Test Your Fight! Palace! with this installment of Mortal Kombat we meet folks like Aqua and Jataaka and Triborg and all sorts of fun folks. Your soul is mine!
For those curious, I looked them up so you don't have to! -Hornbuckle was a background character in one of The Pit stages in MK II, fighting with a random fire-monster (said fire monster became a canon character). The name came from a random in-joke line from Jade - he was assumed to be a secret character - which, given the number of palette swaps MK has, is understandable. -Aqua seems to have been an OC built from an unused announcer voice sample specific to the UK release of Mortal Kombat Trilogy. Talk about a deep cut. -Sang is character from the Malibu comic series _Mortal Kombat Blood and Thunder_ - he has a twin brother named Sing, with whom he fuses to form Siang. For reasons I cannot fathom, none of these three have appeared as playable characters in a Mortal Kombat title. -Drahmin is a demon from Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance, and appears to have been designed around the style-swap mechanics of that game: his weapon is attached to his arm and his styles switch based on whether he has the mask on or not. -Oniro is apparently from The Animated Series, was the former grandmaster of the Lin Kuei, and apparently specialized in shape-shifting into animals - thus the slightly goofy transformation moves. -Janky Johnny Cage is from MK II, but appears to have had a logo written on one of his pant legs. I have to conclude that this is an attempt to demake a version of Johnny from one of the 3D titles, with a Versus sprite fabricated by modifying an existing one. -Hydro is another Lin Kuei cyborg, but only appeared in the previously-mentioned _Blood and Thunder_ comic, and in what (i think?) is a live-action TV series I've never heard of called _Mortal Kombat: Legacy_ that ran for two seasons. Him being old and busted may be because of the whole water+electronics thing, or because he was one of the first of the cyborg-ninjas. His standing and walking sprites appear to be splices of Sektor/Cyrax's dizzy and walking animations - honestly he's pretty impressive for a MUGEN original. -Pajama Raiden is a palette swap of the original Mortal Kombat Raiden; I'm thinking the palette swap might not have gone as intended. -Flame is, as far as I can tell, an OC using MK III Sub-Zero as a baseline. It's possible that he's another MUGEN original created prior to this project that the creator(s) decided to include. -Kenshi was how I was able to determine that Deadly Alliance was, in fact, the last MK game I actually played - that was the first game he appeared in. I'm not sure whose sprites were used as the baseline for him - given how stiff that forward arm is in the standing animation I strongly suspect it might use a set from another game that used digitized actors, since the MK sprites seem to all be on the bouncy side when idle and his attacks have a very different choreography to them compared to the other fighters. -Frost is from Deadly Alliance, and is so much a 'Notice Me Senpai' stereotype that she is described as such in the second sentence of her article on the MK Wiki. She has no sprite-based art, and so is likely made from one or more of the other female characters that do - this would also explain why she doesn't seem to be terribly balanced. -Jarek is from MK 4, and is another one of the reverse-engineered-from-3D characters. The vest and build make me think Kano. -Ruby is in fact a character from the abysmal _Defenders of the Realm_ cartoon. Her primary role seems to have been to have a heel-face turn and pull the protagonists out of an otherwise inescapable situation. She stayed in Outworld and was never heard from or cared about again, until today. Unless you count _Federation of Martial Arts..._ Which is from what I can deduce some kind of MK branded... management sim!? Good lord this franchise is a mess. -Hotaru is from MK: Deception, his design is supposed to be representative of a firefly, his schtick is that he is a Lawful Neutral Murderhobo, and I have no idea where his sprites came from but the face doesn't look like a digitized actor's. -Fujin first appeared in MK Mythologies: Sub-Zero (I suspect his sprite was ripped from there, which is why it looks off). Considering MK IV came out two months later (and isn't Mythologies) it's probably the best proper origin point for him. Fujin in MK 11 is actually pretty bad-ass to see in action, which