Sub-Zero, Scorpion, Other Classic Fighters Confirmed for New Mortal Kombat

The E3 trade show was the venue Warner Bros. chose to show off the new Mortal Kombat videogame, which is being developed for the PlayStation 3 from Sony and the Xbox 360 from Microsoft with a tentative launch date of 2011. And it seems that some of the best-known characters from the series are returning for the fresh game, with the developers also taking care to hide what other fighters they could slip into the 18 empty slots seen by journalists on the character selection screen.

Blurry images have confirmed that the following characters are confirmed for Mortal Kombat: Sub-Zero, Scorpion, Reptile, Kung Lao, Mileena, Night Wolf, Sektor, Johnny Cage. Any Mortal Kombat title would be hard to conceive without the inclusion of the three ninja variants, fighters that have gained quite a following among players despite being initially created as a way for the developers of the early iterations in the series to save memory space.

It's also good to see the underrated Cage make an appearance although some long time players might be concerned about not seeing Liu Kang show up as a playable character. Some of the empty character slots might be reserved for downloadable content that will come after the launch of the game to provide the player with more options. No DC characters are expected to make appearances this time around.

Ed Boon, the main creative mind behind Mortal Kombat, has stated that the new game will aim for a return to the roots of the series, with a version of Raiden about to be killed by the villain Shao Khan sending a message back in time to the version of himself that appeared in the first iteration in the series.

Raiden then goes through the events of the first three games bearing the Mortal Kombat name and the player can expect to see quite a few things happen differently than they did in the current canon.