They Create Worlds

Mortal Kombat

Episode 269

Summary

What began as a stopgap project at Williams/Midway became one of the defining fighting-game franchises of the 1990s. Warren Davis returned to rebuild Williams’ video game division with a belief that 256-color hardware and digitized actors could give games a new level of visual realism. Truevision’s TARGA board made true-color image capture dramatically faster, and Davis adapted it into WTARGA, a system that could turn those images into game graphics. Eugene Jarvis returned to lead the division and drove development of new hardware built around the Texas Instruments TMS34010 graphics processor and Mark Loffredo’s VLI blitter chip. Two teams began developing games for the platform, one for the ultimately canceled USAA and another for NARC. Elsewhere in the division, Ed Boon moved from pinball to High Impact Football, while John Tobias joined the Smash TV team. The two became friends and began imagining a fighting game shaped as much by what they disliked about Street Fighter II as by what they admired in the genre. When Midway needed a project to keep staff and equipment active between larger releases, their game moved into production. It began as a proposed Jean-Claude Van Damme licensed game, but his agent turned it down. Tobias instead turned to martial artists Richard Divizio, Daniel Pesina, and Carlos Pesina, who had all appeared as Foot Clan extras in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze. During digitization sessions, Divizio brought in a rope dart, inspiring Scorpion’s signature attack. Built in roughly eight months by a four-person team handling art, music, programming, and design, Mortal Kombat was made on a budget of about $1 million. Its tests beside a Street Fighter II cabinet went so well that management asked for another fighter, leading to Sonya Blade, modeled on fitness instructor and dancer Elizabeth Malecki. The arcade game sold more than 20,000 machines, but the real explosion came at home. Acclaim used its right of first refusal for Williams/Midway games to create “Mortal Monday,” launching versions for the Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis, Game Boy, and Game Gear on the same day. A three-person team rushed the Super Nintendo port through Nintendo’s strict content rules, while Sega allowed blood and fatalities behind a deliberately publicized code. A chip shortage forced Acclaim to persuade Nintendo to use US government-specification chips at a 10-cent surcharge per cartridge, while Sega cartridges were packed with lettuce to move more quickly through U.S. customs after arriving from Mexico. The coordinated launch sold three million copies in its first three weeks, with Sega’s uncensored version outselling Nintendo’s.

Show Notes

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Intro Music: Josh Woodward - Airplane Mode - Music - "Airplane Mode" by Josh Woodward. Free download: http://joshwoodward.com/song/AirplaneMode
Outro Music: RoleMusic - Bacterial Love: http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Rolemusic/Pop_Singles_Compilation_2014/01_rolemusic_-_bacterial_love

Mortal Kombat

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Summary

Show Notes