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Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.

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Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,

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Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio

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Speaker 1: and a lot of all things tech. And in Monday's episode,

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Speaker 1: I covered how the arcade game Mortal Kombat emerged out

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Speaker 1: of a company called Midway. That was a company that

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Speaker 1: was really a mishmash of several other companies that all

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Speaker 1: were in the coin operated amusement biz at elements of

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Speaker 1: Midway Manufacturing, Williams Electronics, and Bally all wrapped up in there.

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Speaker 1: It's pretty complicated stuff. The two leads in charge of

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Speaker 1: developing Mortal Kombat were Williams employees, but then Williams acquired

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Speaker 1: Midway and changed the name of that division of Williams

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Speaker 1: to Midway Games. And though they didn't necessarily set out

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Speaker 1: to make a video game with over the top violence

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Speaker 1: and even more over the top fatalities, that game naturally

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Speaker 1: evolved in that direction as they developed it and Mortal

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Speaker 1: Kombat hit the arcades. In I didn't really talk about

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Speaker 1: the structure of the game and how it worked from

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Speaker 1: a gameplay aspect very much in that last episode, So

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Speaker 1: I'm going to give a very brief overview here. Mortal

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Speaker 1: Kombat is modeled after fight tournaments, and really it's a

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Speaker 1: lot like fight tournament movies more than actual fight tournaments,

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Speaker 1: specifically the sort of gen Claude van Damn variety of

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Speaker 1: you know, martial arts tournament films. Players choose one of

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Speaker 1: seven characters, and then they go through a series of matches,

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Speaker 1: each match lasting up to three rounds. Winning two of

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Speaker 1: those three rounds would allow the player to progress further

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Speaker 1: up the tournament ladder, and winning two rounds in a

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Speaker 1: road just means that you wouldn't even have to play

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Speaker 1: through the third round. The controls for the game included

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Speaker 1: an eight direction joystick and five buttons. There were two

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Speaker 1: punch buttons high and low, to kick buttons also high

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Speaker 1: and low, and in the middle a block button. Each

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Speaker 1: character had numerous moves that would result from joystick and

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Speaker 1: button combinations, and the fatalities at the end of a

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Speaker 1: game where you had defeated your opponent, and one year,

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Speaker 1: two out of three those relied on specific inputs of

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Speaker 1: joystick and button combinations, So, for example, Scorpions fatality and

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Speaker 1: Mortal Kombat one was you had to start about half

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Speaker 1: a screen away from your opponent, hold the block button

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Speaker 1: and then push up on the joystick twice. Then Scorpion

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Speaker 1: would pull off his mask, revealing a skull and breathe

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Speaker 1: fire out onto his opponent, reducing that person to a skeleton. Now,

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Speaker 1: if you were playing the tournament against the actual arcade machine,

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Speaker 1: so you know a computer is controlling the second character,

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Speaker 1: then a second player could come up and actually interrupt things.

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Speaker 1: So player number two walks up, plunks in some quarters

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Speaker 1: and then joining in, and that would mean the first

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Speaker 1: player would enter into a new match against the second player,

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Speaker 1: and whoever won that contest, you know, contest with a K,

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Speaker 1: would then proceed through the tournament. So if the first

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Speaker 1: player lost, then they would be out of luck and

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Speaker 1: the second player could continue to play against the machine,

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Speaker 1: or maybe someone else comes up and challenges them. Like

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Speaker 1: I said in the last episode, you know, the loser pays,

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Speaker 1: the winner stays. If a player gets through the other

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Speaker 1: six characters in tournament mode, then they face a doppel

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Speaker 1: ganger of their own character, and after that, the player

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Speaker 1: has to win three endurance matches, which they face two

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Speaker 1: opponents per match instead of just one, though they don't

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Speaker 1: face both opponents at the same time. Essentially, you have

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Speaker 1: to defeat your first opponent, which and triggers the entrance

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Speaker 1: of the second opponent, and if you succeed in doing that,

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Speaker 1: then you would go up against a sub boss in

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Speaker 1: the game named Goro, who is a massive foe armed

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Speaker 1: monster who deals enormous amounts of damage, and if you

