From its debut in 1992 through April 1995, the Mortal Kombat franchise generated over $1 billion in revenue between coin-op machines and cartridges for home systems. That figure accounts for the first two games; their sequels earned billions more. At a moment’s notice, hardcore fans and collectors can scour Amazon, eBay, and Craigslist for any of those versions and browse page after page of listings, giving them plenty of time to find the best deal on MK games and merchandise.

Mortal Kombat Nitro will never appear in those listings. Only two copies exist, and their owners have no plans to part with them.

Over the winter and spring of 1993, Sculptured Software and Acclaim struggled to meet Nintendo’s stringent demands for a sanitized version of Mortal Kombat on Super NES. By release, blood had been changed to sweat, and tamer finishing moves had replaced their grisly arcade counterparts. Early on, however, the Super NES port looked markedly different.

“There were versions from Sculptured that had blood,” says Rob Holmes.

Jeff Peters was the project manager at Sculptured Software charged with leading a small team in converting the arcade game to the 16-bit console. While he understood Nintendo looking out for its family-friendly reputation, he thought MK’s violence wasn’t worth all the fuss.

“The blood and guts were so over the top that they were cartoonish,” says Peters.

While Sculptured Software’s engineers translated the arcade version’s code to the Super Nintendo and their artists processed characters and arenas, Peters spent much of his time on the phone. He would show the latest builds to managers at Acclaim, who sent them to Nintendo for approval. Nintendo would get back to Acclaim, and Acclaim would pass their feedback to Peters, who shared it with the team. Unsurprisingly, most approvals failed to meet Nintendo’s standards. What frustrated Peters was that Nintendo provided little guidance. “As we got the game up and running, we would have to test the fence. Is this blood toned down enough? No? Okay, is this toned down enough?”

After several rounds of back-and-forth, Peters gave Nintendo what they wanted. “We’d say, ‘What if it’s sweat flying off? We’d just make the blood translucent.’ And Nintendo was like, ‘Oh. Yeah.’”

“If you think about it,” says Holmes, “the blood is still there. It’s just gray sweat, or fairy dust, or whatever you want to call it.”

Gray blood, jokingly called sweat by the developers, was deemed permissible so long as gobs of the stuff didn’t splatter over the ground the way it did in the arcade. Sculptured reworked the sweat so it sprayed into the air and then dissipated. Nintendo also established a guideline for fatalities.

“They turned around to us and said, ‘Okay, no blood, and no decapitation,’” says James Fink, product tester at Acclaim.

Banning decapitations meant new fatalities for Sub-Zero, Johnny Cage, and Raiden. Fink and the team at Sculptured brainstormed ideas for new finishers. They had no time to make new graphics. That meant recycling animation frames. Instead of blasting his opponent’s head off with a bolt of lightning, Raiden pumps electricity into them until their skeleton disintegrates into a pile of ash with the skull resting on top. To replace Sub-Zero’s iconic spine rip, the developers created a sequence where the ninja freezes opponents and shatters into chunks of ice.

“It was more of an insult to the defeated player when you do that stupid backhand move and shatter them,” says Fink, who was annoyed at Nintendo’s insistence on watering down content.

Before Nintendo insisted on removing blood and sanitizing fatalities, the team at Sculptured had thought up a revised finisher for Johnny Cage that was arguably better than the one Midway had given him. Rather than punching his opponent’s head off their shoulders, he kicks them through their chest hard enough to send blood, bones, and their liver—”that’s what some blobs looked like,” Peters says of the gore—exploding out of their backs. “It’s a good example of what a fatality was before it had to go through Nintendo’s sanitizing machine.”

Nintendo rejected the finisher. Developers at Sculptured and Acclaim threw up their hands — Nintendo had only said no decapitations — but did what was expected and removed the gore. In the final version, Cage kicks his foot through his opponent’s chest and watches as they squirm at the end of his leg. Same animations, squeaky-clean results.

After uploading the latest build for Acclaim — which took forever to send over modem — Acclaim called Peters to report that Nintendo had rejected the game again. “They came back to us like a half-hour later said, ‘Oh, by the way, we need you to take out Kano’s heart fatality,’” Fink says.

That posed a problem for Sculptured and Acclaim. “We didn’t have time to create a new fatality, or we wouldn’t have met the deadline for Mortal Monday,” Fink says. In the final product, Kano tears something out of his opponent’s chest, but what that something is, is open to interpretation. According to Fink, it’s a heart that Sculptured’s artists painted gray. Nintendo gave their consent, and the game was ready for manufacturing.

As frustrating as they found jumping through Nintendo’s hoops, Acclaim and Sculptured Software knew they had no choice but to comply. “They could fail your game if they didn’t like what was in it,” Peters says.

