Mortal Kombat' Co-Creator and Alumnus Ed Boon Profiled

5/13/2009

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In April, Midway announced the eighth version of the super successful American fighting series, Mortal Kombat Vs. DC Universe, debuting the likes of DC superheroes Superman and Batman along side Mortal Kombat characters Sub-Zero and Scorpion. CS alumnus Ed Boon, co-creator of the popular Mortal Kombat video game was interviewed recently by GameTap about the newest version of the popular video game.

GameTap: With Mortal Kombat Vs DC Universe, why did you feel that you needed to do something so different?

Ed Boon: We have done this a few times before. The 2002 release of Deadly Alliance was also like a reboot in many respects. You always introduce something new or people take a "been-there-done-that" approach to your game. This being a new generation of consoles requires a whole new presentation for Mortal Kombat. So we thought we should do something dramatic.

GameTap: How do you decide what elements should stay and what should be cut?

Ed Boon: To a large extent, we started from scratch. We had two characters on screen throwing kicks and punches. We asked ourselves, "What have we always wanted to improve on?" What makes Mortal Kombat Mortal Kombat is magical moves: people teleport and throw spears, as opposed to just hand-to-hand fighting. So we know we'll keep the magic element, and with the DC characters, they really lent themselves to amplifying MK's best qualities. So now we have even more outrageous moves.

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GameTap: When you sat down to design this game, what were your goals? And by the way, when did you start working on this game?

Ed Boon: When Mortal Kombat Armageddon was complete in 2006, we started working on this having no knowledge of including DC characters. We started planning out the game. The DC Universe idea was presented to us, and we talked it over.

My idea was that for this next generation of systems and MK, we needed to do something really different. We needed to make a dramatic change. Even something that will attract attention and may cause controversy. And DC filled a lot of those goals.

Read the complete interview.


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This story was published May 13, 2009.