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Speaker 1: beat Goro, then you go up against the ultimate boss

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Speaker 1: in the game, Sheng Sung, and defeating Shank Sung leads

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Speaker 1: to an end screen that explains your character's fate after

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Speaker 1: winning the Mortal Kombat tournament, and that's where some of

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Speaker 1: the early lore came in. You had intro screens as

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Speaker 1: well in attract mode. Attract mode is what the arcade

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Speaker 1: Biz called the screens that games would show in order

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Speaker 1: to kind of entice people to come in and play

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Speaker 1: the game anyway. Those would explain who the characters were,

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Speaker 1: and then you had your victory screens that gave a

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Speaker 1: little more information about them, but at the time it

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Speaker 1: was pretty threadbare. Future chapters in the Mortal Kombat saga

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Speaker 1: would give a lot more background, as would a lot

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Speaker 1: of additional material provided by stuff like comic books and movies,

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Speaker 1: and sometimes this would end up having contradictory information, so

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Speaker 1: the lore does not always stay in line throughout the

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Speaker 1: entire series. For fighting games, I'm not sure you need

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Speaker 1: that much background. But then Mortal Kombat has obviously extended

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Speaker 1: well beyond just the games. We'll talk about that more

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Speaker 1: in a little bit. Mortal Kombat spawned countless imitators, as

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Speaker 1: well as inspired game developers from other companies to make

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Speaker 1: similarly violent games. Not just fighting games, but other styles

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Speaker 1: of games too. Started to get more violent and more

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Speaker 1: graphic and gory. While in the golden age of arcades,

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Speaker 1: games were kind of more abstract and fanciful. Uh not

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Speaker 1: necessarily better, They just, you know, they couldn't be graphic

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Speaker 1: because we just didn't have the technology to do it.

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Speaker 1: But there was a shift towards more violent and gory

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Speaker 1: games upon the success of More Combat. Not that we

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Speaker 1: suddenly saw all other types of games just disappear, but

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Speaker 1: the trend certainly favored violence and over the top gore.

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Speaker 1: While some media coverage took midway to task for releasing

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Speaker 1: such a violent game, criticism didn't really pick up until

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Speaker 1: the title made its way to home systems, ported to

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Speaker 1: the Nintendo and Sega game systems of the time. Nintendo's

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Speaker 1: version infamously removed all the blood, replacing it with gray fluid.

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Speaker 1: That was I guess sweat. Sega's system if you entered

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Speaker 1: a code at the beginning of the game, kept all

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Speaker 1: that blood in so you can actually enact the the

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Speaker 1: blood mode in Mortal Kombat. And that was actually part

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Speaker 1: of Sega's campaign, saying that Sega does what Nintendo don't

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Speaker 1: cute right. Those home games got the attention of various

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Speaker 1: parental groups and politicians, and there followed a great debate

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Speaker 1: about video games and their role in corrupting the youth.

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Speaker 1: Won't somebody please think of the children? This was extremely similar,

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Speaker 1: one might even say identical to previous waves of parental

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Speaker 1: concern about such societal threats as rock and or roll music,

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Speaker 1: Dungeons and Dragons, and violent movies or TV shows. To

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Speaker 1: this day, studies show no correlation between violent video games

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Speaker 1: and violent behavior, and suggest that perhaps people who are

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Speaker 1: prone to violent outbursts may also like violent video games,

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Speaker 1: but that violent video games don't necessarily make people prone

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Speaker 1: to violent outbursts. So, in other words, maybe there's some

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Speaker 1: sort of relationship here, but there doesn't appear to be

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Speaker 1: any causation, and the correlation kind of goes in the

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Speaker 1: opposite direction that these groups seem to believe. In other words,

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Speaker 1: it's not that violent games make violent people, but that

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Speaker 1: violent people might like violent games. The home release of

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Speaker 1: Mortal Kombat was one of the events that precipitated the

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Speaker 1: creation of the Entertainment Software Rating Board or e s RB.

