I was introduced to Mortal Kombat on April 20th, 1992. I was fresh out of art school and starting my career at Williams/Bally/Midway. I remembered being overwhelmed that I was actually walking into the building where some of my favorite games were created: Narc, Robotron, Defender, and Smash TV just to name a few. Mortal Kombat was yet to be released. However there were a few Mortal Kombat prototypes lining the halls of Midway that we could test out. I remember being just blown away by my first experiences with Mortal Kombat. What first struck me was the size of the digitized characters on the screen. They were huge! I remember selecting Kano as my first character: I was a big Terminator fan at the time, so the choice was obvious. I also remember how in awe I was working (and playing) along side of the guys that created the game. A few days after that, I met the actors that were filmed for the game. John Tobias and Ed Boon brought the whole cast of characters back in to capture the video bio sequences that happened during the attract mode. It was funny how low-budget the whole thing was. It was actually just filmed in the hallway where we tested the games with a low-end video camera, a few lights, and a piece of black cloth as the backdrop. It was a very garage-band scenario but I recall just being blown away that I was witnessing the creation of something big, never really knowing how big Mortal Kombat would actually become.

In this video clip, Mortal Kombat’s longtime Lead Sound Designer Dan Forden discusses the origins of “Toasty!” — one of the most celebrated Easter Eggs in the history of gaming.

Mortal Kombat II was fun in that I had the opportunity to witness the team create the game from the ground up. I was working on another game team at the time, but I was slowly becoming friends with Tobias, Ed, and Tony Goskie. Tony is an amazing artist that bases his talent in surrealism; Mortal Kombat II’s introduction to Outworld was a perfect match for Tony. Luckily my office was directly across from Tony’s so I had the opportunity to see him create some of the most iconic environments in the game. I remember Tony’s disappointment when he had to remove the crucified four-armed Shokan from the Wastelands. We thought it was an interesting element in the background, but the company thought it may be perceived as sacrilegious. One of the best memories I had from the Mortal Kombat II days was when I was asked to be the floating monk in the Tower background. You can’t really tell it’s me in the shrouded robe, but at the time I dorked out hard telling everyone I knew that I was in the latest Mortal Kombat!

In this video clip, Creative Director and co-creator Ed Boon talks about the creation of Mortal Kombat’s iconic dragon medallion logo.

Mortal Kombat 3 is special to me because that was the first Mortal Kombat I was on as an artist. I was honored that John and Ed asked me to join the team. I basically worked alongside John, cleaning up characters, building costumes, and creating special FX. Making Mortal Kombat 3 was a really great time. We busted our asses. We worked crazy hours and stayed overnight quite a bit. Building the character costumes was probably the most fun. Now we build everything in 3D, but back then we had to rely on sporting goods stores, army surplus stores, Halloween shops, and a lot of duct tape. It was a blast getting the cyborg costumes together: it was a mix of BMX motocross gear, hockey protection, duct tape, and rubber tubing. For being really thrown together I am really happy with the way Sektor and Cyrax turned out. By the way, before they were known as Sektor and Cyrax, John Vogel named them Ketchup and Mustard.

In this video clip, Mortal Kombat artist, animator, and motion-capture performer Carlos Pesina recalls how his mother reacted to his career choice.

I am honored to still be working on the Mortal Kombat franchise. I love the Mortal Kombat universe and all the talented people I get to work with every day. In addition to that, I feel we have the best fans in video games. They are extremely devoted and our team deeply appreciates their devotion over the past (almost) 20 years. Thank you all sincerely.

Fatalities are back and better than ever in the new Mortal Kombat! Ever since 1992’s Mortal Kombat, fatalities have gotten a HUGE fan reaction. The new game’s fatalities are the most lethal, elaborate, and quite simply the best we have ever made. We are sure that the fans are going to love what we have come up with in the new Mortal Kombat.

Ed Boon and the rest of the MK team knew that returning to a Mature game rating – PLUS the tremendous graphic improvement and new technologies we now have access to – would let us take fatalities to an unsurpassed level of unimaginable brutality. Additionally, we wanted to make sure there were a ton of fatalities for all of the iconic warriors in the game (with two fatalities, minimum, for every character) as well as fatalities for some of the dynamic environments. There is a looot of content for players to uncover – and we finally had plenty of time to build it all!

The fatality development process is extremely collaborative. In the past, we didn’t start designing and implementing fatalities until the majority of the game was finished. But with this game, the team began working on fatalities early in the development cycle in order to have the maximum amount of time to come up with ideas and polish them. Fatalities are born in the dark recesses of the designer’s minds – each fatality always starts with a general idea from [Mortal Kombat co-creator] Ed Boon and the designers. They basically lock themselves in a room for hours and lay out all of their ideas. Once the meeting begins, one brave soul is the first to share a sick and twisted way for the player to finish off their opponent, and the process begins.

Inspiration can come from anywhere – gruesome murder news stories, old horror movies, and actual nightmares have spawned more than a few of our most disturbing fatalities. There is a usually a lot of “You know what would be cool…” and “What if…” The designers pantomime many of the motions for that fatality and the reaction of the other team members in the room determine whether a fatality is good enough for inclusion in the game. Ideas with the strongest team reactions are the ones we all build on and polish into a final concept. Ed then goes on to storyboard each fatality for the motion-capture session.

The motion-capture sessions are a dynamic experience involving two people that act out each fatality over and over until they perfectly capture the movements needed to make the fatality look as realistic and awe-inspiring as possible. From there, our magicians in the animation and cinematics groups add the look, feel and special effects that take the fatalities from a motion-captured wire frame to a graphically intense piece of in-game content.

As a team, we review each step of the process many times in order to make sure each element looks as impactful as possible. Once the fatality meets our quality requirements, we pass it along to our audio group so that they can take the piece to the next level and create horrifying sounds to add the final touch of atmosphere to the piece. Finally, it is given back to the designers who embed the fatalities in the game in preparation for players around the world.

Fatalities are truly one of the most collaborative development efforts and are a great reflection of the vast amount of talent we have working on the game. We want to ensure that fans get the Mortal Kombat they have been waiting for come April 19th. I wish I could show you some examples of our new fatalities, but because we’re bound by certain advertising guidelines we are only able to show them after you pre-order at GameStop. Once you pre-order, you will be emailed a code that you can enter that into a widget in order to view some of the great fatalities in the final game. You can see more details here.