Dreamcast Strikes Mortal Kombat Gold

Midway's plans for the Mortal Kombat debut on Sega's Dreamcast were revealed last weekend, when it announced that Mortal Kombat Gold will be an exclusive launch game for the Dreamcast console system. Mortal Kombat Gold will have all the features (plus a few extras) that were cut out from the PlayStation and Nintendo 64 versions of Mortal Kombat 4 to compensate for the lack of 3D processing power of those systems. Contrary to the previous MK4 home versions, Mortal Kombat Gold will feature the same 3D models and interactive backgrounds with no polygonal reduction from its arcade counterpart. Each character will feature 3,000 polygons, while the game retains its blistering speed of 60 frames per second. From the preliminary specifications given, it looks as though five nostalgic characters from past Mortal Kombat games will return in full 3D glory, in addition to the 15 characters from Mortal Kombat 4. Five new full motion prerendered endings will accompany these new characters, using the increased capacity of Sega's GD-ROM discs.

Last month, Sega's president and COO, Bernie Stolar, announced at the Game Developer's Conference that Mortal Kombat 5 was supposed be a launch game for the Sega Dreamcast. Mortal Kombat series co-creator, Ed Boon, was quick to point out shortly thereafter that the Dreamcast version of Mortal Kombat was based on Mortal Kombat 4 and not Mortal Kombat 5. This confusion led to Babbage's marking Mortal Kombat 5 as a launch game in their inventory. Later, a press release concerning Midway's earnings contained a reference to the Dreamcast Mortal Kombat game, calling it Mortal Kombat 4-DC. Earlier this month, when Sega announced their official US launch date for the Dreamcast hardware, it neglected to mention any reference to any Mortal Kombat game among the expected launch games. Now that Midway has announced that the game will be titled Mortal Kombat Gold and available at launch time, fans no longer have to worry about Mortal Kombat 5 debuting on the Dreamcast.

Mortal Kombat Gold will make its public debut at next month's E3 Expo held in Los Angeles, Calif.