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Speaker 1: The concern about video game violence and its influence on young,

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Speaker 1: impressionable minds went all the way up to US Congress

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Speaker 1: in and ninety four. In these hearings, which were pretty

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Speaker 1: difficult to listen to, it became clear that Congress was

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Speaker 1: getting ready to wade into the world of video games

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Speaker 1: and potentially start censoring stuff unless the industry guides act

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Speaker 1: together and took care of things itself. The response from

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Speaker 1: the industry was the e s r B, which would

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Speaker 1: have a uniform system to assign ratings to games, which

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Speaker 1: would give parents an indication of what sort of content

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Speaker 1: the games contained and an estimation of the appropriate age

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Speaker 1: of player. So, in other words, you would come across

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Speaker 1: a game in a store, there would be a label

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Speaker 1: on it and it would tell you, oh, this game

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Speaker 1: is not appropriate for young players. For people under the

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Speaker 1: age of say, thirteen, so I shouldn't give this to

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Speaker 1: you know, a little timmy. And just as a side

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Speaker 1: note on this Congress up, it's full of old people,

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Speaker 1: like really old people. There are a few younger people

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Speaker 1: in Congress too, but not many. And I say this

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Speaker 1: as someone who is admittedly a rapidly aging person, and

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Speaker 1: old people have trouble keeping up with the way trends change.

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Speaker 1: To the old people, video games were just things for

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Speaker 1: little kids. They were toys. It didn't occur to most

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Speaker 1: of these old people that the young folks who grew

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Speaker 1: up with video games in the early eighties were still

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Speaker 1: playing video games on more recent systems by the mid nineties,

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Speaker 1: and that this meant the young kids were now young adults.

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Speaker 1: So to the old people, it was all like five

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Speaker 1: and six year olds that were playing Mortal Kombat and

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Speaker 1: learning that if you take off your mask you can

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Speaker 1: incinerate someone and leave a scorched skeleton in their place.

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Speaker 1: Because remember we're talking about realistic violence here. Okay, I

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Speaker 1: might be getting a little snarky. I would say that

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Speaker 1: there was probably a knowledge gap for parents, so a

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Speaker 1: rating system wasn't a bad idea. Necessarily, many parents are

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Speaker 1: also rapidly aging people and maybe are unaware that video

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Speaker 1: games had sort of changed from the days when you

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Speaker 1: were a yellow disc eating dots and avoiding ghosts. So

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Speaker 1: a rating system that would let parents know, hey, this

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Speaker 1: game might not be right for little Timmy who is five.

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Speaker 1: That wasn't necessarily a bad idea, though I would argue

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Speaker 1: that if you have a game titled Mortal Kombat and

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Speaker 1: the game box shows people fighting each other, then that

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Speaker 1: might already be a bit of an indicator. But what

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Speaker 1: the heck do I know? Anyway, the moral panic fed

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Speaker 1: into the creation of the e s RB, and the

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Speaker 1: industry would assign ratings to keep the government out of

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Speaker 1: regulating the video game industry. As long as they did it,

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Speaker 1: the government would need to. For Midway, this was really

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Speaker 1: all great publicity. The company wasn't actually in the business

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Speaker 1: of making home video games right now. In fact, it

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Speaker 1: wasn't responsible for those home ports. It was still firmly

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Speaker 1: in the coin operated arcade game business, so it licensed

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Speaker 1: out its titles to other developers, who then went on

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Speaker 1: to make the home console versions of the Midway titles.

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Speaker 1: But Midway itself was still firmly in the business of

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Speaker 1: taking people's money one quarter at a time, or you know,

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Speaker 1: sometimes two quarters. Mortal Kombat had sort of gained this

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Speaker 1: reputation for being edgy, and that helped push sales. Arcade

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Speaker 1: owners and you know, other proprietors who had purchased arcade cabinets.