No one at Sculptured or Acclaim was surprised when the Genesis version outsold the Super Nintendo port nearly five to one. But there was another, less publicized reason players preferred Mortal Kombat on Sega’s platform.

Sculptured’s port went through hell during its short span of time in development. Early on, one programmer claimed he could code a one-to-one conversion of the arcade game with no help. Months passed before it became obvious he was in over his head. Now even more pressed for time, Peters put three programmers on the project. Along the way, the code responsible for handling player input and referencing which animations to call got mangled. The result was a control scheme that was borderline unresponsive. When you tap up to jump, your character stands there as if no button was pressed. You have to press hard or hold buttons down for the game to acknowledge them.

Fink ground his teeth every time he read a review criticizing the Super NES’s port’s controls. He wasn’t angry with them for knocking his favorite game. He was angry because he knew they were right.

“It didn’t play like that originally,” he says. “It actually played, in all honesty, closer to the arcade than the Genesis version.”

What really bothered Fink was that the Super Nintendo’s graphics were much closer to the arcade than Sega’s. If not for Nintendo’s restrictions and the port’s flawed code, the Super NES would have hosted the best port, no contest.

Fink took this complaint to Rob Holmes and suggested a way to make things right. “I said, ‘Listen, I’ve got this idea. Street Fighter II got Street Fighter II Turbo. Let’s make Mortal Kombat Nitro.’”

Holmes liked the idea, and he thought Nintendo would like it, too. Mortal Kombat was selling so well on Genesis that Nintendo was slowly losing ground they had gained by securing exclusive rights to the first home adaptation of Street Fighter II. Nintendo had already relented and informed Acclaim they would allow blood in ports of the next Mortal Kombat. An updated version of MK with all the blood and the original fatalities would delight fans, which would please Nintendo.

Fink corrected him. He wasn’t proposing a clone of the arcade game. That was just a starting point. He envisioned more blood, more fatalities, more costumes, and tons of new features. Holmes told him to document his ideas. Ecstatic, Fink returned got to work on his design pitch. “At the time as a 21-year-old kid, I wasn’t the CEO of a company, but that I got green-lit on this, I was like, ‘All right, finally, I can make the game the way it should be.’”

Outlining Mortal Kombat Nitro was easy. Street Fighter II’s first upgrade, Champion Edition, had added the previously unplayable boss characters to the roster. Nitro would do the same by making Goro and Shang Tsung playable. Reptile would join the lineup, too, and he’d possess all of Scorpion’s and Sub-Zero’s special moves and move twice as fast, just as he did when under the AI’s control. Fink understood the appeal of secret characters—players were still dissecting the arcade and home versions to uncover anything else Ed Boon and John Tobias may have hidden away—so he knew he couldn’t make Reptile playable without adding a new hidden character to replace him. His suggestion was the original Kung Lao, Liu Kang’s ancestor, who had defeated Shang Tsung 500 years earlier only to be slain by Goro, who became the reigning champion.

The biggest change would be players’ ability to take their character down light or dark paths in the tournament. If you choose a “good” character such as Sonya or Liu Kang, and only kill “bad” characters such as Kano, you’ll unlock a new costume reflecting your alignment. Kill other good characters, and you’ll turn evil.

“So, for example, Sonya is given the opportunity to kill good characters, but if she does, she gets a bad ending. But if she just kills Kano, who was her target, you’d get the good ending,” Fink says.

Acclaim approached Midway with Fink’s design for Mortal Kombat Nitro. Releasing an upgrade was doable on a technical level: Sculptured had archived versions with blood instead of sweat, and they could reinstate fatality animations such as Johnny Cage’s gorier chest kick. Fink had an artist draft sketches showing characters in new outfits based on good and evil alignments: a blood-red scorpion, Cage wearing golden pants. Before long, Sculptured Software had a prototype where players could choose Reptile or the two bosses. It was glitchy, but it was playable.

Before Nitro progressed further, Midway told Acclaim and Sculptured Software to halt development. The notion of anyone creating a sequel or upgrade to their game was a nonstarter for Boon and Tobias. Acclaim’s bosses backed down without a fight. It was early 1994, and Mortal Kombat II was bringing in millions of dollars in quarters; soon, it would be time for Acclaim, Sculptured Software, and Probe to tackle conversions.

“They were afraid that by the time MK Nitro came out, the sales would interfere with MKII,” Fink says.

Fink disagreed. Casual players would buy home versions, but as a diehard arcade rat, he believed hardcore MKII fans would stick to the arcade’s superior hardware regardless of a home port’s availability. Bob Picunko, who had spearheaded Mortal Monday’s campaign and was already wading through the early stages of MKII’s marketing campaign, saw things differently. Sculptured had worked until their deadline on the first MK. Assuming MKII’s Super NES conversion was just as stressful, they would need to devote every spare minute to coding, debugging, and approvals.

