Ed Boon, the young man who loved video games so much that he invented Mortal Kombat

His talents so impressed the company that he was given the opportunity to work on a project of his own, alongside another colleague who shared his passion, John Tobias.

Attentive to new technologies and trends in pop culture of that time, they proposed creating a fighting game starring the then great Hollywood star, Jean Claude Van Damme.

The proposal was rejected by the actor, but Boon and Tobias recognized that Van Damme was not essential, because what they had was something more special. Using the motion capture and image digitization technology of those years, they developed a fighting game defined by fast-paced action and high levels of violence.

In 1992 the world received Mortal Kombata project of two young people who loved video games, and things were never the same again.

There has been a lot of talk about the impact that Mortal Kombat had not only on the industry, but on global culture and even politics. It generated discussions about violence in video games, positioned itself as a benchmark for the realism that this medium can achieve, and challenged the gameplay paradigms of the fighting genre.

Since then Mortal Kombat has not stopped doing exactly that, over and over again, for more than 30 years, and always from the hands and mind of Ed Boon.

Pop culture

Movies, animated series, comics, collectible figures and of course, more and more video games, have made Mortal Kombat a cultural phenomenon comparable to Star Wars or Street Fighter. Although the two creators drifted apart, Boon has remained behind the saga, reinventing it for each generation.

But in these 30 years, Boon never lost the desire to bring Van Damme to this universe, and with the most recent installment of the saga, his wish finally came true.

Jean-Claude Van Damme, the Hollywood star of the 80s and 90s, appears as a playable fighter in Mortal Kombat 1 (2023). His appearance is inspired by that of the movie “Bloodsport,” and his voice is performed by the actor himself, fulfilling a fantasy that took decades.

“It was something we wanted to do all these years,” Ed reveals. “The first Mortal Kombat game we wanted to be called ‘Van Damme: The Video Game‘, but he didn’t want to do it at the time… We kept trying over the years, and he was too busy or he wasn’t in the country, or he just didn’t want to do it. In fact we were very close to achieving it in Mortal Kombat X (2015). We were working on it, we were this close to it, and it fell apart. Fortunately, 30-odd years later, we did it.”

Besides Fatalities and a wonderful cast of fighters and the universe they inhabit, for several years MK games have been a platform to invite celebrities from other fictional universes.

When a special guest is chosen, Ed and his team at NetherRealm Studios They usually return to the great movies that they grew up with in their childhood and adolescence, and whose personality and universe make sense with those of Mortal Kombat, such as Rambo, Robocop, Terminator, Leatherface, Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees and the Xenomorph.

Is it also possible that they look towards the video games of that time? Could Ed and his team somehow integrate Defender and Robotron? “I don’t know how many people would recognize them, maybe people from that era,” Ed replies, “Surely it’s possible, and in fact, we’ve done that. In the first Mortal Kombat game, in one of the large structures, there is a small Pac-Man there. “It’s one of the little easter eggs we’ve put in from the 80s games.”