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Speaker 1: We're pretty happy because the games were popular and it

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Speaker 1: was possible to recoup the investment of purchasing an arcade

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Speaker 1: machine within a few weeks. Meanwhile, back at Midway, the

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Speaker 1: plan was to build on success. The Mortal Kombat team

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Speaker 1: began working on a sequel pretty much right away after

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Speaker 1: the release of the first game. In Midway released other

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Speaker 1: games too, not just Mortal Kombat. One of the big

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Speaker 1: ones was NBA jam in nine. That game featured two

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Speaker 1: on two basketball games with digitized images of players from

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Speaker 1: the NBA officially licensed for the arcade game. The team

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Speaker 1: used images of various players grabbing pictures of their heads

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Speaker 1: looking in directions like up, down, left, right, and diagonal up,

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Speaker 1: diagonal down, that kind of stuff. The digitized heads were

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Speaker 1: plopped onto, you know, kind of cartoonish bodies, and the

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Speaker 1: game featured over the top action, enthusiastic commentary from a

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Speaker 1: voice actor and a lot of fast paced action on

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Speaker 1: the screen. It also incorporated rubber banding, meaning that if

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Speaker 1: you were playing against the computer and you were starting

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Speaker 1: to get ahead, then that computer would start to make

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Speaker 1: your shots miss and your opponents would start to hit

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Speaker 1: their shots. Likewise, if you were falling way behind, well

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Speaker 1: and suddenly the computer controlled team wouldn't make as many

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Speaker 1: shots and you would be able to catch up. So

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Speaker 1: the goal from the games perspective was to keep those

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Speaker 1: games close and exciting, and also to keep convincing players

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Speaker 1: to plunk in quarters to continue the game to completion.

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Speaker 1: But it did feel a little bit like cheating. There

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Speaker 1: was also some legit chicanery going on with the game.

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Speaker 1: The dominant team at the time were the Chicago Bulls,

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Speaker 1: represented in NBA Jam by Scottie Pippen and Horace Grant.

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Speaker 1: But a big rival to the Chicago Bulls were the

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Speaker 1: Detroit Pistons, and it turned out that Mark Termel you

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Speaker 1: remember from the previous episode that he came into William's

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Speaker 1: Slash midway and began work on Smash TV. Well, anyway,

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Speaker 1: while he was working on NBA Jam, he decided, as

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Speaker 1: a big Detroit Pistons fan, that he was going to

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Speaker 1: change the odds a little bit. So if you happen

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Speaker 1: to be playing the Pistons against the Bulls, you would

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Speaker 1: see that the Bulls players tend to miss shots at

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Speaker 1: a critical point in the game, like if it's a

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Speaker 1: buzzer beating type of shot, they miss, Whereas if you're

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Speaker 1: playing the Pistons and you make a buzzer beating shot

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Speaker 1: that would win you the game, you hit it and

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Speaker 1: take that Chicago Bowls. Originally, Midway wanted to put a

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Speaker 1: bunch of special characters in NBA Jam, including Mortal Kombat characters,

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Speaker 1: a sort of Easter eggs, but the NBA objected to

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Speaker 1: that idea, so only a few special characters actually made

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Speaker 1: it into that first game, and they were all Midway

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Speaker 1: employees like John Carlton and Tony Gotsky, and you know,

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Speaker 1: Mortal Kombat was a big hit for Midway, but NBA

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Speaker 1: Jam blew the doors off it. Midway got a call

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Speaker 1: early on when they were testing NBA Jam in a

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Speaker 1: few locations around Chicago, and the call said that the

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Speaker 1: game was broken, which was a huge issue. I mean, obviously,

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Speaker 1: if something is wrong with the game, the team would

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Speaker 1: have to come up with a fix before the game

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Speaker 1: goes into full production or else they're going to be

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Speaker 1: sending out, you know, replacement chips to potentially thousands of

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Speaker 1: different proprietors. So the t went out to check on

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Speaker 1: the machine to find out what was wrong. They found

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Speaker 1: out that the problem was so many people had been

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Speaker 1: playing the game that the coin receptacle in the machine

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Speaker 1: was over full and it could not accept any more quarters,

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Speaker 1: which is actually a pretty darn good problem to have,

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Speaker 1: and it indicated that NBA Jam was going to be

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Speaker 1: a monster hit. Not all of Midways titles were as

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Speaker 1: big of a success, however. There was also Revolution X.