“The issue was, could we really compromise Mortal Kombat II by taking the development team to make a half-step version of the first game?” Picunko says. “Also, would a consumer who bought MK1 buy Nitro, plus another game coming out right after it?”

Both perspectives had merit. The most devoted MK fans who only had a Super Nintendo and were disappointed with their toned-down experience probably would have leaped at the chance to buy a better version. After all, the most impassioned Street Fighter II players dropped cash on every update. However, sales history showed that most consumers weren’t thrilled at paying another $60 to $80 for new versions.

When Capcom’s fiscal year ended in March 1993, it had sold 6.5 million copies of SFII for Nintendo’s 16-bit machine, the first appearance of the game at home, and Capcom’s most successful single-platform release of all time as of 2022. Street Fighter II Turbo for Super Nintendo added more characters, more special moves, and speedier fighting, but topped out at 4.1 million. Super Street Fighter II, the franchise’s last release on Super Nintendo, only sold two million. On Sega Genesis, Street Fighter II: Special Champion Edition—the equivalent of SFII Turbo—came in last at 1.65 million.

The numbers told the story. Some MK fans would add Nitro to their collection, but not enough to risk affecting Mortal Kombat II.

“To this day, I believe Mortal Kombat II on Super Nintendo is the best home version of that game,” Picunko says. “That game probably would not have been as good if the developers would have had to work on an in-between version.”

Fink still believes in Nitro’s design and owns one of two chips containing Nitro’s code. His copy has blood, Kano’s original heart-rip fatality, and Cage’s chest kick complete with blood and guts. Years later, he gave the other ROM chip, which contained more playable characters, to a friend from Midway. “I still have one, which is very wonky, and one that I gave to Ed Boon,” Fink says. “He might have lost it by now. Who knows? This was almost 30 years ago.”

This excerpt is from Long Live Mortal Kombat: Round 1. Written by David L. Craddock, it goes behind the scenes to reveal untold stories from the franchise’s arcade era. The book will be released on October 8, and is available for pre-order on Amazon and from the publisher.

From its debut in 1992 through April 1995, the Mortal Kombat franchise generated over $1 billion in revenue between coin-op machines and cartridges for home systems. That figure accounts for the first two games; their sequels earned billions more. At a moment’s notice, hardcore fans and collectors can scour Amazon, eBay, and Craigslist for any of those versions and browse page after page of listings, giving them plenty of time to find the best deal on MK games and merchandise.

Mortal Kombat Nitro will never appear in those listings. Only two copies exist, and their owners have no plans to part with them.

Over the winter and spring of 1993, Sculptured Software and Acclaim struggled to meet Nintendo’s stringent demands for a sanitized version of Mortal Kombat on Super NES. By release, blood had been changed to sweat, and tamer finishing moves had replaced their grisly arcade counterparts. Early on, however, the Super NES port looked markedly different.

“There were versions from Sculptured that had blood,” says Rob Holmes.

Jeff Peters was the project manager at Sculptured Software charged with leading a small team in converting the arcade game to the 16-bit console. While he understood Nintendo looking out for its family-friendly reputation, he thought MK’s violence wasn’t worth all the fuss.

“The blood and guts were so over the top that they were cartoonish,” says Peters.

While Sculptured Software’s engineers translated the arcade version’s code to the Super Nintendo and their artists processed characters and arenas, Peters spent much of his time on the phone. He would show the latest builds to managers at Acclaim, who sent them to Nintendo for approval. Nintendo would get back to Acclaim, and Acclaim would pass their feedback to Peters, who shared it with the team. Unsurprisingly, most approvals failed to meet Nintendo’s standards. What frustrated Peters was that Nintendo provided little guidance. “As we got the game up and running, we would have to test the fence. Is this blood toned down enough? No? Okay, is this toned down enough?”

After several rounds of back-and-forth, Peters gave Nintendo what they wanted. “We’d say, ‘What if it’s sweat flying off? We’d just make the blood translucent.’ And Nintendo was like, ‘Oh. Yeah.’”

“If you think about it,” says Holmes, “the blood is still there. It’s just gray sweat, or fairy dust, or whatever you want to call it.”

Gray blood, jokingly called sweat by the developers, was deemed permissible so long as gobs of the stuff didn’t splatter over the ground the way it did in the arcade. Sculptured reworked the sweat so it sprayed into the air and then dissipated. Nintendo also established a guideline for fatalities.

“They turned around to us and said, ‘Okay, no blood, and no decapitation,’” says James Fink, product tester at Acclaim.

