Mortal Kombat’s Ed Boon Shows Off the Original 1992 Scorpion Video Capture

Like everyone else, Ed Boon appears to be feeling nostalgic for Mortal Kombat. Boon, who helped create the franchise nearly 30 years ago, recently posted a series of tweets filled with info about Scorpion’s legendary hook attack, complete with motion capture footage that dates all the way back to 1992.

Boon published the video on his Twitter on Tuesday. He says that, even though Mortal Kombat will celebrate its 30th anniversary in 2022, Boon says developing the game began 30 years ago in 1991. Boon shared the video to celebrate and commented on how spontaneous the video shoots were.

“We certainly did a ton of prep for our video shoots, but some ideas came to us while filming,” Boon said. “With Scorpion’s spear, it started with ‘You know what would be a cool ass move?’ From there you can be a fly on the wall and see us working through the details.”

Mortal Kombat will be 30 years old in 2022. But 2021 marks 30 years since we actually BEGAN working on the game. To celebrate, it seemed like a fun idea to share some behind-the-scenes stuff. This clip shows how we created Scorpion’s iconic (GET OVER HERE!) spear move. (1 of 9) pic.twitter.com/3f1tdvjG9R

— Ed Boon (@noobde) October 12, 2021

Boon kept replying to his tweets and talked about the difficulties of saving memory so the game can fit on what chips they had available in the ’90s.

“We were so tight on memory, that we didn’t even capture any motions for the victim reactions,” Boon wrote. “Instead we borrowed from their existing animation frames. You can hear us talk about reusing one of the victim’s ‘knockdown’ animations when they initially get hit by the spear.”

Boon said in his final tweet in the thread that he wants to share more videos in anticipation of Mortal Kombat’s anniversary.

Mortal Kombat developer NetherRealm Studios announced in July that they have stopped developing DLC for the most recent game in the series, 2019’s Mortal Kombat 11, and will develop a new game. Boon is set to talk at DC FanDome on Saturday, which could possibly be that new game announcement.

Mortal Kombat 11 is the best-selling game in the franchise with 12 million units sold. The franchise has exceeded 73 million copies sold on consoles and over 138 million downloads of 2015’s Mortal Kombat Mobile.

IGN’s Mortal Kombat 11 review praised everything about the game except for its “grindy” way to unlock new content: “Everything from its methodical and deep combat to its fantastically absurd story mode and its rock-solid netcode, right down to its extraordinarily comprehensive tutorial is absolutely exceptional. It’s only when you get into its drawn-out progression that it trips up.”

Mortal Kombat 11 was to be played at the in-person Evo Showcase 2021, but the event was recently canceled due to COVID-19 concerns.

Petey Oneto is a freelance writer for IGN.