Do you love Sub-Zero's killing move from the original Mortal Kombat? Well, here's hoping you love Best Buy, where you'll have to pre-order the next Mortal Kombat to get it in your game. But what if you like Scorpion's?
Scorpion's original fatality will only be available in copies of the game pre-ordered at GameStop. Amazon will be selling pre-ordered copies with Reptile's fatality.
The news that those retro fatalities — and classic versions of those characters — will be available only in select stores came this morning in a press release from Warner Brothers Interactive today, publishers of the new game.
The Mortal Kombat series is famous for its brutal "fatality" finishing moves. Presumably all characters in the new game will be stocked with fatalities; we're talking about extras here.
This is an odd one. Sometimes game publishers allow a certain store to sell pre-orders to a version of a game that has exclusive levels or exclusive characters. Selling exclusive moves in a fighting game seems different. In all cases, the intent is clear: to goose pre-order sales with a given game-seller, in order to ensure strong sales at that chain.
We've checked in with Warner Bros. to see whether those fatalities will eventually be available for all users to download and purchase, as some retailer "exclusives" sometimes eventually are. We've also asked whether players who don't have these special versions will be able to see those fatalities if they compete online against players who have them. This post will be updated if we find out more.
The new Mortal Kombat will be out in April on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.