Banning decapitations meant new fatalities for Sub-Zero, Johnny Cage, and Raiden. Fink and the team at Sculptured brainstormed ideas for new finishers. They had no time to make new graphics. That meant recycling animation frames. Instead of blasting his opponent’s head off with a bolt of lightning, Raiden pumps electricity into them until their skeleton disintegrates into a pile of ash with the skull resting on top. To replace Sub-Zero’s iconic spine rip, the developers created a sequence where the ninja freezes opponents and shatters into chunks of ice.

“It was more of an insult to the defeated player when you do that stupid backhand move and shatter them,” says Fink, who was annoyed at Nintendo’s insistence on watering down content.

Before Nintendo insisted on removing blood and sanitizing fatalities, the team at Sculptured had thought up a revised finisher for Johnny Cage that was arguably better than the one Midway had given him. Rather than punching his opponent’s head off their shoulders, he kicks them through their chest hard enough to send blood, bones, and their liver—”that’s what some blobs looked like,” Peters says of the gore—exploding out of their backs. “It’s a good example of what a fatality was before it had to go through Nintendo’s sanitizing machine.”

Nintendo rejected the finisher. Developers at Sculptured and Acclaim threw up their hands — Nintendo had only said no decapitations — but did what was expected and removed the gore. In the final version, Cage kicks his foot through his opponent’s chest and watches as they squirm at the end of his leg. Same animations, squeaky-clean results.

After uploading the latest build for Acclaim — which took forever to send over modem — Acclaim called Peters to report that Nintendo had rejected the game again. “They came back to us like a half-hour later said, ‘Oh, by the way, we need you to take out Kano’s heart fatality,’” Fink says.

That posed a problem for Sculptured and Acclaim. “We didn’t have time to create a new fatality, or we wouldn’t have met the deadline for Mortal Monday,” Fink says. In the final product, Kano tears something out of his opponent’s chest, but what that something is, is open to interpretation. According to Fink, it’s a heart that Sculptured’s artists painted gray. Nintendo gave their consent, and the game was ready for manufacturing.

As frustrating as they found jumping through Nintendo’s hoops, Acclaim and Sculptured Software knew they had no choice but to comply. “They could fail your game if they didn’t like what was in it,” Peters says.

No one at Sculptured or Acclaim was surprised when the Genesis version outsold the Super Nintendo port nearly five to one. But there was another, less publicized reason players preferred Mortal Kombat on Sega’s platform.

Sculptured’s port went through hell during its short span of time in development. Early on, one programmer claimed he could code a one-to-one conversion of the arcade game with no help. Months passed before it became obvious he was in over his head. Now even more pressed for time, Peters put three programmers on the project. Along the way, the code responsible for handling player input and referencing which animations to call got mangled. The result was a control scheme that was borderline unresponsive. When you tap up to jump, your character stands there as if no button was pressed. You have to press hard or hold buttons down for the game to acknowledge them.

Fink ground his teeth every time he read a review criticizing the Super NES’s port’s controls. He wasn’t angry with them for knocking his favorite game. He was angry because he knew they were right.

“It didn’t play like that originally,” he says. “It actually played, in all honesty, closer to the arcade than the Genesis version.”

What really bothered Fink was that the Super Nintendo’s graphics were much closer to the arcade than Sega’s. If not for Nintendo’s restrictions and the port’s flawed code, the Super NES would have hosted the best port, no contest.

Fink took this complaint to Rob Holmes and suggested a way to make things right. “I said, ‘Listen, I’ve got this idea. Street Fighter II got Street Fighter II Turbo. Let’s make Mortal Kombat Nitro.’”

Holmes liked the idea, and he thought Nintendo would like it, too. Mortal Kombat was selling so well on Genesis that Nintendo was slowly losing ground they had gained by securing exclusive rights to the first home adaptation of Street Fighter II. Nintendo had already relented and informed Acclaim they would allow blood in ports of the next Mortal Kombat. An updated version of MK with all the blood and the original fatalities would delight fans, which would please Nintendo.

Fink corrected him. He wasn’t proposing a clone of the arcade game. That was just a starting point. He envisioned more blood, more fatalities, more costumes, and tons of new features. Holmes told him to document his ideas. Ecstatic, Fink returned got to work on his design pitch. “At the time as a 21-year-old kid, I wasn’t the CEO of a company, but that I got green-lit on this, I was like, ‘All right, finally, I can make the game the way it should be.’”

Outlining Mortal Kombat Nitro was easy. Street Fighter II’s first upgrade, Champion Edition, had added the previously unplayable boss characters to the roster. Nitro would do the same by making Goro and Shang Tsung playable. Reptile would join the lineup, too, and he’d possess all of Scorpion’s and Sub-Zero’s special moves and move twice as fast, just as he did when under the AI’s control. Fink understood the appeal of secret characters—players were still dissecting the arcade and home versions to uncover anything else Ed Boon and John Tobias may have hidden away—so he knew he couldn’t make Reptile playable without adding a new hidden character to replace him. His suggestion was the original Kung Lao, Liu Kang’s ancestor, who had defeated Shang Tsung 500 years earlier only to be slain by Goro, who became the reigning champion.

