Ed Boon still hasn’t delivered on his promise to tell fans why Mortal Kombat HD Kollection was canceled 6 years later

We have some ideas about what may have happened though

The first three Mortal Kombat entries are some of the most influential fighting games to ever exist, so it’s fairly surprising they never received the whole HD remake / remaster treatment for modern hardware — except that they almost did.

Series Co-creator Ed Boon confirmed that the Mortal Kombat HD Kollection remakes did exist at one point and wanted to share why the project was canceled, but that was six years ago.

Back in November of 2015, Boon posted a screenshot of the Courtyard stage with Liu Kang and Sonya with the text “Hi-Res Kombat …. one of these days I’ll post an article explaining how the MK HD edition never came to be…..”

Obviously, we’re in 2021 now, and we still don’t really know anything new about the trilogy remake.

Heck, we don’t even know if that screenshot is just a mock up or of an incomplete build because the Liu Kang model is from MK2 while Sonya is pulled from MK3.

Hi-Res Kombat …. one of these days I’ll post an article explaining how the MK HD edition never came to be….. pic.twitter.com/oubqNSIyiv

— Ed Boon (@noobde) November 7, 2015

What is known, however, is Other Ocean Interactive were tasked with the project, and that it was not going to use the original assets from the arcade games.

Instead, brand new actors were brought in, new art was created and production was seemingly well underway.

While it was never officially announced, online retailers listed the HD Kollection with a November 2010 release date before being pulled.

The set would re-emerge the following year as the Mortal Kombat Arcade Edition, which was pretty much just a straight port of the original games for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC.

Fans did get to see a glimpse of what the HD Kollection could have looked like when makeup artist Tanea Brooks shared behind the scenes photos to her website showcasing Kitana, Sonya, Shao Kahn, Kung Lao and other fighters in costume.

Although there’s never been confirmed details on the cancellation, the simplest explanation is that the project was started at Midway before the company went under and Warner Bros. acquired Mortal Kombat.

As the new owners of the property, Warner may not have been keen on continuing development on something they didn’t greenlight, and instead went the cheaper route of porting over the existing games.

Perhaps the reason Boon has been quiet since is he doesn’t want to get into trouble with his WB bosses by essentially throwing them under the bus for potentially canning a highly requested project from fans.

Either way, we’re still waiting Ed.

Image via Tanea Brooks.