Mortal Kombat 1: How We Reinvented Klassic Kombatants Cyrax, Sektor, and Noob Saibot

Launching on September 24, the Mortal Kombat 1: Khaos Reigns expansion is not just a massive drop of story, modes, skins, palettes, new and adjusted moves, bloody new Brutalities, all-new Animalities, and other bits, chunks, and tweaks – it’s also a reintroduction of three klassic characters whose pedigree and backstories both in and out of game stretch back almost to the beginning of the Mortal Kombat Universe.

Yes, Khaos Reigns brings back Cyrax, Sektor, and Noob Saibot – but with Mortal Kombat 1 establishing a whole new timeline for the series, they aren’t quite as you remember them. Here’s how we honored the history of these fan-favorite Kombatants, while reinventing them for the new game.

Cyrax and Sektor

These fan-favorite yellow and red cyborg ninjas date back to Mortal Kombat 3 (1995) and served as a change of pace from the typical ninjas and demigods that made up our roster previously. The appeal of the cyborgs has always been the way they mesh mechanized tools and more halting, robotic movements with the martial arts of the Lin Kuei. Back in the day, they were two of the most fun and fearsome fighters from one of the most beloved and distinctive games of that arcade era.

In subsequent entries, they’ve often returned, whether as fully-fledged roster fighters like in Mortal Kombat (2011), represented as the mash-up fighter Triborg in Mortal Kombat X, or as Story mode exclusive guests in Mortal Kombat 11. Paying homage to the klassic Mortal Kombat 3 forms, Cyrax and Sektor from the ’90s arcade era already appear in Mortal Kombat 1 as Kameo Fighters, ready to pop out and assist your main fighter on command.

Now with Khaos Reigns, entirely new versions will round out their own roster slots, mixing up and referencing various versions along the way, but with many curveballs courtesy of the New Era’s leader, Fire God Liu Kang.

The most important change? They’re all-human now. Instead of a marriage of man and machine, Cyrax and Sektor are all flesh and blood. In this timeline, neither of them is a cyborg, but they augment conventional ninja training and the usual blades, bludgeons, and brawn with all sorts of advanced tech. Their styles, backstories, and allegiances are riffs on what you may remember. You want technological-minded mechanical ninja combat? You got it, but with a different finesse, heart, and wit than before.

Gameplay-wise, Advanced Designer Michael Bellipanni’s focus for the reimagined, cyber-assisted fighters was to hearken back to various versions of both of them, while putting new spins on things. Let us break down both of them.

Breaking Down Cyrax

Cyrax is the quicker of the two, with an acrobatic fight style influenced by ninjitsu and enhanced by high-tech friction boots. Her tool deployment is less direct – she can ensnare foes and lay explosive traps for them, and can quickly relocate all over the battlefield, sandwiching the opposition between her location and her devices.

Most of Cyrax’s tricks come by way of her amazing sphere multitools, which are brimming with lethal functions. To add extra bite or oomph to several of her normal attacks, Cyrax keeps an orb tool in her hand, which can either be used as a set of blades or detonated in bomb form at point-blank range – don’t worry about her safety, that’s what the suit’s for. The orbs can also naturally be tossed as good old-fashioned timed explosives.

In enhanced form, her orb devices zero in on the enemy before whirling to action with horrific spinning blades. Orbs can also be thrown directly at foes to burst upon them with sticky, trapping foam. When subterfuge is appropriate, a device can be detonated at Cyrax’s feet, creating a distraction as she flits suddenly behind her quarry.

She can even toss out devices that do nothing, the perfect dirty trick to make a defender turtle up and expose themselves to mix-ups and throws. With some dexterous device juggling, Cyrax can keep several of these options in play and on field simultaneously, improvising temporary defenses, and planning steps ahead on offense. And you’ll see just how creative Cyrax can get with the orbs when the time to Finish Them fatefully arrives.

From her suit’s built-in features, Cyrax is most reliant on the high-tech friction skates on her feet. These work by jacking the surface coefficient of her footing way up or down, drastically affecting adhesion and repulsion properties on the fly. She uses this capability for effortless gliding and speed boosts, rapid direction changes off walls, and to enable ensnaring kick attacks. A modern take on Cyrax’s klassic Mortal Kombat 3 air throw comes by way of this friction-boot assist, and she’ll be quite slippery to pin down in corners when she can spring off of walls over danger, when she’s not just deceptively gliding right through it. If you haven’t guessed it, she’s a bit of a trickster, ready to play with her food as a hit-and-run keep away artist.

Breaking Down Sektor

Cyrax’s crimson-hued, somewhat awkward comrade-in-training, Sektor is far more direct. Sektor is much more reliant on the brute strength and futuristic ordinance capabilities of the Cyber Initiative’s tech. Under the proverbial hood, Sektor’s packing an assault helicopter’s worth of guided and unguided explosives. On the ground, she can choose between dominating lateral space with rockets or launching more sophisticated targeted or homing missiles into arcing trajectories. In midair, she can release descending burst grenades that can be set off when desired; when enhanced, these airborne bomb-droppings can be immediately followed up with more aerial attacks, leading to all kinds of possibilities.

Add it all up and she’s better armed from afar in terms of sheer firepower than anyone on the field.

