>>11802948
UMK3 was largely made because of fan backlash about the ninjas being missing.

Yes, it was that big a deal. Despite some people saying MK was done by 1995, it's not true, that was the year of the movie, and probably the peak of dedicated fanbase considering the brand was riding high off two games, establishing pretty much two generations of fans between older kids and little kids, and the ninjas were by far the most popular characters despite not being the "main heroes", ninjas were just kinda the rage, plus this was the age of anti-heroes, people generally liked the more dangerous, anti-social, shady etc characters in things so it's not that surprising people loved ninjas more than Liu and Johnny etc