Today he's the Creative Director for NetherRealm Studios, currently overseeing development of their 2013 DC Comics title Injustice: Gods Among Us. History, and many of us, will better recognize Ed Boon as a co-creator of America's most successful homegrown fighting game series: Mortal Kombat.
With the franchise celebrating its twentieth anniversary, Boon took time to remember some of the major milestones of the last twenty years for Complex.com.
- 12. Best Moment: The First Chicago Tests
- 11. Worst Moment: MK Annihilation
- 10. Sub-Zero's Fatality
- 9. Creating Scorpion's Spear Attack
- 8. Seeing MK Characters in Other Games
- 7. Transitioning from 2D to 3D
- 6. Creating Mortal Kombat II
- 5. Addressing the Violence
- 4. MK Goes Mainstream
- 3. Creating Scorpion and Sub-Zero
- 2. Brainstorming the Game
- 1. Watching the Game Come to Life
I suppose if you were to say "off the top of your head," I would rewind to the original game where it was just four of us working on it, no expectations behind us. We kind of caught the video game world by surprise with everything we were doing: our presentation, the blood, the violence, the controversy, all that—that whole chapter up there as just an arcade game. Once Acclaim took it into the mainstream with pretty high-profile television commercials and advertising really hard, that brought it up to a new level. Then, the movie brought it into different media. At that point, it just became one big, crazy ride where there are so many big events associated with it that it's hard to pinpoint any one of them. I could literally write a book on my experiences.
Find the full 12 memories and more of Ed Boon's thoughts at Complex.com.
Mortal Kombat Online recently enjoyed a similar retrospective exchange with the other half of the duo credited with Mortal Kombat's creation. Don't miss the first part of our conversation with the prodigal son, John Tobias [read more]. Share your memories from the last twenty years in the MKOmmunity Year of the Dragon nostalgia thread.
