Mortal Kombat at 30: Co-creator Ed Boon looks back on its creation and legacy

polygon.com:

Thirty years ago this week, the original Mortal Kombat hit arcades. That game not only capitalized on the arcade fighting game craze spurred by Street Fighter 2 — it spawned a franchise that has endured over dozens of sequels, spinoffs, movies, and animated series.

At the now-defunct Midway Games, Mortal Kombat was created by an unthinkably small team: programmer Ed Boon, artist John Tobias, sound programmer and composer Dan Forden, and artist John Vogel. Together with Chicago-area actors and martial artists Daniel Pesina and Carlos Pesina, Richard Divizio, Ho Sung Pak, and Elizabeth Malecki, they created an instant classic packed with enduring characters like Scorpion, Sub-Zero, and Sonya Blade. Mortal Kombat changed fighting games forever and became a billion-dollar multimedia franchise.

The creation of Mortal Kombat also changed the conversation around violence in video games. Alongside 16-bit shlock like Night Trap, the spotlight on Mortal Kombat — especially its wildly successful home console versions — was largely responsible for the implementation of a video game ratings system. With its trademark blood splashes, decapitations, and gruesome fatalities, Mortal Kombat became better known for its graphic violence than its actual gameplay. Thirty years later, however, Mortal Kombat remains a beloved franchise, for its over-the-top presentation and its AAA quality.

Over the past year, Mortal Kombat co-creator Ed Boon has been looking back at the creation of the original game, releasing unearthed footage of its development on Twitter. Those videos show the challenges of working with relatively young technology — digitized graphics of real-life actors — and designing a video game on the fly. Mortal Kombat fans can watch