The biggest change would be players’ ability to take their character down light or dark paths in the tournament. If you choose a “good” character such as Sonya or Liu Kang, and only kill “bad” characters such as Kano, you’ll unlock a new costume reflecting your alignment. Kill other good characters, and you’ll turn evil.

“So, for example, Sonya is given the opportunity to kill good characters, but if she does, she gets a bad ending. But if she just kills Kano, who was her target, you’d get the good ending,” Fink says.

Acclaim approached Midway with Fink’s design for Mortal Kombat Nitro. Releasing an upgrade was doable on a technical level: Sculptured had archived versions with blood instead of sweat, and they could reinstate fatality animations such as Johnny Cage’s gorier chest kick. Fink had an artist draft sketches showing characters in new outfits based on good and evil alignments: a blood-red scorpion, Cage wearing golden pants. Before long, Sculptured Software had a prototype where players could choose Reptile or the two bosses. It was glitchy, but it was playable.

Before Nitro progressed further, Midway told Acclaim and Sculptured Software to halt development. The notion of anyone creating a sequel or upgrade to their game was a nonstarter for Boon and Tobias. Acclaim’s bosses backed down without a fight. It was early 1994, and Mortal Kombat II was bringing in millions of dollars in quarters; soon, it would be time for Acclaim, Sculptured Software, and Probe to tackle conversions.

“They were afraid that by the time MK Nitro came out, the sales would interfere with MKII,” Fink says.

Fink disagreed. Casual players would buy home versions, but as a diehard arcade rat, he believed hardcore MKII fans would stick to the arcade’s superior hardware regardless of a home port’s availability. Bob Picunko, who had spearheaded Mortal Monday’s campaign and was already wading through the early stages of MKII’s marketing campaign, saw things differently. Sculptured had worked until their deadline on the first MK. Assuming MKII’s Super NES conversion was just as stressful, they would need to devote every spare minute to coding, debugging, and approvals.

“The issue was, could we really compromise Mortal Kombat II by taking the development team to make a half-step version of the first game?” Picunko says. “Also, would a consumer who bought MK1 buy Nitro, plus another game coming out right after it?”

Both perspectives had merit. The most devoted MK fans who only had a Super Nintendo and were disappointed with their toned-down experience probably would have leaped at the chance to buy a better version. After all, the most impassioned Street Fighter II players dropped cash on every update. However, sales history showed that most consumers weren’t thrilled at paying another $60 to $80 for new versions.

When Capcom’s fiscal year ended in March 1993, it had sold 6.5 million copies of SFII for Nintendo’s 16-bit machine, the first appearance of the game at home, and Capcom’s most successful single-platform release of all time as of 2022. Street Fighter II Turbo for Super Nintendo added more characters, more special moves, and speedier fighting, but topped out at 4.1 million. Super Street Fighter II, the franchise’s last release on Super Nintendo, only sold two million. On Sega Genesis, Street Fighter II: Special Champion Edition—the equivalent of SFII Turbo—came in last at 1.65 million.

The numbers told the story. Some MK fans would add Nitro to their collection, but not enough to risk affecting Mortal Kombat II.

“To this day, I believe Mortal Kombat II on Super Nintendo is the best home version of that game,” Picunko says. “That game probably would not have been as good if the developers would have had to work on an in-between version.”

Fink still believes in Nitro’s design and owns one of two chips containing Nitro’s code. His copy has blood, Kano’s original heart-rip fatality, and Cage’s chest kick complete with blood and guts. Years later, he gave the other ROM chip, which contained more playable characters, to a friend from Midway. “I still have one, which is very wonky, and one that I gave to Ed Boon,” Fink says. “He might have lost it by now. Who knows? This was almost 30 years ago.”

This excerpt is from Long Live Mortal Kombat: Round 1. Written by David L. Craddock, it goes behind the scenes to reveal untold stories from the franchise’s arcade era. The book will be released on October 8, and is available for pre-order on Amazon and from the publisher.

According to Martin Luiga, an editor on ZA/UM's Disco Elysium, key members of the company, including lead writer and designer Robert Kurvitz, writer Helen Hindpere, and lead of art and design Aleksander Rostov, have left the company in an "involuntary" manner.

Luiga shared the update on Medium.com, saying that he, a "founding member and Secretary of the ZA/UM cultural association, as well as the assembler of most of the core team, am hereby dissolving the ZA/UM cultural association." Luiga also notes that these three core members had not been working at ZA/UM "since the end of last year and their leaving the company was involuntary." Furthermore, he says this would "seem like bad news for the loving fans that are waiting for the Disco sequel."

