Conquest was released on DVD at least in Australia if you want to import it. For the most part MK was a dead franchise when DVD shows were popular even if the games still sold decently so it never got a US release and thats why we never got decent edition of the movies on dvds either. However now that Mortal Kombat is as big as its ever been in recent years I think chances are high. The revival worked great and you can bet we are going to get a new Mortal Kombat game sooner rather than later and tie-ins always happen. Only bad news is tv shows on dvd don't really sell as well as they did in the early/mid 00's. Lets hope. Now lets make this a general MK non games thread, sorry if we missed your earlier thread Chrono.
I absolutely loved Conquest as a kid, I re-watched it (thanks to the Aussie DVDs) about 3 years ago and I loved it. Its similar to Xena and other shows at the time that tried to copy the same format. Its a prequel to the first movie with the original Kung Lao and we see plenty of new faces as well as familiar ones. In fact this show makes me want to have a pre-Liu Kang MK game, a great way to start fresh. The show seems to get a lot of hate on the internet but I absolutely loved it, too bad it was cancelled.
Lets tackle the animated series, Defenders of the Realm, I'm sure you've seen plenty of videos making fun of it but its actually not that bad. The intro of the show makes it seem like they turned the MK characters into superheroes but the show for the most part really isn't like that. The show takes place after the movie and actually spends most episodes exploring the mythology of MK, now its still a cartoon aimed at kids and didn't have Batman:TAS level of writing but if you can endure some corny dialog its pretty decent. One exception is the final episode, for some reason the final episode features different animation and altered character designs as well as much improved writing, great episode and if the whole show would have been like that it would have been an amazing show, heck maybe the second season would have been like that, oh well I would also like to see it on DVD.
Now when the movie came out there was also direct to video movie, MK:The Journey Begins, which is both a prequel/interquel to the movie, it has terrible CG and animation but it actually does flesh out the movie a little more since for the most part this DTV is just gives background to the characters from the movies while having random fight scenes in between. We get to see that Sub-Zero and Scorpion are indeed enemies in the movie and are only working for Shang Tsung for some reason that is explained and whatnot. It wasn't released on DVD but I believe its an extra on the Blu-Ray. Kinda funny all the shows/cartoons/DTVs of MK are in continuity with each other technically since they all based themselves after the movie, the timeline would be something like Conquest > Journey Begins > Movie > Defenders > Annihilation, obviously this wasn't done on purpose so there are a few small continuity problems which you have to explain away but for the most part it works.
I know I'm not in the majority but I actually really enjoy the MK Mythology, I find it very interesting. I mean its fiction, I don't see why people get worked up that its taken too seriously, we know its cheesy but its fun. This is also why I think MK works without having to be Rated R or having excessive blood or violence, as long as its true to the mythology it works. I mean even in game canon most characters don't really die even if you perform fatalities to them, only very few of them actually die continuity wise in the games and those same characters are revived later in the series regardless.