That’s before you consider that she is wearing a fortress. Where Cyrax’s suit is adapted for agility and deception, Sektor’s armor has all its points pushed into power. If Sektor has enough warning against incoming threats, she can extend extra anti-projectile shielding. With perfect timing, she can retaliate immediately after with one of her own projectile attacks just after deflecting a hostile shot – and shot deflections don’t just give Sektor an opening to shoot back, they also energize her suit, powering up a couple of her strongest normal attacks.

Being able to redirect unpredictably in midair is one of the strongest (and most fun) traits a character can have. This is good for Sektor, because her suit’s boosters effectively give her multi-jumps and flexible air combo extensions. That puts her in a position of power against other kombatants who dominate the skies with irregular options, like Ermac, Homelander, Nitara, and Sindel. Thrusters also let her boost off from almost any position before slamming down behind the enemy.

The suit’s numerous thrusters and ports can also be seen adding boosting and scorching touches to many of Sektor’s normal attacks, and when dialed up, considerably provide Sektor with a flamethrower special move. Would you like to bet that these features and more are demonstrated spectacularly in several ways throughout her high-energy Fatalities? You would win that bet.

Sektor does not favor the indirect approach, and she’s not very susceptible to direct approaches either. She can wear down the opposition at long range, firing off her own salvos while absorbing the opponent’s suit-boosted combos up close when the mood strikes.

Noob Saibot

A new interpretation of a generational villain also emerges from the shadows. Or rather, with the shadows. Noob Saibot’s first appearance was strictly as a deeply hidden secret foe all the way back in 1993’s Mortal Kombat II, where the player had to score dozens of wins in a row to fight an entirely-black silhouette. One reason for the abundance of palette-swapped characters in early Mortal Kombat games was simply because of economy: everything had to fit onto arcade and console cartridges. Recoloring existing content was a low-impact way to add more stuff. Jade, Rain, Reptile, and Smoke also started out as simple recolorings, before being fleshed out on their own merits later on. Legend has it Ermac belongs on that list too, but that’s another story for another time.

Alongside the ketchup and mustard-flavored cyberninjas, Noob Saibot is a major player in the expansive story of Khaos Reigns, where New Era origins and motives are explored for all three. Fittingly, in past incarnations, the secret fighter named after Mortal Kombat’s co-creators (if you don’t know, just read his name backwards) is usually depicted as a mindless pawn of a malevolent presence. Whether that’s true in Khaos Reigns is not something we’re going to spoil here. But, come on; look at him. Noob Saibot is heavily cloaked, thoroughly armored, wearing blades on his fingers, and trailed by a roiling shadow that behaves independently. If he’s not working towards evil goals, watch out for whatever is (this isn’t foreshadowing or anything…).

Breaking Down Noob Saibot

That shadow is core to Noob Saibot’s whole identity, in every way. He isn’t just a grimdark edgelord reaper-type. Almost all his moves are influenced by whether his shadow is present. That shadow can be cast underfoot or be seen standing up on its own two feet and moving around – and it isn’t just for looks, it’s information. If Noob Saibot’s shadow trails under him, waving on the floor like upside-down smoke, it’s available for summoning, joining in to enable or amplify most of his kit. But a preoccupied shadow is an unavailable shadow. Some of Noob Saibot’s moves simply aren’t available without the shadow, and many are quite different compared to their shadow-backed versions. Using the shadow to your advantage becomes a constant dance of risk and reward.

Most of Noob Saibot’s normal attack combos feature him and his shadow weaving past each other, taking turns pummeling the target. His throw is different with the shadow, and many shadow-assisted special moves are safer, farther-reaching, with more margins for error, and better follow-up opportunities.

For reasons that will become clear in the events of Khaos Reigns, Noob Saibot can use a ghastly disembodied hand in an incantation called Embrace Khaos, which supercharges the ghostly energy pouring through him. This unique special move can only be used once per match. For a short interval, almost any shadow attack is even more powerful, usually producing effects unique to this buffed state. There is a cost, though: after the spell’s short-lived effects expire, he will be completely without the help of the shadow for the rest of the current round. As a Noob Saibot player, pop Embrace Khaos and it’s showtime; as a Noob Saibot opponent, stay calm and watch every angle.

Thanks to the conditional nature of lots of Noob Saibot’s attacks, his movelist is one of the largest in the game. A huge array of attacks means plenty of places to reference and embellish this fighter’s history. The goal of Advanced Designer Aaron Davis was to pull as many pieces of Noob Saibot from different places together as possible, with a particular emphasis on the portal-tumbling hijinx seen in Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 and Mortal Kombat (2011). But this doesn’t mean that Noob Saibot should be taken as intimidating or overly complex to play. It’s more that many of his moves have an escalation, with the best versions available during Embrace Khaos, and lesser versions occurring when the shadow is gone… and who isn’t stronger alongside a friend?

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As you can tell, we’ve put a huge amount of effort into recreating Cyrax, Sektor, and Noob Saibot for Mortal Kombat 1. But even with all that work, they’re just a piece of what’s coming when the Mortal Kombat 1: Khaos Reigns Expansion launches digitally on Sept. 24 for Xbox Series X|S.