The ZA/UM cultural association is different from the studio ZA/UM that developed Disco Elysium, and Luiga says that he chose to dissolve the cultural organization as it "no longer represents the ethos it was founded on."

"People and ideas are meant to be eternal; organizations may well be temporary," Luiga continued. "I find that the organization was successful overall and most of the mistakes that were made were contingent, determined by the sociocultural conditions we were thrown into. I still encourage people to organize, and I would say that one of the qualities that the ZA/UM cultural organization sorely lacked was pretty much any formal structure. For a while, it was beautiful. My sincerest thanks to all that have rooted for us."

In the comments of the post, Luiga appears to place some of the blame for this situation on the investors of ZA/UM while also admitting Disco Elysium may not have happened without them in the first place.

"Imagine a kleptomaniac, if you will," Luiga said. "Only that instead of stealing, say, 'A Lolly pop,' they take pains to manipulate dozens of people to steal, in the end, from themselves, just because they happen to be very proficient in that kind of an operation. It's what they always do, really. One of them was the first guy to be convicted for investment fraud in Estonia. All the same, idk if we would have managed to get the initial investment without these people."

While this may not be the best news for those waiting on the sequel to Disco Elysium, Luiga wrote on Twitter that he believes "things with the sequel are actually sweet enough, you might even get it the way it was meant, it might take a shit ton of time but RPG fans are sorta accustomed to waiting, ain't they."

In our rare 10/10 review of Disco Elysium - The Final Cut, we said that it is a "unique blend of noir-detective fiction, traditional pen-and-paper RPGs, and a large helping of existentialist theory," and the Final Cut elevates the game from "an already phenomenal RPG to a true must-play masterpiece."

Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.

Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

According to Martin Luiga, an editor on ZA/UM's Disco Elysium, key members of the company, including lead writer and designer Robert Kurvitz, writer Helen Hindpere, and lead of art and design Aleksander Rostov, have left the company in an "involuntary" manner.

Luiga shared the update on Medium.com, saying that he, a "founding member and Secretary of the ZA/UM cultural association, as well as the assembler of most of the core team, am hereby dissolving the ZA/UM cultural association." Luiga also notes that these three core members had not been working at ZA/UM "since the end of last year and their leaving the company was involuntary." Furthermore, he says this would "seem like bad news for the loving fans that are waiting for the Disco sequel."

The ZA/UM cultural association is different from the studio ZA/UM that developed Disco Elysium, and Luiga says that he chose to dissolve the cultural organization as it "no longer represents the ethos it was founded on."

"People and ideas are meant to be eternal; organizations may well be temporary," Luiga continued. "I find that the organization was successful overall and most of the mistakes that were made were contingent, determined by the sociocultural conditions we were thrown into. I still encourage people to organize, and I would say that one of the qualities that the ZA/UM cultural organization sorely lacked was pretty much any formal structure. For a while, it was beautiful. My sincerest thanks to all that have rooted for us."

In the comments of the post, Luiga appears to place some of the blame for this situation on the investors of ZA/UM while also admitting Disco Elysium may not have happened without them in the first place.

"Imagine a kleptomaniac, if you will," Luiga said. "Only that instead of stealing, say, 'A Lolly pop,' they take pains to manipulate dozens of people to steal, in the end, from themselves, just because they happen to be very proficient in that kind of an operation. It's what they always do, really. One of them was the first guy to be convicted for investment fraud in Estonia. All the same, idk if we would have managed to get the initial investment without these people."

While this may not be the best news for those waiting on the sequel to Disco Elysium, Luiga wrote on Twitter that he believes "things with the sequel are actually sweet enough, you might even get it the way it was meant, it might take a shit ton of time but RPG fans are sorta accustomed to waiting, ain't they."

In our rare 10/10 review of Disco Elysium - The Final Cut, we said that it is a "unique blend of noir-detective fiction, traditional pen-and-paper RPGs, and a large helping of existentialist theory," and the Final Cut elevates the game from "an already phenomenal RPG to a true must-play masterpiece."

Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.

Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

With no new Star Wars movies on the immediate horizon, Hasbro has been betting big on the various Disney+ shows as it continues to expand the Star Wars: The Black Series line. That trend continues with the first wave of figures inspired by Star Wars: Andor.

Hasbro gave collectors their first look at the new Andor line during their Pulse Con livestream, and IGN can exclusively debut the official images for all four. Get a closer look in the slideshow gallery below:

This wave is focused on the heroes of this surprisingly dark but excellent Star Wars series, including Cassian himself along with Bix Caleen, Luthen Rael and Mon Mothma. All are designed in the typical Black Series six-inch scale and include various accessories.

