--Total Mortal Kombat Ed Boon Interview E3 2008-- MK vs DCU - TMK interviews Ed Boon Part 1! - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bt2bdW5vagY MK vs DCU - TMK interviews Ed Boon Part 2! - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_God1bvc8L8 TMK: The first question I have was when it was first announced, you guys said you expect this sort of reaction... Ed: What Reaction are you talking about...hahaha? TMK: He Got Me! Ed: Yeah we knew there was going to be a reaction in the direction we were going, I think the fact that we didn't show gameplay right away caused that. TMK: Some people said "Thats it, I'm not longer a Mortal Kombat Fan" and I know I would never stop being a fan...did you ever see stuff like that? Ed: Yeah we saw video commentary and that...and as negative as that stuff is, we saw it as a positive because its been 16 years since the first game and that shows that the fans still have passion and I was confident that when fans saw gameplay they would have a change of heart. TMK: Alot of people sort of took it out on you as soon as this was announced were you like of like "oh my god?!" Ed: Well that comes with the territory, of being the lead, team lead...as negativie as it is thats part of the territory. TMK: Will there be any secret characters? Ed: Yeah um I guess I certainly can't get to the point of promising more secret characters, you know if I have anything to say and it and if time permits we are diffinatly going to hide secrets in there... characters, content like that maybe in a few months from now somebody could ask me that agian as I would like to have 2 secret characters in there. TMK: Will there be multiple fatalities per character? Ed: You know we are trying to shy away from the happy stuff yeah and between us I don't think DC would like us to have Batman offer somebody a present or some flowers or something like that and um we want it to stay serious, and the big thing with dc and stuff is alot of people have seen those characters represented in animatied format and we are really trying to take it seriously and friendships don't kinda go with that. TMK: What about like animalities...I noticed animals apperaing on "certain" websites... Ed: No you know ...Yeah...agian I don't think those features are gone for good I would be surprised if we didn't see friendships in the next game and stuff but certainly for this game we are trying to keep it kinda serious tone. TMK: Can you tell us some of the secrets hidden on noob.com? Ed: Um...I had like an anigram which blew my mind how many people and how fast I thought "oh this will keep everybody busy for a month" and like a day later there was diagrams and circles and stuff like that and that really impressed me so I think um...I definatly plan on doing more of that and I have a really cool one in mind so hopefully it might be in the next couple of weeks but unfortunalty the only time I can work on these things is like two in the morning when I can't think about the game anymore...I like to keep things kind of cryptic. TMK: Multiple Skins aka Alternate Costumes? Ed: We are definatly you know...one of the challages of doing alternate costumes you know with Mortal Kombat we have had alternate versions since MK4 or MK5 While we like to do it with a DC licence we need approvial for each one of them so there is a certain amount of time that adds to but at the same time if you pick Batman and I pick Batman we can't have the same exact Batman, so we have to do modifications so how far we can take it you know we are going to see what we can do. TMK: Will Liu Kang be in Zombie form? Ed: No. TMK: Damn! I loved Zombie Liu Kang, I was the guy that requested the render from you and that went off online. Ed: Oh really..oh awesome. TMK: Can you tell us something we don't know yet? Ed: Um...well at Comic-Con we are going to have Shang Tsung and Catwoman and hopefully another character too we are going to see how that goes um at Lipzeig we are going to show more characters in the game and um I guess you know in terms of remaining characters I keep telling people this if you were to name what you thought would be the top 10 DC characters in the game you would probably get 8 out of the 10 so um thats about a close as a clue I about the remaining characters. TMK: Yeah I tried to guess the roster myself but there have been so many Mortal Kombat badies and I don't know much about DC and I thought well would they use Goro or Kintaro... I am hoping Shao Kahn is in there... Ed: Right...Right...*nods* CLassic Questions: TMK: Reptile in MK1 was so elusive and special, people started to say that he was in the game and you fought him in the pit, but alot of people thought this was just rumors. I don't think the MK games have topped the Reptile secret, to get the chance to fight him is such a rare event, my question can we please get something like this in a future MK game? TMK: Like the first time I unlocked him I had people crowding around me like "whose that!" Ed: hahahahaha! TMK: And they were like: "Hes fighting in the pit, Whats going on!" I dont think you guys have ever topped that secret cause people are always going to find out who is in the game but secerts like that require skill to unlock.. any chance of seeing that in future MK games? Ed: Yeah um there was diffinatly um like a magic to that, I actully somebody sent me pictures they had put up big posters it was a contest you know "Be the first to find Reptile" and you know they had the posters up and everyone was like "whos reptile?" and you know the reality of the situation is that I went to lunch that day and I was at KFC or something and then I thought we could make a cooler version of Scorpion and literally that night it was done all the visuals...it was just an idea off the top of my head it was kinda silly and it