There are a lot of major video game anniversaries taking place right now, and next year will be no different. One of the bigger celebrations will be 30 years of the famous brutal, bloody and violent western fighting game, Mortal Kombat.
Ahead of its anniversary milestone, the series' co-creator, Ed Boon, has decided he'll be sharing some "fun" behind-the-scenes footage - allowing fans to see first-hand (well, kind of), what it would have been like to see these games created, from the perspective of a "fly on the wall".
The first move he's shared is Scorpion's iconic "Get over here!" spear attack. Here's the clip, which also shows it in action in the original Mortal Kombat:
Boon also shared a series of follow-up tweets, which we've compiled in order here:
We certainly did a ton of prep for our video shoots, but some ideas came to us while filming. With Scorpion’s spear, it started with “You know what would be a cool ass move?”. From there you can be a fly on the wall and see us working through the details.
One of those details was how fast Scorpion threw the spear, which had to be quick so he could catch opponents by surprise. This meant keeping the animation simple & very few frames. We also wanted the spear to pass over a ducking opponent, so we kept it at chest height.
We were so tight on memory, that we didn’t even capture any motions for the victim reactions. Instead we borrowed from their existing animation frames. You can hear us talk about reusing one of the victim’s “knockdown” animations when they initially get hit by the spear.
We also borrowed the victim’s “fatality dizzy” frames to show they were stunned after being pulled in. Reusing existing animations was one of the many tricks we used to save memory, which was so much more limited in 1991.
A few things make me laugh watching this so many years later. Try counting how many times you see my arm reach out from the right side, trying to (ninja) mime the move. Also hearing @therealsaibot (John Tobias, fellow Mortal Kombat co-creator) describe how he wants to make the rope like a snake by saying “shh shh”.
Also… did you notice how young Ed Boon really likes to use the word “WAH” to describe things? WTF?
Finally, while there was SO MUCH more involved with us creating this classic move (fx, sounds) it’s still kool to see the germ of an idea that eventually became so synonymous with Mortal Kombat, and duplicated SO MANY TIMES in future games, movies, tv, animation & comics!
Fingers krossed, I’m hoping to release more (fly on the wall) videos like this in the future as we lead up to Mortal Kombat’s 30-year anniversary.
2021 has seen the release of a new live-action Mortal Kombat movie, sales of Mortal Kombat 11 pass the 12 million mark worldwide and the release of a new animated movie. NetherRealm has also called time on its latest entry in the series - revealing it would be ending DLC support to focus on the "next project".
Are you excited for Mortal Kombat's 30th anniversary in 2022? What did you think of Ed's history lesson above? Leave a comment down below.
[source twitter.com]
Comments 29
Back then the spear move was always my favorite projectile move as it not only hit your opponent but could also catch them and reel them towards you for a free hit as well. I hate how they change that in MK11 cause in that one the spear doesn't give you the free hit, instead when Scorpion reel them back he auto hit them himself which is lame.
I grew up on Mortal Kombat, back in the day when coming home from the arcades and telling my friends about the "killer game", no one believed me. And the same thing repeated a few years later when I told them about "friendships" in Mortal Kombat II. Pesky little fools...
Anyways I wonder if this upcoming anniversary will bless us with the rumored MKI, MKII and MKIII-Ultimate HD-Remasters/Remakes. Would love to play them all over again as I enjoyed the simpler times, back when MK was still 2D and not such a goofy ULTRA-4K-SLAUGHTERFEST it is today.
@Specter_of-the_OLED Didn't know that since I quit the series after the 2011 Mortal Kombat (which I loved for nostalgia) and yes it indeed DOES sound really lame!
@Specter_of-the_OLED just amplify it then it does. Gotta change the game up some how other wise everyone moans that Scorpion is a lame OP character that only cheats use. Btw hes my character of choice. It was also my favorite move. Spear then a classic uppercut. Toastyyyyy (Anyone old enough to have played the origionals will get it)
I’d love a physical release of the arcade games to go with the Street Fighter collection.