just emphasizes how far he's come from his first appearance as Palette Swap'd Rem Lazar. - Sareena and Jataaka are also from MK Mythologies - I have to assume the former is here only for the sake of completeness, given what a dumpster fire that game is. They were sub-bosses in (IIRC) the prison level, and might have gotten one or two lines in the awful cutscenes - Sareena went on to other Mortal Kombat games but Jataaka (whose design I honestly prefer) was abandoned, minus a brief inclusion in one of the Konquest modes. -Tanya and Reiko are both from MK 4; they've both been reverse-engineered from other characters. I'm not sure if I should commend the people who made the characters, given that have movesets are just as outlandish as the real cast, or deride the series for making it this easy to make MUGEN demakes almost indistinguishable from the real thing. -Tremor is from MK Special Forces - the _other_ terrible action spin-off. Not really much to say here, other than that he's apparently meant to be larger than the others. He later showed up in MK X with a redesign to make him also made of sand. -Triborg is a newer character, and is an evil robot made from putting the consciousness of four other cyborg-ninjas into one body. Because it wasn't enough to make a Kill-bot, he also has to have some silly shit in his backstory. His design looks nothing like Sektor, but using that sprite coupled with Chameleon's LSD shifting is honestly a decent enough shorthand. -Noob Saibot was apparently retconned into an actual character, and is the ghost of the first Sub-Zero. If that doesn't say it all, I don't know what else could.
kenshi is a pretty stiff edit of mk3 kano, and hotaru is HEAVILY edited over the umk3 ninjas 'pajama rayden' is using sprites from the cancelled 'mortal kombat trilogy extended' which color separates a lot of the mk1 cast, since the white clothing made alternate palettes almost impossible to make. the mk1 shang tsung from that seems to be in here too, wanted to see their surprise seeing that guy now run around and do jumping kicks
@@RoboMelvana That'd explain why I couldn't work them out - honestly one of the reasons Hydro works so cohesively is that they kept it relatively simple. Is the weird-looking Johnny Cage also from MK trilogy extended? Because that'd explain a fair bit of the weirdness going on with his Vs. sprite.
@@Camkitsune the one with the writing on his pants is no different from MK2 aside from the otomix logo, but the one with the glasses always on is ripped from mk trilogy. he looks a bit odd because since it was taken from a non-arcade game, they had to upscale and majorly touch it up to fit the 'arcade look' more. it sticks out a bit but it's a very commendable effort a lot of the vs sprites are cobbled together and edited though since the first two mks didn't have them
@@RoboMelvana Some of the sprites are definitely better than others - since this is MUGEN it'd make more sense if this were a compilation of already-extant fighters rather than an effort to do the whole thing as a unified team. This would explain the inconsistent sprite quality (Mythologies Fujin) and balance issues (Frost's powers being less ice and more cheese). If I had to guess Otomix was the guy either behind the compilation or behind Johnny and any other characters he was packaged with.
@@Camkitsune otomix is actually just the brand of tights johnny cage's actor was wearing. due to copyright reasons they mostly edited it out in the final product, although they strangely forgot to erase it for one animation. not actually sure who made this compilation fujin looks that way because he's a similar deal to mkt johnny cage, he also needed to be upscaled and edited. same deal with sareena and quan chi, jataaka i can't actually tell but her winpose is definitely traced over umk3 jade
So the funniest thing about Hydro is that his entire backstory is "the Lin Kuei tried to make a water ninja into a cyborg ninja and, predictably, that turned out to be a bad idea" this, of course, makes him into the best character in the game
While technically I respect that they presumably reassembled Mortal Kombat from scratch codewise (or from Mugen but even then that's work), most of the stuff they added looks clumsy and weird. Hydro, though? Hydro is genuinely inspired.
Hydro was basically Smoke before Smoke, was the best buddy of Sub-Zero and he get killed by Scorpion(if I rember correctly), then they kinda use his backstory for Smoke in future games.