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Speaker 1: That game was a shooter game, so the arcade version

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Speaker 1: had gun controllers attached to it, so you held a

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Speaker 1: little plastic gun and fired at the screen, and the

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Speaker 1: targets on the screen were all sorts of different stuff.

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Speaker 1: I guess you guys are probably familiar with this type

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Speaker 1: of arcade game. Anyway, Revolution X had a really bizarre plot,

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Speaker 1: and even more bizarre was the involvement of the band Aerosmith.

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Speaker 1: The band actually appeared on screen as characters in the game.

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Speaker 1: They would encourage you in between sequel this is uh

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Speaker 1: they're acting? Was um not great, but the game was

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Speaker 1: really weird. It hadn't share of fans, but overall it

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Speaker 1: just didn't, you know, do so well for Midway. But

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Speaker 1: let's get back to the Mortal Kombat team. They were

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Speaker 1: busy making the sequel to Mortal Kombat, and the bosses

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Speaker 1: in charge were making sure that they were covering their

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Speaker 1: bases with a real carrot and stick approach in order

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Speaker 1: to motivate employees. I'll explain more when we come back

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Speaker 1: after these messages. According to Mortal Kombat co creator Ed Boone,

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Speaker 1: originally his team was thinking of moving forward on pursuing

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Speaker 1: a licensed Star Wars arcade game. Depending on which version

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Speaker 1: of the history of Midway you're looking at, this could

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Speaker 1: fall either after Mortal Kombat, before Mortal Kombat two, or

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Speaker 1: between two and three, or even between three and four.

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Speaker 1: It kind of I think a lot of people just

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Speaker 1: have mixed up memories and it's hard to place them

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Speaker 1: in the correct chronology. But anyway, they were thinking about

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Speaker 1: moving on to something else. However, they were told by

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Speaker 1: management that that was crazy, that they should make another

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Speaker 1: Mortal Kombat game, because that game was exploding in popularity

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Speaker 1: and people wanted more, and they thought Oh, that's We

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Speaker 1: hadn't even really thought about that because we were so

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Speaker 1: used to making a game and then you switch and

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Speaker 1: change to develop a totally different game. So their goal

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Speaker 1: was to improve upon the original Mortal Kombat. They wanted

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Speaker 1: to introduce some new fighters, some new moves, some new stages,

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Speaker 1: and new storylines. To that end, the fighting roster went

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Speaker 1: from seven playable characters from the first Mortal Kombat game

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Speaker 1: to twelve in the sequel. Sonja Blade and Kano, two

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Speaker 1: of the original fighters, would actually be unavailable Immortal Kombat too.

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Speaker 1: They appeared in the background in the relient in the game.

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Speaker 1: They had both been captured by the big bad guy,

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Speaker 1: Shao Khan, who was the boss of Shang Sung. That

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Speaker 1: was the the big bad guy from the first game,

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Speaker 1: so now Seng Sung would serve as a sub boss fight.

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Speaker 1: He had been rejuvenated, so in the first game he

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Speaker 1: appeared as an old Nan and in the second game

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Speaker 1: he appeared as a much younger man. Following Sean Sung

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Speaker 1: if you were to defeat him, would be Shao Khan's

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Speaker 1: bodyguard Kintaro, who was kind of like a tiger striped

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Speaker 1: version of Goro from the first game, and then The

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Speaker 1: final boss of the game was Shao Khan himself. New

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Speaker 1: characters included women ninja like Molina and Katana. There was

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Speaker 1: also a hidden female ninja named Jade. There was a

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Speaker 1: monstrous new character named Baraka who could extend blades from

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Speaker 1: his arms. There were new male ninja that included Smoke,

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Speaker 1: and new Saibot, whom perceptive listeners will recognize is having

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Speaker 1: a name that is Boon and Tobias old backward, so

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Speaker 1: John Tobias and Ed Boone were the co creators of

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Speaker 1: Mortal Kombat, Boon being the lead programmer and Tobias being

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Speaker 1: the lead artist. You also had new characters like Jack's

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Speaker 1: and Kung Lao, and among the new moves were some

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Speaker 1: that were kind of jokes. You still had fatalities, in fact,

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Speaker 1: now each character had two different fatalities to choose from,

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Speaker 1: but perhaps to poke fun at the reaction to the

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Speaker 1: over the top gore from the previous game. UH. You

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Speaker 1: also had babilities that would turn the loser into a

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Speaker 1: crying baby. And then you also had friendships which uh.

