Platform:
PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, Stadia, PC
Publisher:
Warner Bros. Interactive
Developer:
NetherRealm Studios
Release:
<time datetime="2019-04-23T12:00:00Z" class="datetime">April 23, 2019</time>
Rating:
Mature
Ed Boon is best known for his work on the Mortal Kombat series, which he's had a hand in guiding since 1992, first at Midway Games and now with his team at NetherRealm Studios. He's one of the most celebrated creators in gaming, and today he'll be honored with an induction into the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences' Hall of Fame.
Boon joins the likes of other video game legends like Shigeru Miyamoto, Mark Cerny, Bonnie Ross, Gabe Newell, and last year's recipient, Connie Booth. Fellow Hall of Famer Todd Howard will present the award, which will be a part of this year's D.I.C.E. Awards show, kicking off at 7 p.m. CT on IGN and various streaming networks.
I had the chance to talk to the fighting game legend for an hour a couple of weeks ago, a few days after he first learned he was being inducted into the Hall of Fame. He was still processing his thoughts, taking it all in, and reflecting on his lengthy career.
Walk me through the day you found out about the Hall of Fame induction. I’m guessing that was an unusual moment.
I received an email from Meggan [Scavio] from the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences. I had to read it, like, three times for it to register. It settled for days. With each day that passes, I’m appreciating it even more than the day before. It’s really a great honor.
You are a sports fan, and you began your video game career by creating High Impact Football. In sports, making the Hall of Fame means your career is over. That isn’t the case with this award, but I’m guessing it’s still a bit of a tough pill to swallow since it represents such a vast amount of time doing the same thing.
I’m glad it wasn’t a lifetime achievement award. [laughs] Still, it’s been 30 years. When I think of that, all these statistics start popping into my head. I was in my 20s when I did the first Mortal Kombat. I have more years in my life with Mortal Kombat than without. In terms of my decades – my 20s, 30s, and 40s – it’s consumed most of them. I’ve been fortunate enough to go through pinball games, arcade games, the home video game business, and now with online, it’s kind of becoming its own genre of games.
I’ve been having a lot of nostalgic and retrospective thoughts about all the groups of people I’ve worked with. I have distinct chapters in my life of the groups of people that I worked with. Obviously, a big one was the Midway days. Things were just exploding back then with Mortal Kombat, NBA Jam, NARC, and all these games. I was in the middle of all of those, from arcades to consoles, and saw how big the video game industry has gotten. For me, it’s just been a huge journey down memory lane and a nostalgic trip.
You brought up the Midway days. Is there one moment from those days that always flashes to mind when you explore the past?
I don’t think there is one. There are certainly big chapters. Those few years at Midway where everything was on fire, and the last 12 years with Warner Bros. have been a great high. You don’t know you are in it while you are in it. A few years have to pass and then you can kinda look back and go, “That was really great.” When we released that first Mortal Kombat game in 2011 with Warner Bros., it was a stressful time for me. But looking back, it was a great time, too – especially going into the Injustice games and alternating between those with Mortal Kombat.
There was also a period of time with pinball and the early video games where I was working with Eugene Jarvis and Larry DeMar. Working with them and looking back now – how they instilled their work ethic and way to approach things – that really stuck with me. Again, I’m further acknowledging these things as I look back.
Take me all the way back to the start, when you decided you were going to work in games. What other options were on the table at the time for careers? Which directions were you leaning in if this Midway job didn’t work?
I never chose the career of video games. I made one resume in my entire life when I was 21 years old. There was a little Asterix at the bottom that said “interest in video games.” It was more of a personal thing. A head hunter saw it and sent it to Williams Electronics. They called me for an interview. I went into it thinking it was for a video game, but it was for pinball. I distinctly remember saying, “People program pinball machines?” I think part of me was still thinking they were those electromechanical things, even though I had seen the more recent games. They said, “Oh, yeah,” and showed me the new games. I got excited about the job. I also knew they were starting the early stages of a new video game system. That was when they started working on games like Narc.
I became friends with the video game people downstairs and I worked three years doing pinball. I loved it and had a great time, but I kept seeing Eugene and the team working on Narc and I gravitated that way over time. I eventually joined that department and started working on High Impact Football.
I heard you lent your voice to a pinball machine.
I’m a voice in about 20 pinball machines [laughs].
Give me the big one that people would recognize.
That was probably FunHouse. It had a talking puppet. There was a movie called Magic that had an evil puppet in it. That puppet made its owner do bad things. FunHouse is kind of loosely based on that. There’s this puppet who is taunting the player. I’m the voice of that puppet.
Talk to me about the transition from pinball to video games.
I guess I cut my teeth on game programming in the pinball days. I think I had a better understanding of it – a prerequisite into the video game department. I loved pinball, but I always knew I eventually wanted to do video games. Like I said, I made friends with Eugene and some of the guys who were making the games downstairs. I was always down there looking to see what they were doing, asking questions, and seeing them videotape real people who were digitized. It was really cool. That whole process was exciting. Naturally, over time, when I was programming my last pinball game, I had a video arcade in my office that I would program on in my off hours because I was that excited to join them.
I remember they gave me this packet of dollar bill images that would drop in Narc and I was making explosions of them on screen. Just making things move on-screen is so addictive. There’s nothing you can think of that you can’t do. It’s like a painter’s canvas. What you can try is unlimited.
You said you are feeling nostalgic. Any thoughts of making a new pinball game?
I have friends who are still programming pinball machines. I stopped programming at least 15 to 20 years ago. There’s no way I would be able to keep up with them. To give you an idea of the timing, I did all my games in Assembly. The one I’m hoping will happen someday – and it’s come close a few times – is a Mortal Kombat pinball machine. I think that would be really cool. I would love to have one of those in my basement.
You know, Ed Fries [former vice president of game publishing at Microsoft] went and made a Halo game on Atari 2600. He did it the old-school way. You could do the same thing for a Mortal Kombat pinball machine! I was talking to Matt Booty [head of Microsoft Studios] the other day and he was telling me about this group that is still making Atari 2600 games. He was telling me all about them and sent me links and everything. As great as it is to make video games now, when it was a two- to three-person team, the turnaround of idea to on-screen could be as short as two hours. Now it’s months. The hands-on experience and working with a close, small team, there was nothing like those really special days.