Mortal Kombat 2 source code leak reveals unused animations and sprites | Hacker News Reader

Mortal Kombat 2 source code leak reveals unused animations and sprites

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110 pointsshscs91117 comments

See also "The Cutting Room Floor", which collects unused artifacts in games. Looks like they are aware of this leak but haven't merged in all the findings yet.

https://tcrf.net/Mortal_Kombat_II_(Arcade)

I want to thank you for the hours I’m about to waste on that rabbit hole of a site.

Non ironically, I happen to be sick in bed so you just made my day.

My life has come full circle:

$ rg -i ermac

  MAIN.ASM
  990:txt_sm4     .string "ERMAC WHO?",0
  1022:txt_jd3    .string "ERMAC WHO?",0
  1327:   ermac   1
  1895:   .string "ERMAC WINS",0

Toast-yyyyyyy!

Please elaborate! (I'm not a Mortal Kombat expert)

ERMAC: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ermac

“ The character originated from rumors alleging he appeared in the original 1992 game as either a glitch or a hidden character, which were perpetuated by video game magazine Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM). His name was derived from a diagnostics menu in the first game that displayed the text "error macro" as ERMACS. Although the rumors were false, growing interest led to him becoming an official playable character.”

So this reflects both the original “ermac” macro usage in the assembly code as well as the perpetuation of the rumors which led to an actual ERMAC character :)

Direct link:

https://twitter.com/annoyingdog322/status/160770152004442521...

hey! it's you! the Scorpion to my Sub Zero

GET OVER HERE

FRIENDSHIP

Ok, we'll change to that from https://www.eventhubs.com/news/2022/dec/27/mortal-kombat-2-s..., which points to it. Thanks!

I'm curious if any of the mk1 or mk2 actors/models went on to bigger work in their careers. It would be hard to top revealing to your young adult grandchildern you were Jax in Mortal Kombat.

This Wiki seems to have all the details; here's Jax specifically:

https://mortalkombat.fandom.com/wiki/John_Parrish

Also, ChatGPT (sorry, but I was curious) says:

One example is Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, who played Shang Tsung in the 1995 Mortal Kombat movie and its 1997 sequel, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation. Tagawa has had a long and varied career in film, television, and stage, appearing in a number of popular movies and TV shows such as The Phantom, Pearl Harbor, and Hawaii Five-O.

Another actor who appeared in the Mortal Kombat movies and has had a successful career is Robin Shou, who played Liu Kang in both films. Shou has appeared in a number of action movies and TV shows over the years, including Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li, DOA: Dead or Alive, and NCIS: Los Angeles.

Other actors who appeared in the Mortal Kombat movies and have gone on to have successful careers include Bridgette Wilson (Sonya Blade), Talisa Soto (Kitana), and Linden Ashby (Johnny Cage).

Jax... wins?

Sub Zero from MK3 also appeared on Prison Break (look for "John Turk")

How does the source code for an old video game get leaked?

And why aren't more old video games open sourced like Doom?

Sometimes it's people who used to work on the game that still have copies of the source code laying around that leak it. Sometimes copies end up on old hard drives/disks that get sold/found in cleanups.

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