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Speaker 1: Instead of the winner slaughtering the loser, the winner would

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Speaker 1: do something nice like give a present or a smooch,

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Speaker 1: you know, very sweet. On top of that, the developers

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Speaker 1: chose to speed up the gameplay from the first game,

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Speaker 1: so there was less recovery time between strikes, which amped

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Speaker 1: up the energy of the man, which is considerably The

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Speaker 1: game was the first Midway Cabinet to use the DCS

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Speaker 1: sound system, that was the digital compression system. Williams Electronics

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Speaker 1: had developed the DCS for the pinball game line of Williams.

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Speaker 1: Uh Those were actually still marketed either as Williams Machines

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Speaker 1: or Bally Machines. So funny that in the old days,

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Speaker 1: Bally and Williams were competitors. Now they both belonged to

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Speaker 1: the same company, but you still had pinball machines that

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Speaker 1: were branded either Bally or Williams as if they were

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Speaker 1: still competing. The Mortal Kombat team received more resources while

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Speaker 1: they were developing the sequel, and while they were busy

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Speaker 1: putting it together, they saw that the home version of

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Speaker 1: Mortal Kombat was selling extremely well. It's probably a pretty

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Speaker 1: good time to be working within that team over at Midway,

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Speaker 1: probably feeling pretty good about your work. Making things sweeter

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Speaker 1: was that the company was putting in place a kind

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Speaker 1: of bonus policy if a game sold really well, then

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Speaker 1: the team making that game would get a bonus from

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Speaker 1: the revenue generated through the sales. Essentially you're getting like

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Speaker 1: a cut. According to the documentary insert Coin, these bonuses

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Speaker 1: had a cap of two million dollars, which that is

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Speaker 1: a lot of money. But you might ask, well, why

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Speaker 1: is it capped? Why was there a limit? Well, according

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Speaker 1: to that that documentary where they were interviewing various people

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Speaker 1: from Midway, the managers wanted to make sure that the

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Speaker 1: developers wouldn't get rich and then just retire because they

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Speaker 1: needed those folks to to keep making games so the

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Speaker 1: company would keep making money. So they said, well, we

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Speaker 1: can't give them more than that or they'll just quit.

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Speaker 1: Why would they keep working? So that was the the

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Speaker 1: reasoning from the management level of capping the bonuses. So

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Speaker 1: the revenue sharing was a carrot. But I also mentioned

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Speaker 1: before the break that there was a stick. So in

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Speaker 1: this case, the real stick was a non compete clause.

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Speaker 1: The employees at Midway were under a non compete agreement

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Speaker 1: that said they weren't allowed to just leave Midway and

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Speaker 1: work for a compat editor. And while the legality of

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Speaker 1: non compete clauses is something that tends to be a

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Speaker 1: bit questionable legally speaking, it did give Midway the gateway

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Speaker 1: to sue former employees should they try to leave the

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Speaker 1: company and work for someone else, And the goal wasn't

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Speaker 1: to win the lawsuit. The goal was to discourage former

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Speaker 1: employees all by forcing an expensive, lengthy and stressful process

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Speaker 1: into the mix, and it helped intimidate existing employees at Midway.

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Speaker 1: They would discourage them from following in the footsteps of

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Speaker 1: the person who left. So, if you think that sounds

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Speaker 1: kind of gross, um in agreement with you. The company

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Speaker 1: wanted to keep making hits and for that and he

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Speaker 1: had to hold on to talent, and this was kind

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Speaker 1: of how Midway went about doing that by giving them

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Speaker 1: bonuses and telling them, if you leave and try to

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Speaker 1: work for someone else, we will sue you to the

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Speaker 1: ends of the earth. Fun times. Meanwhile, there was a

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Speaker 1: little bit of a kerfuffle behind the scenes due to

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Speaker 1: Mortal Kombat two. Three of the actors who were involved

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Speaker 1: in the development Elizabeth Malecki, who had been used as

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Speaker 1: the the stand in for Sonja Blade and the first game,

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Speaker 1: Catalan Zamyar who played Katana, Molina and Jade, and Dr

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Speaker 1: Philip On, who played the Young Shank Sung Immortal Combat Too.