Aqua... Duck... *Aquaduct* ... YEAH THAT'S ON BRAND, this series gave us a *purple* ninja called *Rain* who is a *prince* so good job whoever made this monstrosity!
aqua comes from an april fool's magazine article regarding mk trilogy, where he was supposedly in the european version of the game. bizarrely, an 'aqua wins' sample is actually in the files, so who knows. i really like that they made something good out of him though and i never thought about him being a kappa, that's...interesting. makes more sense than 'cyber-demon-oni platypus'
This is easy to laugh at, but the Mortal Kombat fan inside me is tickled to see so many deep cuts and characters from the 3D games demade in the classic style.
How do you even play as Triborg in the pre-style system? Isn't his whole thing being able to switch between three (secretly four) other robotic characters?
I'm pretty sure that Hornbuckle is a green-recolor monk you can see fighting an Outworlder in a stage background in MK2 or 3. Really, _really_ far in the background. I don't remember why the community latched onto him, or decided to call him "Hornbuckle," but this is the same group that essentially tulpa-ed an operator's-menu counter name into the red ninja character, so there you go. Seriously, the sheer power of the collective FGC to bring things into reality scares me sometimes. They convinced Capcom to make Ryu's mentor from an EGM April Fool's issue a playable character in SF4, there's a whole subgenre of shitpost fighting games like Divekick that are actually fun and competitive, they turned motherfucking _Catherine's_ multiplayer battle mode into a legitimate fightgame scene for a couple years...
I LOVE FIGHT PALACE
Shang Tsung's morph inputs must be enormous.
For those curious, I looked them up so you don't have to!
-Hornbuckle was a background character in one of The Pit stages in MK II, fighting with a random fire-monster (said fire monster became a canon character). The name came from a random in-joke line from Jade - he was assumed to be a secret character - which, given the number of palette swaps MK has, is understandable.
-Aqua seems to have been an OC built from an unused announcer voice sample specific to the UK release of Mortal Kombat Trilogy. Talk about a deep cut.
-Sang is character from the Malibu comic series _Mortal Kombat Blood and Thunder_ - he has a twin brother named Sing, with whom he fuses to form Siang. For reasons I cannot fathom, none of these three have appeared as playable characters in a Mortal Kombat title.
-Drahmin is a demon from Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance, and appears to have been designed around the style-swap mechanics of that game: his weapon is attached to his arm and his styles switch based on whether he has the mask on or not.
-Oniro is apparently from The Animated Series, was the former grandmaster of the Lin Kuei, and apparently specialized in shape-shifting into animals - thus the slightly goofy transformation moves.
-Janky Johnny Cage is from MK II, but appears to have had a logo written on one of his pant legs. I have to conclude that this is an attempt to demake a version of Johnny from one of the 3D titles, with a Versus sprite fabricated by modifying an existing one.
-Hydro is another Lin Kuei cyborg, but only appeared in the previously-mentioned _Blood and Thunder_ comic, and in what (i think?) is a live-action TV series I've never heard of called _Mortal Kombat: Legacy_ that ran for two seasons. Him being old and busted may be because of the whole water+electronics thing, or because he was one of the first of the cyborg-ninjas.
His standing and walking sprites appear to be splices of Sektor/Cyrax's dizzy and walking animations - honestly he's pretty impressive for a MUGEN original.
-Pajama Raiden is a palette swap of the original Mortal Kombat Raiden; I'm thinking the palette swap might not have gone as intended.
-Flame is, as far as I can tell, an OC using MK III Sub-Zero as a baseline. It's possible that he's another MUGEN original created prior to this project that the creator(s) decided to include.
-Kenshi was how I was able to determine that Deadly Alliance was, in fact, the last MK game I actually played - that was the first game he appeared in. I'm not sure whose sprites were used as the baseline for him - given how stiff that forward arm is in the standing animation I strongly suspect it might use a set from another game that used digitized actors, since the MK sprites seem to all be on the bouncy side when idle and his attacks have a very different choreography to them compared to the other fighters.
