While these days Mortal Kombat co-creator, Ed Boon, realizes that the IP he helped create is getting close to becoming a forever franchise, it took him a long time to realize this.
He even warned people involved with the console port of this first game, and the first movie, that they might be overestimating how popular the franchise was.
This started out because Boon was asked if he had any clue that Mortal Kombat would one day turn into a movie while he was creating the first game.
“No, [I had] no idea. There’s a few steps with Mortal Kombat over the years that we have to give credit to,” said Boon.
“Acclaim Entertainment, when they did the first Mortal Kombat game [on console], they did Mortal Monday,” he said.
Boon went on to describe one of the most iconic commercials in all of video games, where gamers are shown in the streets shouting ‘Mortal Kombat!’ to promote the console release of the initial game.
“I remember them showing me the video tape of the commercial, and I remember turning to them at CES (prior to E3), and I said ‘I think you guys are betting a little too hard on this game, it’s not going to live up to what you’re expecting’,” said Ed Boon about his older self.
“It exceeded their expectations, but who could have predicted that?” he added.
“And the same thing with the production team that made the first Mortal Kombat movie. I was literally saying ‘You’re really overestimating how appealing this thing is’,” said Boon.
“I had no idea. We’re in the middle of it, so we had no idea how big it had gotten, and I was just warning them, to make sure they knew what they were doing,” he added.
“Between Acclaim and the producers of the first movie, they really stuck their neck out and they helped elevate Mortal Kombat into popular culture, no doubt,” stated Boon.
“We were so busy working on the arcade games, that the movies came along and all of that stuff, and we had our heads down for years, just getting the next game out and feeding the beast,” he said.
“It wasn’t until Mortal Kombat 4, or something, that I personally looked back and said ‘Wow, this thing is really getting big!’ and it had already had a couple of movies out, and it just didn’t register to me until long after everybody else knew that it was big,” concluded Boon.
You can find more news about Mortal Kombat in our section for the franchise.
Quotes from Ed Boon transcribed from the video embedded above by Brian Tong.