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Speaker 1: They all filed a lawsuit against Midway seeking compensation and

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Speaker 1: form of royalties. They argue that they should be due

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Speaker 1: some of those royalties because of the revenue generated by

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Speaker 1: sales of the game. So these were the actors who

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Speaker 1: were shot on video and that video was then digitized

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Speaker 1: in order to become part of the animation of the games.

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Speaker 1: In fact, they were more digitized. They use more of

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Speaker 1: the digitized footage in World Combat Too than the stuff

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Speaker 1: that they had shot for Mortal Kombat one. This isn't

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Speaker 1: that strange in the world of acting to demand royalties.

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Speaker 1: I mean, it's pretty much standard procedure. If your work

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Speaker 1: is going to continue generating revenue then and it stands

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Speaker 1: to reason that you deserve some of that revenue. Um.

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Speaker 1: It's the reason why organizations like the Screen Actors Guild

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Speaker 1: exists in order to help guarantee fairness when it comes

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Speaker 1: to compensation for work. But Midway argued that the actors

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00:24:14,760 --> 00:24:18,119
Speaker 1: were all in a work for higher status and thus

403
00:24:18,160 --> 00:24:22,040
Speaker 1: not eligible for royalties. The judge found in favor of Midway,

404
00:24:22,280 --> 00:24:25,200
Speaker 1: and those actors would not return for Mortal Kombat three,

405
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Speaker 1: which meant the company had to either leave them out

406
00:24:28,280 --> 00:24:31,719
Speaker 1: or recast those roles with new actors. They also had

407
00:24:31,720 --> 00:24:35,040
Speaker 1: to get a new Johnny Cage. Daniel Pasina, the actor

408
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Speaker 1: who had served as the model for Johnny Cage, as

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Speaker 1: well as sub Zero and some others, had also sued Midway.

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Speaker 1: Passina was seeking compensation for the use of his likeness

411
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Speaker 1: in the home versions of Mortal Kombat Too, which we're

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Speaker 1: selling really well. He and his fellow actors had been

413
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Speaker 1: paid a flat hourly rate. Passina says that for the

414
00:24:55,320 --> 00:24:59,040
Speaker 1: first Mortal Kombat it was fifty dollars an hour, which

415
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Speaker 1: ended up being a paycheck of a few thousand dollars,

416
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Speaker 1: and for the second game it was seventy five an hour,

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Speaker 1: but like the other actors, there were no guarantees of

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Speaker 1: royalties or a cut of any of the homes sales. Ultimately,

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Speaker 1: the court found in favor of Midway, saying that only

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Speaker 1: six percent of players surveyed felt that Passina resembled Johnny

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Speaker 1: Cage in the games, which would mean that his likeness

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00:25:22,880 --> 00:25:26,640
Speaker 1: wasn't terribly important. Moreover, the judge essentially said that Possina

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Speaker 1: wasn't famous enough for his likeness to have been a

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00:25:29,160 --> 00:25:31,760
Speaker 1: selling point. For Midway, So in other words, no one

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00:25:31,840 --> 00:25:34,479
Speaker 1: was rushing to buy the game because Daniel Possina was

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Speaker 1: in it. Thus no one was trading upon Possina's likeness

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Speaker 1: or fame. Ouch Carlos Posina, Daniel's brother, was working for Midway,

428
00:25:45,400 --> 00:25:48,159
Speaker 1: still was working for them as an art lead, but

429
00:25:48,640 --> 00:25:53,040
Speaker 1: he was also the person who portrayed Raydon in those games.

