Mortal Kombat Trilogy on Unreal Engine 5 - Fans Support Independent Initiative

The fad for remakes and remasters is not just a whim of publishers. Gamers themselves often demand the return of their beloved games from years ago and sometimes remind the publishers about them, with mixed results. Fans of Mortal Kombat are hoping for the return of the first three installments of series on Unreal Engine 5 thanks to Eyeballistic and a certain petition.

The story of the initiative is not a young one, it didn't also started in October when the petition was launched. However, it was only in recent weeks that the team at Eyeballistic Games began releasing footage showing what the refreshed MK trilogy would look like. You can watch the latest video below.

Mortal Kombat - remaster (remake?) of hopes and disappointments

The idea of refreshing Mortal Kombat was born already back in... 2013 (via DSOG, which a few years ago provided a lot of information about the project). Already then, the team attracted the attention of Warner Bros. employees, who - although intrigued - de facto forbade the release of the game (not games; at the time, the devs were thinking only of a remaster of the first MK).

However, this did not discourage the creators, who, after much toil and having prepared a playable prototype in the popular program M.U.G.E.N. managed to gain the support of none other than Ed Boon. The work of Eyeballistic Games made such a great impression on the co-creator of Mortal Kombat, that he arranged for the team to meet with a representative of Warner Bros.

Unfortunately, after months of debate WB considered the project too risky (read: expensive), but the authors were encouraged to try a year later. The developers took to developing their own engine and began to think about refreshing the second and third installments of the series as well. This time they managed to impress not only Boon, but also high-ranking representatives of Warner Bros. who gave the team a green light.

However, just one week later Eyeballistic Games received another call from WB, which withdrew its support for the project. Several reasons were given, but, as we read in the petition, one of the most important was the lack of faith in the creators and the ability to sell more than 100 thousand copies of the game.

Unreal Engine 5, price and platforms

For such turbulent history and uncertain projects, the developers have very specific plans. For starters, they want to collect 100,000 votes to prove that Warner Bros.' concerns are unfounded. If they succeed, the team will launch a crowdfunding campaign to convince the studio of the project's potential.

There's still a long way to go because by the time of writing the petition was signed by "only" over 15 thousand people. Despite this, Eyeballistic Games has already set not only the target platforms but also the price. Mortal Kombat Trilogy on Unreal Engine 5 would launch on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch for $39.99. All three games would enable us to play at 4K resolution and 60 fps.

The title would also support network multiplayer with the use of so-called rollback netcode - a system predicting the player's movements by the server in order to eliminate the delays typical in network games. This solution was used in Guilty Gear: Strive, Street Figther V and Melty Blood: Type Lumina, among others. Joe Tresca, president of Eyeballistic, estimates the development cost at 1-1.5 million dollars, 200-300k of which the team would like to raise through a community fundraiser (via The Gamer).

Apart from the belief that the saying "the third time makes the charm" will also work this time, one can have doubts about the success of the initiative. Almost two years ago we were sure of an imminent announcement of a similar project, but since then we have received absolutely nothing. Perhaps this will change on the 30th anniversary of the release of the first Mortal Kombat as Capcom did with Street Fighter. However, for now, it is better not to be overly optimistic.