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PS.Blog:
The original arcade game came together in less than a year, right?
Ed Boon:
Yes, about eight months total. Yeah.
PS.Blog:
If you could travel back in time and give yourself one piece of advice
while you were working on the original Mortal Kombat, what might it be?
Ed Boon:
Don’t work so many hours? When you’re in your twenties you have
almost unlimited energy. But at the same time, I don’t think I would
have listened to myself back then. We were so driven. We were so motivated
to do something special. And with each new thing that we saw, that we put
into the game, and seeing people react to it… that just charged us that
much more so there was no, there was no stopping us at that point. We were
self-motivated. We were just on a mission.
PSB: With
Mortal Kombat turning 30, are you reflecting on your life and how it
intersects with the series?
EB:
Not so much of my life, but certainly on my career making games. Mortal
Kombat is kind of like different forms of school for me now. The arcade
days were like grade school, and the 3D games were, you know, middle
school or high school.
And now the most
recent games — Mortal Kombat 9, MKX, and MK11 — are kind of like
college or graduate school. I think of my career as different chapters
because it’s been so long. And we’ve been doing the games pretty
consistently, over those 30 years, right? We didn’t stop and take a
10-year break and then come back.
PSB:
Do you get much of a chance to catch up with other folks like your peers
in the fighting game development world?
EB:
Not very often. I’m a huge fan of the games. I love Tekken, I love
Street Fighter and play those games every new version that comes out. The,
you know, obviously the Guilty Gears and Samurai Showdowns and all that
are great, I love them.
But a lot of them
live and develop their games in Japan, and I’m not in Japan very often.
So every once in a while, we’ll cross paths at maybe an E3 or something
like that. But I don’t get that opportunity too often.
PSB:
What are your thoughts just more broadly on the fighting game scene now?
Is it healthy?
EB:
I’m very positive. For instance, Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, Tekken,
I think are very mainstream games, right? They’re not niche games that a
few people play. They have broad appeal, and they’re very different.
I think all of them
have realized that you can’t be too complex, or you need to have some
layer that’s accessible to the general public that doesn’t count
frames…. they have become aware of that but maintain the kind of deeper
element that the hardcore players are really going to kind of devour. So
I’m very excited over, especially, the next couple of years. We’re
going to have a lot of high-profile big hitters coming to bat.
PSB:
What do you think
pushes evolution in the fighting genre?
EB:
Technology does,
obviously. Every game that comes out has new, better graphics. Online play
is a big one, too. As games play better online, it just naturally creates
a broader audience, a bigger scope of opponents to play against. And then,
exposure: Events like EVO certainly are growing in popularity, and
demonstrate what you can do with these games. So a lot of players become
inspired by seeing professionals play.
PSB:
Street Fighter also
has an anniversary this year, it’s turning 35. Going back in time, again
to 1991. What was it like to see Street Fighter II for the very first
time?
EB:
The
thing that struck me in Street Fighter II, was how big the characters
were. For their time, they were huge on the screen. And that was a lot of
fun, and really inspired us to make our characters even bigger on the
screen.
Arguably, you could
say Karate Champ really started the genre. SFII pushed it into, you know,
a phenomenon. Some people credit SFII and the fighting games that followed
with saving arcades while they were really taking a dip.
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