In keeping with the last few entries in the franchise, Mortal Kombat 1 was only officially revealed about a month ago, but it's already set to hit store shelves in September. After an exhilarating CG announcement trailer that confirmed that the game will be both a sequel and a reboot, Mortal Kombat 1 received its first gameplay reveal at Summer Game Fest, where it was widely considered to be one of the biggest highlights of the entire event.
But even with a fairly lengthy first look at gameplay, there's a lot about Mortal Kombat 1 that fans still don't know. The roster, for the most part, is still a mystery, as is the secondary Kameo Fighter roster, with just a handful of characters confirmed for each. And while fans have a general idea of Mortal Kombat 1's overall story premise, there's still no word on just how this new rebooted universe will affect the series' most iconic characters.
Mortal Kombat 1 Fans Should Keep an Eye on Evo 2023
Founded all the way back in 1996, the Evolution Championship Series is a weekend-long fighting game tournament that sees the best of the best battle it out in state-of-the-art Esports arenas, with audiences of thousands cheering them on. Over the last decade or so, Evo has also transitioned into more of a convention for fighting games in general, with plenty of pop-up stores, an artist alley, and tons of game cabinets and stations to check out. But more interestingly, Evo's also been the site of some pretty high-profile fighting game announcements.
Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, and Tekken didn't have anything to show at Evo 2022 last year, but a few other big announcements did come from the event: Arcade1UP announced its Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 cabinet, Guilty Gear Strive detailed its Season 2 roadmap, MultiVersus detailed its Season 1 roadmap, and Skullgirls announced a brand-new fighter heading to the game. Evo 2021 saw several big fighting game announcements as well, a lot of which related to Street Fighter 5's Championship Edition.
While Mortal Kombat has never really announced anything major at Evo in the past, the timings have never really synced up. For the past few Mortal Kombat entries, Evo has ever come a little too late or too early for NetherRealm to announce anything, but that won't be the case this year. This year, Evo begins on August 4, landing just over a month before Mortal Kombat 1's release date, making the likelihood of an announcement pretty high.
When Ed Boon took to the Summer Game Fest stage to show Mortal Kombat 1's first gameplay reveal, he also mentioned that fans can expect to see plenty more reveals of the game in the coming months leading up to its September 19 release. Evo seems like as good of a place as any for at least one new Mortal Kombat 1 announcement, and the most likely reveal is one relating to the game's roster.
Right now, only a handful of characters has been confirmed for Mortal Kombat 1's roster, and it would make sense for NetherRealm to gradually announce new fighters in the lead-up to the game's release, thus paving the way for at least one fighter reveal at Evo 2023. It's also possible that fans get to see a tease of Mortal Kombat 1's DLC roster, potentially confirming guest characters like Omni-Man and Homelander that have been heavily rumored for a while now. With Mortal Kombat 1 also being playable for the first time publicly at Evo, some kind of announcement feels likely.
Mortal Kombat 1 will be released on September 19, 2023, for Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S.