-Frost is from Deadly Alliance, and is so much a 'Notice Me Senpai' stereotype that she is described as such in the second sentence of her article on the MK Wiki. She has no sprite-based art, and so is likely made from one or more of the other female characters that do - this would also explain why she doesn't seem to be terribly balanced.
-Jarek is from MK 4, and is another one of the reverse-engineered-from-3D characters. The vest and build make me think Kano.
-Ruby is in fact a character from the abysmal _Defenders of the Realm_ cartoon. Her primary role seems to have been to have a heel-face turn and pull the protagonists out of an otherwise inescapable situation. She stayed in Outworld and was never heard from or cared about again, until today. Unless you count _Federation of Martial Arts..._ Which is from what I can deduce some kind of MK branded... management sim!? Good lord this franchise is a mess.
-Hotaru is from MK: Deception, his design is supposed to be representative of a firefly, his schtick is that he is a Lawful Neutral Murderhobo, and I have no idea where his sprites came from but the face doesn't look like a digitized actor's.
-Fujin first appeared in MK Mythologies: Sub-Zero (I suspect his sprite was ripped from there, which is why it looks off). Considering MK IV came out two months later (and isn't Mythologies) it's probably the best proper origin point for him.
Fujin in MK 11 is actually pretty bad-ass to see in action, which just emphasizes how far he's come from his first appearance as Palette Swap'd Rem Lazar.
- Sareena and Jataaka are also from MK Mythologies - I have to assume the former is here only for the sake of completeness, given what a dumpster fire that game is.
They were sub-bosses in (IIRC) the prison level, and might have gotten one or two lines in the awful cutscenes - Sareena went on to other Mortal Kombat games but Jataaka (whose design I honestly prefer) was abandoned, minus a brief inclusion in one of the Konquest modes.
-Tanya and Reiko are both from MK 4; they've both been reverse-engineered from other characters. I'm not sure if I should commend the people who made the characters, given that have movesets are just as outlandish as the real cast, or deride the series for making it this easy to make MUGEN demakes almost indistinguishable from the real thing.
-Tremor is from MK Special Forces - the _other_ terrible action spin-off. Not really much to say here, other than that he's apparently meant to be larger than the others. He later showed up in MK X with a redesign to make him also made of sand.
-Triborg is a newer character, and is an evil robot made from putting the consciousness of four other cyborg-ninjas into one body. Because it wasn't enough to make a Kill-bot, he also has to have some silly shit in his backstory.
His design looks nothing like Sektor, but using that sprite coupled with Chameleon's LSD shifting is honestly a decent enough shorthand.
-Noob Saibot was apparently retconned into an actual character, and is the ghost of the first Sub-Zero. If that doesn't say it all, I don't know what else could.
kenshi is a pretty stiff edit of mk3 kano, and hotaru is HEAVILY edited over the umk3 ninjas
'pajama rayden' is using sprites from the cancelled 'mortal kombat trilogy extended' which color separates a lot of the mk1 cast, since the white clothing made alternate palettes almost impossible to make. the mk1 shang tsung from that seems to be in here too, wanted to see their surprise seeing that guy now run around and do jumping kicks
@@RoboMelvana
That'd explain why I couldn't work them out - honestly one of the reasons Hydro works so cohesively is that they kept it relatively simple.
Is the weird-looking Johnny Cage also from MK trilogy extended? Because that'd explain a fair bit of the weirdness going on with his Vs. sprite.
@@Camkitsune the one with the writing on his pants is no different from MK2 aside from the otomix logo, but the one with the glasses always on is ripped from mk trilogy. he looks a bit odd because since it was taken from a non-arcade game, they had to upscale and majorly touch it up to fit the 'arcade look' more. it sticks out a bit but it's a very commendable effort
a lot of the vs sprites are cobbled together and edited though since the first two mks didn't have them
@@RoboMelvana
Some of the sprites are definitely better than others - since this is MUGEN it'd make more sense if this were a compilation of already-extant fighters rather than an effort to do the whole thing as a unified team.
