Mortal Kombat fans are upset because of AI upscaling of beloved characters

Mortal Kombat fans who bought a new book on the history of the Mortal Kombat game series are complaining that some of the art used in the book looks horrendous.

Last week, publisher Insight Editions released the book Mortal Kombat: Flawless Victory. A Visual History of the Iconic Series, written by Ian Flynn.

As the subtitle indicates, the book takes readers on a visual journey of all Mortal Kombat characters who made their appearance in the gaming franchise throughout the years. Besides artwork, the publication contains early concept sketches, renders, illustrations, and interviews with the development team. In other words, it’s a must-read for true Mortal Kombat fans.

However, instead of embracing the new book, Mortal Kombat enthusiasts are appalled by some of the artwork presented in the publication. This has to do with the thumbnails of fighters who made their first appearance in the first two Mortal Kombat games.

Back in 1992 and the following years, the game developers used digitized photos to portray the characters in the fighter selection screen. They used a resolution that’s considered low by today’s standards. These profile pictures made it to the new book, but had to be resized. Instead of recreating the old footage, the publisher opted for AI upscaling, with devastating results.

For example, the masks of Sub-Zero, Mileena, and Kitana blend into faces, and the eyeballs of Shang Tsung and other characters appear to be “melting.”

“I’m really let down by this art book. Instead of having an actual artist carefully remaster the Mortal Kombat artwork, the company chose to rely on AI upscaling. The result feels impersonal and not up to the standard fans deserve. It’s a shame they paid someone to use a machine instead of hiring an artist to do the job right. One star,” says a disappointed Mortal Kombat fan in a review on Amazon.

There have also been lots of complaints on X.

“The use of AI upscaling is disastrous in this book. It's reminiscent of those nightmarish early AI models. This needs to be addressed, or the fans should massively request a refund,” Matias writes.

“Wow, this is pretty damn bad. I was going to order this one, but it seems filled with bad AI upscales. I think they could have just interpolated a nearest neighbor upscale of the original pixel art, and it would have been good,” another fan says.

As of writing, publisher Insight Editions hasn’t commented on the issue.

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