Mortal Kombat Vita has exclusive Challenge Tower, touchscreen fatalities

Ed Boon has said the development team really "went to town" with front touchscreen interaction in the Vita version of Mortal Kombat, but decided against making use of the system's reach touchscreen.

Speaking with the PS Blog, Booon said while the functionality of the rear touchscreen was experimented with, the team "ultimately opted not to pursue" its use, and instead put a lot of work into the controls and the front touchscreen.

"In terms of gameplay, we’ve always wanted MK to be as accessible as possible," he said. "For example, you can touch your X-ray meter to execute an X-ray attack. For fatalities, you can slash the screen with the appropriate inputs — say, away, away, up — to execute the fatality. It makes some of the more difficult fatalities easier and it’s fun to slash at your screen to fire off a fatality.

"I was surprised by how engaging it is. There’s a lot of precision with the slicing mechanic, so it works well for fatalities."

Book said the team looked into implementing a dedicated touchscreen-only mode for casual players, and while it was an "interesting novelty at first," the team decided the normal control scheme would suffice for any level of play.

In the Vita version of the game, the entire Story Mode and all the downloadable characters and content from the original console game will be included, along with additional modes and features tailored for specifically for the handheld, such as and expanded Challenge Tower.

"The fundamental necessity is quick access to gameplay, whether it’s online or locally," he said "The mobile gaming experience is shorter bites of time. We identified the Challenge Tower as a perfect fit for mobile sessions, so we expanded it greatly for PS Vita. There are actually two Challenge Towers in the PS Vita version, and the new one has 150 challenges that are exclusive to PS Vita.

"A number of those challenges use PS Vita’s hardware features: the touch screen, [and] the accelerometer. But in the new Challenge Tower, there are challenges that are unique to PS Vita’s capabilities. Over the years we’ve had Test Your Might, Test Your Luck, Test Your Sight…well, we’ve added two completely new ones for PS Vita. Those extra 150 Challenge Tower missions are tons of fun. Imagine tilting your PS Vita and affecting gravity in the game, things like that.

"We’ll be revealing those soon, and they will take advantage of the accelerometer and other features."

Mortal Kombat is slated for release on Vita in the spring.