30 years ago, development started on the very first Mortal Kombat game, a fighting game franchise known for its brutal combat and violent Fatalities. To celebrate this milestone, co-creator Ed Boon gave fans a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of one of Scorpion's most iconic moves.
In a Twitter thread posted yesterday, Boon showed off a two-minute video where he talks with John Tobias, the other co-creator of Mortal Kombat about "what would be a cool-ass move" and Daniel Pesina, the actor who played Scorpion and Johnny Cage, acts out the move. In the original Mortal Kombat, all of the characters were digitized sprites based off of real actors who acted out the moves that appeared in the game. From the start, they work out various details about the move, such as how Scorpion would drag in his opponent for an uppercut, and how the spear could be dodged if his opponent was ducking.
Mortal Kombat will be 30 years old in 2022. But 2021 marks 30 years since we actually BEGAN working on the game. To celebrate, it seemed like a fun idea to share some behind-the-scenes stuff. This clip shows how we created Scorpion’s iconic (GET OVER HERE!) spear move. (1 of 9) pic.twitter.com/3f1tdvjG9R
— Ed Boon (@noobde) October 12, 2021
The thread also went over how Boon and his team overcame some obstacles caused by being a memory-heavy game. Games in 1991 didn't have nearly as much memory as games do today, so the team managed to save some memory by reusing some other animation frames for the other characters in the attack. Most notably, the team discussed using the start of their knockdown animations for the initial grab and reusing the Fatality stun (the animation they go through when they're defeated and the opponent has the opportunity to perform a Fatality) for the moment when they're pulled in right before the uppercut.
Mortal Kombat's official 30th anniversary is October 8, 2022.