This would explain the inconsistent sprite quality (Mythologies Fujin) and balance issues (Frost's powers being less ice and more cheese).
If I had to guess Otomix was the guy either behind the compilation or behind Johnny and any other characters he was packaged with.
@@Camkitsune otomix is actually just the brand of tights johnny cage's actor was wearing. due to copyright reasons they mostly edited it out in the final product, although they strangely forgot to erase it for one animation. not actually sure who made this compilation
fujin looks that way because he's a similar deal to mkt johnny cage, he also needed to be upscaled and edited. same deal with sareena and quan chi, jataaka i can't actually tell but her winpose is definitely traced over umk3 jade
So the funniest thing about Hydro is that his entire backstory is "the Lin Kuei tried to make a water ninja into a cyborg ninja and, predictably, that turned out to be a bad idea"
this, of course, makes him into the best character in the game
While technically I respect that they presumably reassembled Mortal Kombat from scratch codewise (or from Mugen but even then that's work), most of the stuff they added looks clumsy and weird. Hydro, though? Hydro is genuinely inspired.
Hydro was basically Smoke before Smoke, was the best buddy of Sub-Zero and he get killed by Scorpion(if I rember correctly), then they kinda use his backstory for Smoke in future games.
Aqua... Duck...
*Aquaduct*
...
YEAH THAT'S ON BRAND, this series gave us a *purple* ninja called *Rain* who is a *prince* so good job whoever made this monstrosity!
you'd have the official UK playstation magazine april fool's issue to thank for that, turns out
aqua comes from an april fool's magazine article regarding mk trilogy, where he was supposedly in the european version of the game. bizarrely, an 'aqua wins' sample is actually in the files, so who knows. i really like that they made something good out of him though
and i never thought about him being a kappa, that's...interesting. makes more sense than 'cyber-demon-oni platypus'
In all seriousness, while there are some stinkers in there, some of the sprite work is not half bad.
Oiram's boar move looks like the sprite from Heroes of Might and Magic 2 stretched vertically.
This is easy to laugh at, but the Mortal Kombat fan inside me is tickled to see so many deep cuts and characters from the 3D games demade in the classic style.
Yes, another M&B Fight Palace! You guys beat James and Mike Mondays anyday.
How do you even play as Triborg in the pre-style system? Isn't his whole thing being able to switch between three (secretly four) other robotic characters?
Kenshi's blindfold... 🤦♂️
That sprite edit's been around for a long-ass time; you'd think somebody would have edited it by now... 🤷♂️
Madi has been scarce!
Fujin is a god of wind, of course he can block sound! :D Try sound in a vacuum. You wont get far.
Best Netherealms spritework yet
17:40
That Johnny Cage looks like an imitator from Taiwan or some shit lol
FIGHT PALACE IS BACK YES
This is awesome!
As wacky as this game may seem on the surface, this is one of those rare instances of someone putting a lot of work into a Mugen full game.
Yeah, I'm pretty impressed with the sprite work on the characters that only showed up in 3D games.
Beef why didn’t you play as your favorite characters, Quan Chi and Stryker? D:
Gotta love slowbeefs laugh
I'm pretty sure that Hornbuckle is a green-recolor monk you can see fighting an Outworlder in a stage background in MK2 or 3. Really, _really_ far in the background. I don't remember why the community latched onto him, or decided to call him "Hornbuckle," but this is the same group that essentially tulpa-ed an operator's-menu counter name into the red ninja character, so there you go.
Seriously, the sheer power of the collective FGC to bring things into reality scares me sometimes. They convinced Capcom to make Ryu's mentor from an EGM April Fool's issue a playable character in SF4, there's a whole subgenre of shitpost fighting games like Divekick that are actually fun and competitive, they turned motherfucking _Catherine's_ multiplayer battle mode into a legitimate fightgame scene for a couple years...