These Andor figures are priced at $24.99 each and are slated for release in Summer 2023. All four will be available for preorder on the Hasbro Pulse website beginning at 3pm PT on October 1. You can also find Amazon preorder links for all four figures below:

Hasbro Pulse Con also gave us our first look at the new Indiana Jones: The Adventure Series line, with the first wave of figures focusing on the heroes and villains of Raiders of the Lost Ark. You can also check out Hasbro's recently revealed The Mandalorian: Season 2 figures.

Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.

With no new Star Wars movies on the immediate horizon, Hasbro has been betting big on the various Disney+ shows as it continues to expand the Star Wars: The Black Series line. That trend continues with the first wave of figures inspired by Star Wars: Andor.

Hasbro gave collectors their first look at the new Andor line during their Pulse Con livestream, and IGN can exclusively debut the official images for all four. Get a closer look in the slideshow gallery below:

This wave is focused on the heroes of this surprisingly dark but excellent Star Wars series, including Cassian himself along with Bix Caleen, Luthen Rael and Mon Mothma. All are designed in the typical Black Series six-inch scale and include various accessories.

These Andor figures are priced at $24.99 each and are slated for release in Summer 2023. All four will be available for preorder on the Hasbro Pulse website beginning at 3pm PT on October 1. You can also find Amazon preorder links for all four figures below:

Hasbro Pulse Con also gave us our first look at the new Indiana Jones: The Adventure Series line, with the first wave of figures focusing on the heroes and villains of Raiders of the Lost Ark. You can also check out Hasbro's recently revealed The Mandalorian: Season 2 figures.

Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.

The Indiana Jones franchise has never been nearly as well represented on the collectibles scene as Star Wars, but Hasbro is looking to change that in 2023. During Hasbro's Pulse Con livestream, the company gave collectors a first look at the Indiana Jones: The Adventure Series line.

Similar to Star Wars: The Black Series, these Adventures Series figures are six-inch scale figures that emphasize both articulation and movie-accurate likenesses. This new line will draw from all corners of the franchise's 40-year history, but fittingly, the inaugural wave will focus on the heroes and villains of 1981's Raiders of the Lost Ark.

IGN can exclusively debut images of all six figures in this Raiders wave, which includes Indy himself along with Marion Ravenwood, Sallah, Major Arnold Toht and Rene Belloq. Gaze into the slideshow gallery below, but try not to melt your face off in the process:

Not only do these figures come with all the laundry list of accessories (including an incredible alternate head sculpt for Major Toht), each comes with "Build an Artifact" pieces. Collecting the entire wave allows you to assemble a scale-model Ark of the Covenant and really take the collection up a notch.

The Adventure Series marks the first new line of Indiana Jones figures since 2008, when Hasbro debuted a line of 3 3/4-inch figures to coincide with the release of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Sadly, that sequel didn't leave Indy fans much in the mood for buying toys, and the toy line met a premature end. Hopefully the upcoming Indiana Jones 5 will have the opposite effect.

All five figures are priced at $24.99 each and are slated for release in Spring 2023. The Indy and Major Toht figures will be available for preorder beginning at 3pm PT on the Hasbro Pulse website, and you can also find Amazon preorder links below. The remaining three figures will go up for preorder at a later date.

In other toy news, IGN recently got a first look at NECA's new Shredder figure inspired by the original TMNT comics.

Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.

The Indiana Jones franchise has never been nearly as well represented on the collectibles scene as Star Wars, but Hasbro is looking to change that in 2023. During Hasbro's Pulse Con livestream, the company gave collectors a first look at the Indiana Jones: The Adventure Series line.

Similar to Star Wars: The Black Series, these Adventures Series figures are six-inch scale figures that emphasize both articulation and movie-accurate likenesses. This new line will draw from all corners of the franchise's 40-year history, but fittingly, the inaugural wave will focus on the heroes and villains of 1981's Raiders of the Lost Ark.

IGN can exclusively debut images of all six figures in this Raiders wave, which includes Indy himself along with Marion Ravenwood, Sallah, Major Arnold Toht and Rene Belloq. Gaze into the slideshow gallery below, but try not to melt your face off in the process:

Not only do these figures come with all the laundry list of accessories (including an incredible alternate head sculpt for Major Toht), each comes with "Build an Artifact" pieces. Collecting the entire wave allows you to assemble a scale-model Ark of the Covenant and really take the collection up a notch.

The Adventure Series marks the first new line of Indiana Jones figures since 2008, when Hasbro debuted a line of 3 3/4-inch figures to coincide with the release of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Sadly, that sequel didn't leave Indy fans much in the mood for buying toys, and the toy line met a premature end. Hopefully the upcoming Indiana Jones 5 will have the opposite effect.