Loved the originals, very much remember Mortal Monday and purchased this on the Megadrive. Although it didn’t have the parallax scrolling floors of the Snes, we had abacabb
back when MK was new, this move was maybe the one thing that really made the game stand out of the crowd of beat em ups.
I mean MK really had quite a few things that make it special, but Scorpion and his COME HERE was just dynamite
@Kidfunkadelic83 love a good Toastyyy (but I think knowing that reference makes our usernames obsolete)
@valcoholic that and Sub’s ice freeze. In my school every MK match up was Sub Zero vs Scorpion
@Kid_Sickarus aaah right, sub zero; totally agree
@Kid_Sickarus maybe we should update them to oldfunkadelic and old_sickarus. As you quite correctly pointed out, to know that reference were certainly not kids anymore 🤣
@Specter_of-the_OLED Considering there are lots of sweats who can do 50% damage combos perfectly, would not be too fun to get hit by a spear and a BS combo and be half dead, of course they had to change it.
Shame MK11 is horrible on switch, only game I regret buying.
Thing to note. They appear to have made this up on the spot, because they thought it looked cool.
No plan.
Best move in the franchise.
One of the most iconic moves from the series was originally just a “you know what would be cool” moments?! The spontaneity of so many amazing things that have happened through history is fascinating.
@Specter_of-the_OLED Yep, it doesn't feel cool anymore.
Such an ironic move was just made up on the spot? Dammit!
Love MK, the arcade 1up cabinet is the most played in my collection
Scorpion is my guy in the MK series. This move is iconic - very cool video. Thanks for sharing!
Not necessarily me being pulling a "Back in my day" here. But I do sort of miss the old digitized graphics of the first three games. There was just a certain charm to them that I can't explain. Maybe because it made the games feel a bit more immersive and realistic, even with the fantastical special and finishing moves.
Not to derail the discussion, but I sort of share the same sentiments with Resident Evil and its old tank-style gameplay.
I love these kinds of behind-the-scenes features, and hope they share footage of all the capture work they did, or at least most of it. Crazy to think how "Wild West" game development was during the early 90s.
@UmbreonsPapa I'm totally with you on that. I even liked MK1 better than MK2 because the sprites looked more realistic, they seriously upped the saturation on the costumes for MK2. And now, looking at all the 3D Mortal Kombats we have, after all these years they still look like cartoons and a digitized photo of a real actor will just be better in my book!
I'd love them to just 3D-scan real actory in costume and even keep the colors and everything intact and work with that. Also I enjoyed the "more plausible" fatalities of the older games. Not every fatality needs to end in a fountain of gore and mangled eyes.
I can see the actor’s martial arts background by the way he moves, pretty darned cool.
NINJA APPROVED (obviously)
Was playing mortal Kombat 11 ultimate on the switch the other day & it crashed on me 3 times within an hour hoping for a patch to improve the performance abit
There was a Mortal Kombat collection on the xbox360 that had arcade versions of Mk, MK2 and MK3 (can’t recall if it was the ultimate version). Unfortunately it is one of those pesky games that won’t work on the xbox1 which is why I still have the 360 under my TV.
Just a shame about the 1 player game, I could never get far with the computer reading my inputs!
@Scollurio Can't believe it's been almost 30 years. I grew up playing the first 4 games in arcades too. Mortal Kombat II for SNES was the first pre-order I ever had.
@PBandSmelly Damn really?! So they just acted like they didn't want to be there?
@PBandSmelly So was Daniel Pesina, Ho Sung Pak and Katalin Zamiar there?
@JustMonika Yep, time flies. You see it especially with pets that go over the years, kids that grow up and the cycle of videogames you play and how the tech progresses.
Really loved the older games of that era, not only MK. I remember things like Battle Isle and Jagged Alliance fondly only a few years later on PC. And yeah, like you my first preorder also was MKII.
@Jayenkai Yeah! And even the famous catch phrase! That was awesome!
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