Wait of the World

My GDEMU finally arrived! Huzzah! But I'm having someone print out a tray for me, so air properly circulates inside the Dreamcast and SD cards don't get lost inside the system. That means I won't actually get to use the thing until the end of the week. Uh, significantly less huzzah.

At least I may have something fun to do while I'm waiting. Microsoft is hinting really, really hard that a Mortal Kombat game will soon be available for its Game Pass service. They're not saying which one specifically, but I'm hoping it will be Mortal Kombat 9, the reboot which got the franchise back on the right foot after a trio of lousy games from the Playstation 2 era. That was around the time Ed Boon decided that what players really wanted from their Mortal Kombat experience was everything Virtua Fighter and Tekken were already doing, with a coat of scarlet paint. 

The thoughtful strategy of chess and the
blood-spewing chaos of Mortal Kombat. Two
great tastes that shouldn't be in the same
zip code together.
(image from YouTube)

Each new Mortal Kombat game from the 2000s took a Cold Stone creamery approach to the series, dumping another cup of sprinkles and chocolate chips onto the mess the franchise had become. This one has a puzzle game included, and this one's got a kart racer! Hey, this new one lets you make your own fatalities, except they're all drawn from the same pool of finishers! Mortal Kombat just kept getting more bloated and desperate, until Midway's bankruptcy forced Boon to pick up the clue phone and return the series to its roots.

Giving credit where credit is due, Mortal Kombat 9 was surprisingly good, and I'd argue that the sequel is better than the latest entry in the Street Fighter series. I would never have made that argument before, but it's funny what a new cast of idiotic characters, stale gameplay, and a storyline apparently lifted from a 1980s cartoon will do to flip a guy's loyalties. The only innovation worth mentioning in Street Fighter V are all the ways Capcom found to wring money out of players who already bought the game. (Yes, the ads didn't last long, but it's like bragging that the house you set on fire stopped burning after there was no house left to burn.)

Okay, okay, I'm done bitching... I'll get right to the point. Mortal Kombat 9 might be coming to an Xbox One near you, although Microsoft is being coy about what's actually going to be released. It could be the yet-to-be-released Mortal Kombat 11, and it could even be Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, the game that inspired Netherrealm's Injustice series. We won't know until it happens, so we'll just have to be patient.

...I did mention that I hate being patient, right?