Remember waaaay waaaay back before the Vita was the Vita and, in fact, before it was even the NGP? When talks about it were mere whispers in the night and rumors of its prowess were sort of leaked by Netherrealm Studios who, presumably, had a prototype version of the device to work with? I didn't. I completely forgot all about it. So when Joystiq featured an article with the box art for Mortal Kombat on the Vita, I had, initially, a moment of "Oh, wow, that's neat." followed directly by "Oh, yeah, I knew that already". Because, well, I did, we all did. We knew it because Netherrealm knew it and were a bit loose about everything since as we know, the Vita is indeed "powerful" and it is a thing that exists and is a thing that will run Mortal Kombat where the 3DS will not.
Regardless, Mortal Kombat for the Vita is definitely a thing and in quite a big way, honestly. Apparently the game will feature, at the very least, the PS3-Exclusive Kratos and the other DLC characters released for the console versions, but is also fairly likely to include other bits and pieces of DLC such as the classic skins and the like. Perhaps not a voucher for the Mortal Kombat movie through PSN, but, well, I think we'll manage. Just saying. On top of that, however, we're promised some new features that will, presumably, be exclusive to the Vita version for at least a little while, maybe, but nothing's really explicitly said or set in stone. We'll just know when they announce it. Or someone blabs about it. Whichever comes first.
I admit that my interest, my vigor for Mortal Kombat spiked for a while there when the game was just being shown off, not released, and the Mortal Kombat Legacy shorts were Machinima's big Friday draws, and for good reason since they were pretty awesome or at least the first half. Unfortunately, my excitement did die off quite fast, so much so that I actually forgot to finish watching Legacy. Not like I -can't-, but I just haven't, which I guess is telling for the fact that I'm not really all about it at the moment. Not maliciously or anything, of course, I just can't be bothered with fighting games as a base, and even something as iconic as Mortal Kombat has to do a lot to stir me. That may change, however, since it seems that the Vita is the place to go with Fighting games - the current list includes BlazBlue, Tekken x Street Fighter, Marvel vs. Capcom and Reality Fighters announced, with versions of Dead or Alive and Soul Calibur quite likely in my opinion.
Anyways, thanks to its successful resurgence, Mortal Kombat is a fairly big name again (Man, who saw that coming?) so this is a pretty big boon (no pun intended) for the Vita. It's nice to have some fairly objectively good news about the system since the gaming media seems to like bashing anything non-Cell Phone Mobile Game (I said iOS initially, but that's not all of it) for months before it actually comes out. Depending on the price and how much it packs in compared to its console counterparts, I might just pick this up as I was really quite interested in the game as I said. That I never followed up on it is hardly a surprise, but hell, that's just what time does, I guess. Makes you do things you never planned on doing, or makes things happen that you couldn't have expected to happen. And that's....well, that's not cryptic code for other things going on at the moment at all, no siree.
For what it's worth, I should say that Mortal Kombat seems interesting for reasons beyond "It's Mortal Kombat! Again!" and "It's Mortal Kombat! But Shiny!", going so far as to say "It's Mortal Kombat! With a -good- combat system!" and "It's Mortal Kombat! With polish!". (I'll stop typing It's Mortal Kombat! now.) That is to say that it looks like it was a real labor of love to put the game together rather than the iteration of the series that had come out just prior in Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe which was, well, a pair-up doomed to fail. There's no conceivable way that Superman, for instance, could've been ripped apart or decapitated even before DC insisted that their characters not be treated as such, so not a whole bunch could've been expected from it. Still, I imagine that Mortal Kombat is just going to be one of those things that you can't help but notice since it's very likely that you grew up with it. (Even if you weren't 'supposed' to.)
Update!: Well, it certainly didn't take long to get a little extra information. Thanks to an interview with Ed Boon over at the Playstation Blog, there's a few things that've been extrapolated on a bit. First off, and I think this is probably the most important thing to mention here, is that the game will be locked at 60 FPS, much like the console counterpart. FPS is obviously a very important thing for Fighting Games, so to hear right out that they made sure on that, well, that's a good thing. On top of that, it's been confirmed that all the content from the PS3 version (story modes, Challenge tower, etc.) will be on the Vita version alongside the new things, of which will include an entirely new Challenge Tower for the Vita, designed specifically around the things the Vita has to offer. Touch Screen features, Accelerometer/Sixaxis, etc. will all have a place, minus the Rear Touch Panel. The number '150' came up in relation to Challenge Tower missions, but I don't know if they're necessarily for the Vita-Exclusive one or not. And, finally, there will obviously be Multiplayer for the Vita in both Ad-Hoc and Wi-Fi Infrastructure varieties, so fighting game fans all around the world will be able to challenge each other as if there were just a controller in their hands.
