A number of professionals have described the moment they knew they had a hit product, and the development team at Midway, who created the first Mortal Kombat game, are no exception.
“It was our first weekend test, and the way we tested coin-op games back at Midway, we would do a prototype in a plain black cabinet, with a Xerox copy marquee [for Mortal Kombat],” said John Tobias, co-creator of the original game.
“There was a Street Fighter 2 machine just down the way, and a pack of players around it, and I just remember thinking ‘What are we doing here? How are we going to compete with this game?’,” said Tobias.
“They turned the Mortal Kombat machine on and there it sat alone with no one playing it, and then the first player walked over and put a token in, and then ran over and told his friend about the game,” said Tobias. “They were both playing it, and then slowly the crowd migrated over from Street Fighter 2.
“That’s when we realized there’s gotta be something special about this game,” Tobias stated. “We kind of felt that during development, people around the office were excited about it, but it was the first night [at the arcade] where we understood there was something special about the game,” Tobias concluded.
“When we took the game away, the arcade was saying they were getting phone calls, asking when they were going to bring the Mortal Kombat game back,” said series co-creator, Ed Boon.
“I remember watching the game and seeing where people’s eyes lit up, or sometimes worse, where they were confused about something,” said former Midway employee, Sal DiVta. “While we were watching games on test, we would notate that and go back to the office, sometimes that very night, and make fixes.
“We’d study the people playing Mortal Kombat, and we weren’t allowed to interfere either,” said DiVita.
This all took place back in the early 1990s at a Chicago, Illinois arcade called Times Square that was located on Broadway Street.
You never know when something you’re working on will blow up into a major thing, but when those moments happen, it’s something truly special.
If you want to go further, check out John Tobias and Ed Boon breaking down a cut Fatality that went too far, presumably for Mortal Kombat 2 and how Mortal Kombat is close to becoming a forever franchise, like Star Wars and Marvel.
You can scope out the full discussion with Ed Boon, John Tobias, Sal DiVita and Kerri Hoskins in this video from Tabmok99.
Source: Event Hubs
