Behind-the-scenes footage of a recording session for the cancelled Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection HD recently popped up online, and it shows actor Taylor Choi-Marquez portraying Kung Lao, a role originally held by his father in Mortal Kombat 2 and 3. In addition to his role in the unreleased remaster, Choi-Marquez was a motion capture performer for Mortal Kombat 9.
Cancelled in 2011, Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection HD was intended as a full remaster of the first three games in the series. The production process included recording actors playing the roles of Mortal Kombat’s fighters then digitizing them, just like in the games’ original releases. Though the collection never saw the light of day, the first three Mortal Kombat games were re-released, albeit not remastered, in Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection.
In 2014, a few years after Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection HD was cancelled, a set of behind-the-scenes photos was released online by a makeup artist working on the game, but that’s all that was ever revealed about the process of recording its actors. Now, a short video of a recording session for Kung Lao has made its way online, thanks to self-described Mortal Kombat fanatic Mel Oliveira on Twitter. The video shows the crew setting up for a shot against a green scene in a studio that looks very barebones compared to the motion capture setups used by many games today. The short clip ends with a glimpse of Taylor Choi-Marquez in the full Kung Lao uniform.
While work on Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection HD was eventually stopped, there may still be a remaster of those early Mortal Kombat games in the future. In 2017, developer Blind Squirrel began work on Mortal Kombat Kollection Online, which was also meant to be a remaster of the first three games in the series. By the end of 2018, that project, too, was reportedly cancelled, but it appears that it may be back in production. Last month, a rating for the supposedly cancelled Mortal Kombat game was spotted on the website for PEGI, the European game rating board. It’s since been removed, but it was active long enough to get plenty of old-school fighter fans excited about the possibility that a Mortal Kombat remaster might actually make it out after all these years.
The new behind-the-scenes clip may not reveal anything new about the Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection HD, but it’s still an interesting piece of gaming history. The project was highly anticipated by fans, and it’s fascinating to get a glimpse at a production process for a type of performance recording that’s mostly been replaced by motion capture these days.
Next: Mortal Kombat 11: Co-op Towers of Time EXPLAINED
Source: Mel Oliveira/Twitter