just kinda took off. TMK: hahaha I love that! TMK: Reptile apperances in MK1 were so rare, is there any way to get him to apear more often and give clues or is it totaly random? Ed: Its a random function call you know you got something like 1/100 chances that will happen. TMK: Yeah I have a video of one and people always ask me about it. Ed: Right. TMK: My next question is the second stage the temple gate there is a red door to the right and above it you can see icons of Pac-Man and the Ghosts... Ed: oh...right right. TMK: I always wondered about that... Ed: You know what that was John Vogel, he was just trying to be...you know... and it didn't mean anything. TMK: I was like oh thats cool...but whats it mean..haha. Ed: Yeah... yeah. TMK: The rare gory game over screen, that was so cool... where it shows it... Ed: And it pans down...yeah. TMK: Any chance that could make a comeback? Ed: I guess there is a chance, but until you mentioned it I hadn't thought of that for 10 years. TMK: In ports of MK1 like on the bonus disc of MK Deception use the roms from the arcade versions, but players can't access the "Service" menu settings, any chance if you release future versions of MK you could make these options avaialble? Ed: We thoretically could but I think we never thought about adding that we just asumed that people wouldnt want to change the coinage to frech coinage... TMK: no no not the coinage, like the stats and like ermacs and shawn attacks... Ed: right...um...Ermacs was an error... and Shawn attacks was it? Yeah I think I just named that after my cousin Shaun. TMK: Yeah alot of people debate the Ermacs thing, people say it was Scorpion turning red cauisng it... Ed: It was nothing to do with that, it was something in my code if something happened in the game that wasn't supposed to I would want to know how they reached it and it would just log it and people turned it into a character so a few games later we said ok lets put him in the game. TMK: laughs... TMK: Just like with MK1, Jade/Smoke/Noob clues were just as rare...is there any way to get clues more often or is it totaly random? Ed: Just to let you know there is someone waiting behind you just so you can get all your questions in... TMK: Is that the same in MK2 totaly random? Ed: Oh yeah, totaly. TMK: MK3 had such radical new characters, like Kabal and Stryker even the characters we knew were radicaly differant and Scorpion was missing.... Any reason to do that After MK2 was such a massive hit? Ed: It was really a we felt like we needed to introduce as much as possible, I think in retrospect it was a mistake not to include Scorpion in the game there are certain characters you have to have in the game so we bought them back in the ultimate upgrade. TMK: Classic Sub-Zero's spine rip was censored in UMK3, was this the doing of the ESRB, or did you guys decide to do this? Ed: No you know what that was, I didn't have the frames of animation of him tearing it off so what do we do, we just faded the screen black and let your imagination take over and it was kinda lame you know so... TMK: Mortal Kombat 4... When will we see an Arcade port of MK4 or even possibly MK Gold? Ed: Um I don't know maybe someday as a collection kinda like we had with Mortal Kombat 1 and 2... TMK: In Deadly Alliance the impale move was introduced and never returned after, how come..the bleed out was awesome! Ed: Um I know some people thought it was really cheap...I can't even rememebr why we got rid of it, I actully really liked it to. TMK: Alot of my friends too, you just let them bleed to death! TMK: Mortal Kombat: Deception I was one of those sad people to reverse the netherealm speech and was wondering what Ed Boon 490 means? Ed: Our CEO used to page me on our loud speaker all the time and it happened often and at some point the company joke was Ed Boon 490 and so we would always say that. TMK: oh and the 490? Ed: That was his extension... TMK: oh right. TMK: After MKA came out, you guys had said the next MK was going to be darker and brutal, at that time did you know it was going to be MK vs DCU? Ed: No we were planing on Mortal Kombat 8 and it was just Mortal Kombat and then our marketing people came to us and said do you want to do DC Comics and we went with that and it changed the direction. TMK: Do you guys even keep in contact with John Tobias? Ed: Oh yes yes...in fact we have a big surprise with John Tobias I had lunch with him last week and thats going to be quite an announcement. TMK: Did you ever think to maybe bring him back for MK vs DCU, with his skills at mythology and comic book styke art? Ed: Um, John is in the comic book industry now so hes working there he left the company in 99 its been like 8 or 9 years since he left. TMK: When was the last time you heard from someone regarding the MK3 movie? Ed: I got an e-mail today with the new version of the script I havn't read it yet. TMK: Send that to me if you want! TMK: Pleased with the overall reaction at E3 this year? Ed: Yes, you have hopes and expectations and it has exceeded what I was hoping for. TMK: Who on the MK Team are the boobie police, when making a character...ie those breasts are to small, to big ect...have you seen the render of Ivy from Soul Calibur IV? Ed: Um, no one really decides its just a general consenses... TMK: Yeah I don't know if you have seen Ivy from Soul Calibur IV but she is just, ridiculous... Ed: right right... TMK: Collectors Edition for Europe? Ed: Id love to do it sometimes the decision not to do it is like circumstances that are beyond our control like laws, or distrution things timing its never the case we don't want to do it for them... TMK: Yeah I know that Germany has a ban on Mortal Kombat 1-4 Ed: Yeah Exactly TMK: Thanks Ed, for answering all these questions its just that I get asked them so much! Ed: Sure no problem!