Introduction

There have been only a few "M" rated games for Nintendo's Wii console since its launch last November but Midway intents to change that with their upcoming Wii port of their 2006 fighting game Mortal Kombat: Armageddon. FiringSquad got a chance to chat with the game's producer Shaun Himmerick to find out more about the Wii port to see if it will be the fighting game Wii owners have been waiting for.

FiringSquad: First, was it always the plan to port Mortal Kombat: Armaggedon to the Wii or did Midway decide to bring the game to the console after its huge reception at E3 2006?

Shaun Himmerick: When we first started designing MK Armageddon we didn’t know much about the Wii, let alone have development systems.  So we didn’t always have a plan to do Armageddon for the Wii. However, after we got our hands on one, we realized we had the opportunity to make something really unique. The fact that the Wii is selling so well really kind of sealed the deal.

FiringSquad: How hard was it to get the Wiimote to work with a game that was originally designed for conventional controllers?

Shaun Himmerick: This was the biggest challenge in the game. We could not approach this as a port or as “just make it work”. We approached it as a redesign of the controls, basically as if the Wii version was its own game. The Wii system was so new that the biggest difficulty we had with the controller was learning what it could and could not do in the game. We went though quite a few experiments before deciding on the final system we use.

FiringSquad: How much of the special combos can be handled just with movements of the Wiimote?

Shaun Himmerick: Every single special move in the game can be done with our Wii-Remote gesture system. There are 8 different gestures in the game for Super moves, and every super move can be done with those 8 gestures. We also made sure to take into account the people who like the old controllers. So, we support the Classic Controller and Gamecube Controller and the moves can be done with the button combos as the game has always done. Also every one of our fatalities can be done with our Wii-Remote gesture system. There are more than just the 8 gestures from the super moves, that way we could make the motions feel as if you are doing the Fatalities.

FiringSquad: At Midway's press event earlier this year, Ed Boon stated that the Wii port of Armageddon would make special moves so easy his grandmother could do it. Was that part of the reason to bring this game to the Wii so that a wider audience would appreciate it?

Shaun Himmerick: The Wii is so friendly to many skill levels of users, that we wanted to make sure we took that into account when designing the controls, while still not forgetting what Mortal Kombat has always been. We really wanted the super moves to be easy for anyone who picks up the Wii-Remote to do and immediately start fighting.