Mortal Kombat series co-creator Ed Boon is fairly prolific on Twitter. The long-time game developer and flat out legend in our industry often tweets on his personal X profile and drops hints at things to come for his games, shares fascinating tidbits of behind-the-scenes information, and occasionally ask followers questions to gauge their interest in various topics.
Recently, Mr. Boon put out a poll on his personal Twitter account asking fans what fighting game series (unrelated to Mortal Kombat and NetherRealm Studios) they’d like to see return the most. Boon posted the results today, and the game fans want most is actually pretty surprising (sort of).
As mentioned previously, Boon is the Chief Creative Officer of Mortal Kombat at NetherRealm Studios, which means the games he listed in the poll probably aren’t hinting at projects his company would ever take on in its current standing. However, Ed’s reach is massive, and the poll accrued 37,359 votes before it was closed — with a good majority of these voters very likely being fighting game fans as they’re following Boon.
In this poll, Boon included Team Ninja/Koei Tecmo’s Dead or Alive series, EA Games’ Def Jam, Capcom’s own Power Stone, and Virtua Fighter from Sega.
Each of these choices (short of one kind of special case we’ll get to later) generally has a strong fan base behind it, and honestly, with the amount of requests we’ve seen from people over the years, any one of them could have won the top spot.
The highest voted fighting game in Ed Boon’s poll was none other than Def Jam, and this one is particularly interesting. For one thing, this series is the least like a traditional competitive fighting game than all of the others on the list, more resembling the professional wrestling games of the early 2000s.
However, a game like Def Jam: Fight for NY has a surprisingly strong fan base within the FGC, making it a bit of a cult classic of sorts. We have even seen this game get its own side tournaments at several major fighting game community events over the years.
“Def Jam winning doesn’t surprise me,” Boon began. “Impressive how dominant it is after so many years. I hear so much demand for Power Stone, but according to this, it seems more like the vocal minority.”
Def Jam winning doesn’t surprise me. Impressive how dominant it is after so many years. I hear so much demand for Power Stone, but according to this, it seems more like the vocal minority. pic.twitter.com/94efxVFY2L
— Ed Boon (@noobde) May 25, 2024
Of those over 37,000 votes, Def Jam received 45.5% of them. In second place was Dead or Alive with 26.3%, then Virtua Fighter with 16.2%, and finally Power Stone with 12%.
This poll likely isn’t any kind of hint at an upcoming NetherRealm Studios project (though anything IS possible, I suppose), but it’s still a fascinating experiment to gauge what fighting games fans actually have interest in.
Which of the four listed fighting game series in Ed Boon’s poll would you like to see return? Let us know in the comments!