Ed Boon on Mortal Kombat 1’s new features and twists

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Mortal Kombat 1 was a standout game during this week’s Summer Game Fest. It was certainly my favorite hands-on demo from the Los Angeles-based Play Days. I’m looking forward to the full release on September 19 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch and PC.

The reboot features familiar Mortal Kombat flash and brutality, but it also has some notable new features. This includes Kameo fighters, a new twist on the assist fighter mechanic that we’ve seen before in the genre.

I had a chance to talk with Mortal Kombat 1 director (and series co-creator) Ed Boon at Summer Game Fest Play Days about Kameo fighters and other new features.

GamesBeat: Mortal Kombat 1 is one of the games that everybody’s talking about at Summer Game Fest. There’s a lot of excitement around the demo.

Ed Boon: It’s the first time that people outside of the company got their hands on it. There’s always a bit of nervousness there. But the response was, I think, exactly what we were hoping for.

GamesBeat: It’s a reboot of sorts. You have an opportunity to work with all these classic characters, but you have these interesting ways of twisting them up. Was it fun to play with this familiar universe in a new way?

Boon: As we were crafting the story and changing the origins and relationships of the characters, the more we did that, the more novel it felt. It felt like Mortal Kombat fans who know these characters will have a good time seeing new origin stories, new relationships and stuff like that. That mixture is a lot of fun.

GamesBeat: One of my concerns was whether we were just going to see the original Mortal Kombat cast. But seeing someone