Warner confirms Mortal Kombat Vita for spring

Following intital chatter this morning, Warner's formally announced a Vita version of Mortal Kombat for a spring release.

The release will come with "brand new gameplay features" and exclusive content for the handheld version.

The new version reintroduces the 2D fighting pane, tag team, challenge tower and a "deep" story mode. More new gameplay features will be unveiled "in the coming months".

The small box-art shows confirms Kratos as a playable character. God of War's main man was also a playable character in the PS3 version.

"The NetherRealm team is committed to making sure that we follow up the success of 2011’s Mortal Kombat with an equally compelling experience on the PlayStation Vita," said Netherrealm's creative director Ed Boon.

"The original game content and new features we developed for the PlayStation Vita will provide gamers with the best fighting game experience available on the new mobile platform."

The confirmation comes as a reader sent us a TwitPic yesterday which showed what appeared to be the same press release sent out today that confirmed the spring launch and additional gameplay features, as well as quotes from Boon.

Warner told VG247 earlier in the afternoon it didn't "have any comment on the link," which has since been removed from TwitPic.

The original Mortal Kombat released last April for PS3 and 360.

It's also worth noting that Netherrealm was the first studio to actually publicly say it had what was then a PSP2 development kit back in September 2010.

Boxart for the title is posted below.