On week where Mai Shiranui had her gameplay reveal as the latest guest DLC character in Street Fighter 6, it looks like Netherrealm Studios has followed their longtime rival with a gameplay reveal for their guest DLC character in Conan the Barbarian.
Funnily enough, being the second Arnold Schwarzenegger guest character in the franchise with the first being Mortal Kombat 11’s Terminator, Conan follows the theme from Mortal Kombat 11’s guests, that being an iconic 80s action hero with plenty of movie references baked into his moveset. Conan’s iconic sword training montage fits nicely into his intros and outros, and of course his fatality features the scalding hot pot of… whatever they were boiling in the movie that included human bits. Said fatality is also brief but brutal, a nice departure from the typical fatality fare in recent Mortal Kombat games.
There’s also an interesting mechanic in Conan’s trailer, where it appears that he revives himself after death similar to Jason Voorhees from Mortal Kombat X. How that’s implemented as well as other mechanics and moves that Conan has is covered in the Kombat Kast that featured right after the trailer revealed:
Of course, there’s the elephant in the room that Conan is the penultimate last DLC for Mortal Kombat 1. After the release of the T-1000 Terminator later in the year, Mortal Kombat 1 will cease being supported by Netherrealm and Warner Brothers due to the low sales of the Khaos Reigns expansion, sad end for a game that was highly anticipated for many Mortal Kombat faithful, but an end that isn’t entirely unexpected considering the lifespan of Netherrealm Studio games. With Mortal Kombat being one of the IPs that Warner Brothers is looking to expand on, we can hopefully expect something major from the franchise soon, just not from this particular game.