was the result of countless hours of hard work by many people, and seeing the game surpass the million-seller plateau makes it worth all the effort," said Ed Boon, Mortal Kombat co-founder and creative director, Midway. "We're already hard at work on our next version of Mortal Kombat, and look forward to being able to reveal more details in the future."

It was also revealed that Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe was the most "pre-ordered" game ever in Midway history. In addtion, Midway also announced that over 3.6 million online matches have been played on Sony's PLAYSTATION Network.

Congratulations to all of the people who worked so hard to make Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe a success and we highly anticipate the direction the next version of Mortal Kombat takes over the next several months.

Keep it tuned to TRMK for any new details to the next Mortal Kombat game as they are announced, along with the pending announcement of Downloadable Content (DLC) for Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe.