The Evolution Of: Mortal Kombat
Ed Boon explains how his gory one-on-one fighter has evolved over the last three decades
There are few gaming joys greater than decapitating your humbled foe, but there’s much more to this classic series than that. Ed Boon explains why Mortal Kombat has been a lethal competitor in the fighting game scene for over 25 years
There are very few games in history that could be described as having achieved true notoriety, but Mortal Kombat is definitely one of them – after all, it was a lightning rod for controversy in its earlier years, thanks to being the fighting game where you could kill people. Concerned moral guardians didn’t want kids anywhere near the series, but they could hardly avoid it because Mortal Kombat has been a genuine cultural phenomenon, with a multitude of games as well as film, TV and comic adaptations.
It’s easy to get caught up in all of that, but to do so is to ignore why the series has achieved such longevity.
Very little is constant in the world of Mortal Kombat, and if your impression of the series is still a vision of rainbow-hued ninjas differentiated only by their special moves, you’ve missed a couple of decades of evolution. For a series so often judged by its grizzled exterior, it’s the guts underneath that are truly fascinating.
The Mortal Kombat series can be broadly categorised into a few different eras, the first of which was naturally the 2D era. Despite using 2D sprites like every other fighting game had at the time, Mortal Kombat was in part defined by its look. “The idea for the first Mortal Kombat came by combining a (relatively new) digitisation technology that Midway Games had with a fighting game,” explains Ed Boon, cocreator of Mortal Kombat and creative director
at Netherrealm Studios. This technology allowed the developers to use filmed images of real objects to create sprites, rather than drawing them from scratch. The fighting game part of the pitch was based on the trends of the time. “Street Fighter II was very big in 1991, and we originally wanted to make a Jean-claude Van Damme fighting game because he was also very popular at the time. When he passed on our idea, we decided to make a fighting game using characters we would create.” The setting that was created centred on a fighting tournament, in which the warriors of Earthrealm (our world, essentially) fought to save it from the sorcerer Shang Tsung. Through the sequels, we’d learn more of the story – Shang Tsung was attempting to take over Earthrealm on orders from Shao Kahn, the supreme ruler of supernatural realm called Outworld.
Midway wasn’t the first studio to attempt to combine digitisation technology with the fighting genre, as fans of Atari Games’ Pit-fighter will tell you. But that game had come before Street Fighter II, and as well as kickstarting a boom in popularity for the fighting genre, Capcom’s game provided a key point of comparison for Mortal Kombat. “Street Fighter had an anime art style and we wanted our game to look different and stand out more. Mortal Kombat’s visuals played a critical role in making the game stand apart from Street Fighter, as well as other arcade games. Mortal Kombat looked
real and its imagery was of real people and real objects,” explains Ed. “The realistic look of our digitised characters prompted us to add other realistic elements like blood and it kind of took off from there.” This digitised art style would be Mortal Kombat’s signature look, and would eventually come to influence a number of games such as Way Of The Warrior, Tattoo Assassins and even Street Fighter: The Movie.
While the Midway team carved its own path when it came to the technological side of the game’s appearance, there was plenty of pop culture influence when it came to the theme and style. “Mortal Kombat was inspired by many movies that we grew up seeing. Big Trouble In Little China certainly was one of those movies. The Asian theme and setting was John Tobias’ idea,” Ed tells us. “That, along with Dan Forden’s music, really gave Mortal Kombat a lot of its feeling and overall tone.” This look was very strong in the first game, and gained more fantastical elements in the second game, which took place in Outworld, another realm of the game’s universe. Mortal Kombat 3 instead focused on urban locations to sell the story of Outworld’s invasion of Earthrealm, but the Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 update added more fantastical locations such as Scorpion’s Lair to balance the themes a little better.
Character design was a little trickier. “We had never made a fighting game before, so we did a lot of experimenting. We did know that we wanted to make our characters do more ‘magic’ based special moves, rather than strictly martial arts,” says Ed. This developed over the course of the original trilogy – while the characters were realistic in appearance, moves such as fireballs and energy waves added the fantasy element. Only the four-armed penultimate boss Goro had a truly outlandish design, and as a result he was the only character to be created with a clay model and stop-motion animation. But many of the original cast are the amongst the series’ most beloved characters. “Scorpion and Sub-zero are probably the most iconic and recognizable of all the Mortal Kombat characters,” says Ed. “Raiden and Shang Tsung are up there too.”
All four of the characters Ed mentioned were retained for Mortal Kombat II, alongside Liu Kang and Johnny Cage, and the new female fighters Mileena and Kitana used the same colour-swapping technique as Scorpion and Sub-zero’s sprites had in the original, saving space while adding more variety. But there were advances to be found – the game began to add crazier elements to the character designs, like Baraka’s bladed arms and the incorporation of actual reptilian elements into the design of Reptile. Mortal Kombat 3 developed the cast further, introducing the series’ tradition of major cast refreshes by dropping five of the previous game’s characters and adding seven new ones. This was partially because Midway had ended up in disputes with a number of the actors
that had portrayed characters in the first two games – some were recast, like Liu Kang, while others were removed. The game had even more fantasy elements, from the cyborg duo of Cyrax and Sektor to Sindel’s hair attacks. Digitisation did prove to be a limiting factor later on in the 2D era, though. When the previously omitted characters were returned in updates of Mortal Kombat 3, the nature of the existing footage limited what the team could do – for example, Mortal
Kombat Trilogy included new moves for Baraka, Kintaro and
Shao Kahn, which had to be constructed using old sprites from Mortal Kombat II that had been left unused.
But as much as the characters and setting were appealing factors in Mortal Kombat, they wouldn’t have gained players’ attention if the fighting hadn’t been solid.
The initial game established the series’ five-button system – high and low punch buttons, high and low kick buttons and a block button. “We wanted the player to be able to walk backwards without blocking during their opponent’s attacks. We wanted to be different from Street Fighter,” says Ed. “We also felt like the joystick should be used strictly for movement, while the other actions should be triggered via buttons.” In Mortal Kombat 3, a run button was added, allowing players to rapidly close the distance between fighters. Advanced players would learn the potency of juggle combos in the first game – attack strings that kept a vulnerable opponent in the air for further hits. These were refined further in Mortal Kombat II, and Mortal Kombat 3 added chain combos, preset inputs allowing players to inflict huge damage with a rush of blows. Combined with the run button, these additions made the third game far quicker and less defensively oriented than its predecessor. Of course, the most spectacular attacks were saved for ending a fight. The original Mortal Kombat gave each character a single Fatality move, a gory special technique that would kill the opposing fighter.
These were a huge source of controversy at the time, but they were also a key part of the game’s appeal – while the moves themselves were completely over the top, it was still shocking to see them performed on relatively realistic character sprites. Surprisingly, these weren’t a priority in development. “Creating Fatalities back then mainly involved us trying to construct them by reusing existing art. We had a very limited amount of storage remaining in the game, which meant very little space for Fatalities,” Ed explains. “You’ll notice that a few characters’ Fatalities (Raiden, Johnny Cage, Sub-zero) all involved removing the opponent’s head and having their body fall to the ground. Johnny Cage’s Fatality reused his uppercut animation, and we just had the opponent’s head pop off. So, we didn’t have as much room to create original Fatalities for each
fighter. But players never really knew this, and everything turned out okay I suppose.”
The original Fatality moves were all quite dark, but as the 2D era progressed finishing moves became a source of levity in the series thanks to Friendships and Babalities. They were no easier to perform though, and the developers didn’t explain how to do so. “From the beginning we wanted to have a lot of mystery elements in the game, which is why we never documented how the special moves and
Fatalities were performed,” Ed recalls. “Players had to discover the moves by themselves.
That mystery element heightened the interest from players who kept wondering what else was in the game that they hadn’t seen.” That sense of mystery was a huge draw for the arcade crowd, and was heightened by another long-running Mortal Kombat tradition established in the 2D era – a proliferation of secrets. “I personally have always been a big fan of game secrets and Easter eggs. Mortal Kombat was our chance to go crazy with that,” confesses
Ed. “The original hidden character Reptile was my favourite. Street Fighter had a ‘Sheng Long’ rumour that some people thought was a hidden fighter or boss. So how cool would it be to actually have a hidden fighter in our game? The idea came to me one day while taking a lunch break
and by that evening he was in the game. I didn’t tell anyone he was in the game and was hoping it would be seen rarely enough that most people would think he wasn’t real.”
The green-hued ninja combined Scorpion and Sub-zero’s moves, and before long his existence was confirmed. By the sequel, the developers were actively working to create urban legends – the service menu for Mortal Kombat II had a counter for ‘Kano transformations’, fuelling the rumour that Shang Tsung could become the otherwise unplayable character. Actual secret characters Jade and Smoke would peek out from behind trees in one stage, and a third inclusion named Noob Saibot was completely black in colour. Mortal Kombat 3 took this to its ultimate conclusion with Kombat Kodes, six-digit strings which could be input before matches to alter rules and unlock secrets.
The 2D era was a time of explosive popularity for Mortal Kombat. The original game was a huge success in arcades, and Acclaim capitalised on this with a raft of home conversions backed by a huge marketing campaign, promoting the ‘Mortal Monday’ release date in 1993. In a review of the SNES version, which had a lack of blood and fatalities due to Nintendo’s content policies at the time, Edge complained that “the lack of blood ‘n’ guts goes a long way to reducing what gave the game its weird appeal” and opined that the underlying
fighting wasn’t as good as Street Fighter II. Mortal Kombat II tightened the game design considerably, and was much closer competition – evaluating it head to head with Super Street Fighter II Turbo, CVG felt that Midway’s game had the advantage, assessing it as “a more exciting escapist game with more variety between characters and a far superior atmosphere”. Mortal Kombat 3 was also critically acclaimed, but that wasn’t so unanimous as with the previous game. In the US, Next Generation magazine described the new characters as “desperately in need of something endearing” and complained that “in an industry which depends on innovation to keep it fresh and interesting, MK3 just doesn’t deliver”. That didn’t stop it performing admirably in arcades and at home, and two updates were released. Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 originated as a free upgrade for arcade operators, which rebalanced the game and added fan favourite characters like Scorpion and Kitana. The home-exclusive Mortal Kombat Trilogy included every existing character, plus stages and music from the first two games.
By this point in time, Mortal Kombat had gone about as far as it could in 2D. The industry was changing and though digitised sprites arguably looked more convincingly human than the 3D models of Virtua Fighter 2 and Tekken, those were the games that Mortal Kombat 3 had been in competition with. The decision was made to utilise 3D graphics starting from 1997’s Mortal Kombat 4, beginning a new era for the series.
This was initially a mixed blessing for the artists. On one hand, working in 3D allowed for any sort of movement the team wanted – there was some motion capture, but also a lot of manual animation. On the other, Mortal Kombat 4 was the team’s first 3D game and where it had led the way with digitisation, it was now essentially playing catch-up. Additionally, the series had lost one of its distinguishing factors as it was no more realistic than the competition. Despite these growing pains, the series caught up with the competition considerably with its first PS2 instalment Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance, and by the end of the generation Mortal Kombat: Armageddon looked as good as any other fighting series around.
The new graphical technology allowed the game design to evolve. Mortal Kombat 4 introduced the ability to dodge attacks by sidestepping, an obvious but worthwhile use of the new 3D space. Environmental interaction became more important starting from Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance as stages could be different sizes and shapes, and occasionally contained objects. Mortal Kombat: Deception upgraded the arenas further by including death traps – a variation of the ‘ring out’ concept with a grisly twist, whereby if an unfortunate player was knocked into a designated area, they would instantly be killed and lose the round regardless of their remaining health. Another major development in the series during the 3D era was the introduction of weaponry. Weapons were a limited and gimmicky inclusion in Mortal Kombat 4, but Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance developed on the theme massively by incorporating them into new selectable fighting styles. Each character could choose from three fighting styles, two unarmed and one armed – these shared special moves, but the basic techniques of each were completely different and could be swapped out on the fly. This system persisted through Deception, but was scaled back to two styles for Armageddon. Other gameplay innovations included the Breaker, a technique introduced in Mortal Kombat: Deception allowing the player to interrupt their opponent mid-combo in order to regain the initiative.
The major cast refreshes that had started with Mortal Kombat 3 became a key theme of the 3D era. Mortal Kombat 4 didn’t include any of Mortal Kombat 3’s newcomers, and Deadly Alliance went even further, discarding almost every character that had debuted in the previous game and even dramatically killing off series hero
Liu Kang. Deception dumped slightly less of the Deadly Alliance cast, but by the time Mortal
Kombat: Armageddon pulled together a full cast reunion,
From the beginning we wanted to have a lot of mystery elements in the game Ed Boon
there were over 60 characters to include – an impressive number. That wasn’t the only way the 3D era games impressed with content, as the single-player Konquest mode provided an actionrpg quest for players to sink their teeth into. The 3D era also introduced the concept of the Krypt, a vault of unlockable goodies, as well as robust minigames. The falling block game Puzzle Kombat and Chess Kombat appeared in Deception, and the kart racer Motor Kombat debuted in Armageddon.
Mortal Kombat’s 3D era was interesting and experimental, and despite not being the pop culture phenomenon it had been during the early Nineties, the games were still positively received by both critics and audiences. Typical review scores for Deadly Alliance hovered around the
8/10 mark and in a 2011 interview with Nowgamer, Ed mentioned that it had sold 3.5 million copies. Deception fared similarly well critically and sold
1.9 million copies in a year. Mortal Kombat: Armageddon didn’t fare quite as well critically, receiving scores that were more solidly in the 7/10 range. Part of the reason for this was a sense that the series was bloated – “While fans of the series may struggle not to drown in their own drool over this massive cast, anyone even marginally less fanatical won’t recognise at least half of them,” noted Luke Albigés in a 5/10 review for Eurogamer. “While there’s obviously been some attempt to differentiate between them, the fact that so many characters look and play alike is still very much in your face.” Armageddon still did well in shops, shipping over a million copies before the Wii conversion was even released. These were solid numbers, but it seemed that the series was experiencing diminishing returns.
The introduction of the HD consoles was an opportune time for a change of approach. Ed intimated that the tentatively titled Mortal Kombat 8 would be darker and grittier, with visuals inspired by Gears Of
War. Ed had promised that the team was “reinventing everything from the ground up” in an interview with
Game Informer at the time, as “we really think that’s needed”. That ultimately came to pass, but a licensing deal put it on the backburner while Mortal
Kombat Vs DC Universe was developed.
The game saw Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman and The Joker doing battle with a selection of the Mortal Kombat cast, and served as a bridge between the 3D fighters and the HD era proper – the fighting still included full 3D movement and arena interaction in the form of mini-segments like Free-fall, but the fighting style system was out and an excellent new story mode was added, which served to introduce players to the characters. The game was reasonably well received thanks to improved combat mechanics and a compelling story mode, but there was criticism of the reduction in gore and lack of unlockable secrets compared to previous games. The game still sold 1.9 million units within just a few months, but that wasn’t enough to save Midway from bankruptcy in 2009.
The Mortal Kombat series was bought by Warner Bros, which also acquired the Mortal Kombat team’s Chicago studio. This ultimately became Netherrealm Studios, the developer of the games today. Under this new ownership, the HD era began properly, marked with a ‘back to basics’ approach that has delivered critical acclaim and strong sales. The cast and setting were both revamped in 2011’s Mortal
I personally have always been a big fan of game secrets and easter eggs. MK was our chance to go crazy with that Ed Boon
Kombat, in which Raiden sent visions to his past self – allowing the story to reset to the characters and settings of the 2D era. Why did the team go backwards? “The original games are seared into Mortal Kombat fans’ memories,” according to
Ed. “Plus, the team loves to revisit that era.” The game’s story mode followed the template laid down by Mortal Kombat Vs DC Universe, with each chapter focused on a single character, and this became a staple of the series. Mortal Kombat X was set 25 years later and ensured that some of the newcomers retained connections to the classic characters – Johnny Cage and Sonya Blade’s daughter Cassie and Jax’s daughter Jacqui being the most obvious. Time is also the theme of the latest game in the series. “MK11 does not return to the past. Rather it brings past characters to the present to meet their older counterparts. This is part of the magic of what happens in the Mortal Kombat 11 story. It’s crazy,” says Ed.
2011’s Mortal Kombat also revamped the fighting style of the series, returning the action to a 2D plane and adding a three-level super move gauge. This enabled the use of enhanced special moves at the first level and combo breakers at the second, but it was the new X-ray moves that drain a full gauge that proved to be a perfect addition to the series. As well as doing massive damage, they showed detailed injuries in grisly close-up detail – shattered skulls, broken ribs and all. Mortal Kombat X retained them and added interactivity to arenas, with players able to throw or jump off objects from the background. Those changes might seem at odds with the return to fundamentals, but it’s business as usual in the context of the series. “Our approach with all the Mortal Kombat games, including Mortal Kombat 11, has been to always introduce a lot of new elements and features – change things up
– so the games always feel fresh,” Ed says. “This was certainly the approach with MK11.
“We switched our fighting mechanic quite a bit by introducing Krushing Blows, changing the meter so it splits offense and defensive moves, and tying the Fatal Blows to the player’s health meter. This has dramatically changed up the pace and tension of the fight,” says Ed, explaining the changes in Mortal Kombat 11. “The fighting is closer up which makes it feel even more intense.” The two new move types are the most notable additions. “Krushing Blows are ways to dramatically increase the damage certain moves