Mortal Kombat: Special Forces
| Mortal Kombat: Special Forces | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Developer(s) | Midway Games |
| Publisher(s) | Midway Games |
| Producer(s) | Michael Gottlieb |
| Designer(s) | Richard Ho Carlos Pesina Herman Sanchez |
| Programmer(s) | John Walsh Jonathan Murfey Daniel Markham |
| Composer(s) | Dan Forden |
| Series | Mortal Kombat |
| Platform(s) | PlayStation |
| Release | |
| Genre(s) | Action-adventure, beat 'em up |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
Mortal Kombat: Special Forces is a 3D action game developed and released by Midway Games for the PlayStation in 2000. The game stars the character Jackson "Jax" Briggs from the Mortal Kombat fighting game series.
Special Forces is chronologically the first game in the Mortal Kombat storyline, as its events take place even before Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero. The story of the game involves Kano freeing his gang, the Black Dragon (Tasia, Tremor, No Face and Jarek) from a maximum security prison and Jax, seeking revenge for the slaughter of his Special Forces comrades at the hands of the Black Dragon, undertakes a mission to stop them from retrieving an artifact of great power, the Eye of Chitian. The true power of the artifact is shown in the ending that it can open portals to other realms when Jax uses the artifact to teleport himself and Kano back to Earthrealm after defeating him.
This was the second Mortal Kombat game developed by Midway that was more of a platformer than a fighting game, after having tested the waters with Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero in 1997. Series co-creator John Tobias intended to work on a series of platform games to expand the Mortal Kombat universe, including titles centering on Baraka and Liu Kang; only the latter was actually released by Midway (2005's Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks) despite having sat on the drawing board for many years.
Although Special Forces was only released on the PlayStation, it was also supposed to be released both on the Nintendo 64 and Sega Dreamcast, as evidenced by an IGN interview with John Tobias. Many of Midway Games staff, including Tobias, left the company in 1999 for various reasons while the game was still in production. The plot of Special Forces (which originally included Sonya Blade) was greatly revised following Tobias's departure and the game was rushed to completion. Ed Boon later recalled: "I didn't work on Special Forces. The game and project were riddled with all kinds of problems. I could write a book on that."
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