Mortal Kombat had lost the person responsible for creating all the characters and storylines, and the Special Forces project was in utter disarray.
Then John Tobias did finally throw in the towel and left Midway. To be fair, that is an exceptionally low bar to clear, but still! Screenshots showing Sonya fighting against Black Dragon goons appeared in magazines, and while Special Forces didn’t look like it would set the world on fire or anything, it definitely seemed like a major improvement over Mythologies. Instead of another 2D side-scrolling title with controls designed by a madman, Special Forces would be a 3D third-person action game with a controllable camera and was planned for release on the PlayStation, Nintendo 64 and Dreamcast.
One of these games, Mortal Kombat: Special Forces, was going to focus on Sonya and Jax in their fight against Kano’s Black Dragon gang before the events of the original Mortal Kombat. John Tobias wasn’t quite ready to throw in the towel quite yet, though, and floated around ideas for other games based on various Mortal Kombat characters. You’d think Midway would have given the Mortal Kombat action game spinoffs a rest after the failure of MK Mythologies: Sub-Zero, a game so bad only Jeff Gerstmann liked it.
