It’s crazy to think that it’s been over 33 years since Mortal Kombat hit the arcades back in October 1992. Dan Forden has only recently retired after having been involved with Mortal Kombat since the very beginning.
Needless to say, the sound programmer and music composer has had a major impact on the Mortal Kombat franchise throughout his time with Midway Games, which even continued after the game production studio was transformed into NetherRealm Studios after the Warner Bros. purchase. Of course, even Ed Boon left a heartfelt tribute in honor of Forden’s departure.
Just recently, Dan Forden sat down for an interview with Shacknews. During this interview, Forden spoke about how he got himself involved in the development process for the first Mortal Kombat.
“I don’t remember if we even had music playing in the game at that point. You start beating up on each other, and it was hilarious. I just started cracking up.” — Dan Forden
“After Ed and I had done High Impact and Super High Impact video games, John and Ed got together and John was talking up this idea of, hey, how about a mythology-based, large-character-based fighting game with Asian tropes, kung fu and things like that. Ed got interested in that. They’d probably been sussing this whole project out,” said Forden.
“Eventually, Ed or both of them came to me and said, ‘Hey, do you want to work on our game?’ And I was like, ‘Sure!’ I liked working with Ed. He worked on good games; he liked what I did, and I liked the games that those guys made, so I said, ‘Let’s do it.'”
As many of us already know, Mortal Kombat apparently started as a video game adaption of Bloodsport. It was supposed to feature Jean-Claude Van Damme as one of the characters within the game, but negotiations fell through.
However, what was intended to be Jean-Claude Van Damme’s character ended up getting recycled to develop Johnny Cage. This resulted in Johnny Cage becoming the first Mortal Kombat fighter created.
In the interview, Forden seemingly confirms that Johnny Cage was indeed the very first of the Mortal Kombat characters. He specifically remembers a build that only had him ready to test.
“I started making sounds and music for it pretty much right away, and there wasn’t much of a game yet to attach them to. After they’d gotten the actors in, they took the videos, digitized them, did what they needed to do to take out the frames they needed, and they got [Johnny Cage] going and could play with him,” continued Forden.
Though this was clearly meant to be a serious fighting game, things began to seem funny to Forden as it all started coming together, especially with the sound effects that he was inserting.
“What I remember is at the very beginning, I’d gotten a suite of punch sounds, some attack yells and reactions, and maybe a couple of other things,” said Forden. “I don’t remember if we even had music playing in the game at that point. You start beating up on each other, and it was hilarious. I just started cracking up.”
Apparently, this might’ve even upset Ed Boon a little since this prompted him to ask Forden “What are you laughing at?” Everything just felt so over the top to Forden that he just couldn’t help it.