All five figures are priced at $24.99 each and are slated for release in Spring 2023. The Indy and Major Toht figures will be available for preorder beginning at 3pm PT on the Hasbro Pulse website, and you can also find Amazon preorder links below. The remaining three figures will go up for preorder at a later date.

In other toy news, IGN recently got a first look at NECA's new Shredder figure inspired by the original TMNT comics.

Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.

Werewolf By Night is already an unusual project for Marvel Studios, but it further distinguishes itself from the rest of the MCU by the inclusion of something we haven't seen a lot of in previous movies – blood and gore.

The horror throwback adapts the comic books, but takes on the style of monster movies throughout the ages, and director Michael Giacchino says that his wish to bring some of the bloody violence of the genre into his movie was something that no one ever questioned:

"Well, it was one of those things where no one said no," he told IGN. "I just kept pushing. I knew that we were going to balance that with heart and humor and humanity and empathy and all of that. And as long as we kept that balance in tow that I felt like we had some leeway to push on the horror side.

"And look, we're dealing with monsters, monster movies, and I felt like we needed to just go into that realm, just not be afraid of it. And if that meant, 'Sorry, you're going to have to edit this,' somebody came into my room. And if that meant that we were going to try some new things, we were going to try some new things."

The director's interest in adding more gore became apparent to the crew, it seems: "The big joke on set became when they would be like, 'All right Michael, how is this? Is this good?' I'd be like [Giachinno grimaces], I would start to say something, and they'd go, 'Let me guess more blood. You want more blood, right?'"

Giacchino admits that there was some trepidation about his approach: "I think there was an air around the production of, 'What's going to happen? Are they going to let us do this while we come back with all this footage that is so violent? What's going to happen?' But I knew in my heart that what we were doing was not sadistic. We weren't creating a film that was all about just indiscriminate killing. It was about the people. And I feel like if you keep it about the characters and the people, then you'll have some leeway to do some other things that you normally wouldn't get to do."

He added that a key was that the movie's look naturally takes away some of the impact of gore, too: "And being in black and white didn't hurt us either."

The Halloween themed 'Special Presentation' is invoking the look of classic grindhouse movies, with a first trailer showing us something of the plot. The cast is shown in a spooky mansion, with a monster raging in a cage while surrounded by soldiers, as well as quick-cut horror movie-style shots. The last shot is of a werewolf, played by Gael Garcia Bernal, attacking Laura Donnelly, who will play Elsa Bloodstone.

The feature arrives on Disney+ on October 7, and continues Marvel's interesting turn into horror-inspired filmmaking.

Joe Skrebels is IGN's Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.

Werewolf By Night is already an unusual project for Marvel Studios, but it further distinguishes itself from the rest of the MCU by the inclusion of something we haven't seen a lot of in previous movies – blood and gore.

The horror throwback adapts the comic books, but takes on the style of monster movies throughout the ages, and director Michael Giacchino says that his wish to bring some of the bloody violence of the genre into his movie was something that no one ever questioned:

"Well, it was one of those things where no one said no," he told IGN. "I just kept pushing. I knew that we were going to balance that with heart and humor and humanity and empathy and all of that. And as long as we kept that balance in tow that I felt like we had some leeway to push on the horror side.

"And look, we're dealing with monsters, monster movies, and I felt like we needed to just go into that realm, just not be afraid of it. And if that meant, 'Sorry, you're going to have to edit this,' somebody came into my room. And if that meant that we were going to try some new things, we were going to try some new things."

The director's interest in adding more gore became apparent to the crew, it seems: "The big joke on set became when they would be like, 'All right Michael, how is this? Is this good?' I'd be like [Giachinno grimaces], I would start to say something, and they'd go, 'Let me guess more blood. You want more blood, right?'"

Giacchino admits that there was some trepidation about his approach: "I think there was an air around the production of, 'What's going to happen? Are they going to let us do this while we come back with all this footage that is so violent? What's going to happen?' But I knew in my heart that what we were doing was not sadistic. We weren't creating a film that was all about just indiscriminate killing. It was about the people. And I feel like if you keep it about the characters and the people, then you'll have some leeway to do some other things that you normally wouldn't get to do."

He added that a key was that the movie's look naturally takes away some of the impact of gore, too: "And being in black and white didn't hurt us either."

The Halloween themed 'Special Presentation' is invoking the look of classic grindhouse movies, with a first trailer showing us something of the plot. The cast is shown in a spooky mansion, with a monster raging in a cage while surrounded by soldiers, as well as quick-cut horror movie-style shots. The last shot is of a werewolf, played by Gael Garcia Bernal, attacking Laura Donnelly, who will play Elsa Bloodstone.

The feature arrives on Disney+ on October 7, and continues Marvel's interesting turn into horror-inspired filmmaking.

Joe Skrebels is IGN's Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.