430
00:25:53,480 --> 00:25:57,240
Speaker 1: And then he helped out on a project called Tattoo Assassins,

431
00:25:57,480 --> 00:26:01,000
Speaker 1: which was a planned fighting game from Data East that

432
00:26:01,119 --> 00:26:04,080
Speaker 1: was meant to be a sort of Mortal Kombat competitor,

433
00:26:04,760 --> 00:26:07,320
Speaker 1: and Daniel Passina had been tagged to work on it,

434
00:26:07,400 --> 00:26:11,080
Speaker 1: and perhaps as a punishment, the character that Carlos Pasina

435
00:26:11,119 --> 00:26:13,120
Speaker 1: portrayed in the first two Mortal Kombat games that being

436
00:26:13,440 --> 00:26:17,120
Speaker 1: raid in would be absent in Mortal Kombat three. Pessina

437
00:26:17,160 --> 00:26:19,159
Speaker 1: would stay on it Midway, but I bet it was

438
00:26:19,160 --> 00:26:22,879
Speaker 1: awkward that, you know, he had been associated with a

439
00:26:23,080 --> 00:26:28,240
Speaker 1: planned game to compete with the company's flagship fighting franchise.

440
00:26:28,680 --> 00:26:32,360
Speaker 1: By the way, Tattoo Assassin never came out. It was planned,

441
00:26:32,359 --> 00:26:35,480
Speaker 1: but it was never released. At the same time, Midway

442
00:26:35,520 --> 00:26:38,760
Speaker 1: developers were getting noticed within the gaming industry and beyond,

443
00:26:39,160 --> 00:26:42,160
Speaker 1: and that interest did give the employees a little bit

444
00:26:42,160 --> 00:26:45,760
Speaker 1: more leverage when it came to negotiating salaries and benefits. Yeah,

445
00:26:45,800 --> 00:26:47,680
Speaker 1: there was the non competing there, but those can only

446
00:26:47,800 --> 00:26:51,400
Speaker 1: last so long, and that was giving them the chance

447
00:26:51,440 --> 00:26:54,280
Speaker 1: to say, hey, these other companies are really interested in me.

448
00:26:54,720 --> 00:26:58,399
Speaker 1: If you don't, you know, if you don't help work

449
00:26:58,440 --> 00:27:01,480
Speaker 1: with me to to come up with an agreeable compensation plan,

450
00:27:02,080 --> 00:27:04,800
Speaker 1: I'll leave waited out and then I'll work for them.

451
00:27:05,200 --> 00:27:08,800
Speaker 1: So there was some leverage that the employees had as well.

452
00:27:08,840 --> 00:27:11,200
Speaker 1: It wasn't all a one way street with Midway holding

453
00:27:11,240 --> 00:27:14,639
Speaker 1: all the cards. Something else that was taking shape in

454
00:27:14,680 --> 00:27:18,000
Speaker 1: the mid nineties was the movie adaptation of Mortal Kombat,

455
00:27:18,359 --> 00:27:22,800
Speaker 1: directed by Paul W. S Anderson, who also directed the

456
00:27:22,840 --> 00:27:25,560
Speaker 1: movie Event Horizon. That's a movie that we've talked about

457
00:27:25,600 --> 00:27:28,520
Speaker 1: on Tech Stuff several years ago. We I watched it,

458
00:27:28,600 --> 00:27:30,919
Speaker 1: I think for the first time for that episode to

459
00:27:31,000 --> 00:27:34,800
Speaker 1: talk about the science and tech in that movie. It

460
00:27:34,880 --> 00:27:39,560
Speaker 1: was wacky anyway. The Mortal Kombat movie stitched together a

461
00:27:39,640 --> 00:27:43,320
Speaker 1: narrative about the tournament and Shang Sung and the various fighters.

462
00:27:43,760 --> 00:27:48,639
Speaker 1: It's a cheesy, schlocky movie. I can't exactly recommend it.

463
00:27:49,240 --> 00:27:51,920
Speaker 1: But it did help illustrate how Mortal Kombat had become

464
00:27:52,000 --> 00:27:56,760
Speaker 1: a legitimate cultural touchstone beyond just the arcades. A sequel

465
00:27:56,840 --> 00:28:01,160
Speaker 1: came out for that movie in was called Mortal Combat Annihilation.

466
00:28:01,480 --> 00:28:04,920
Speaker 1: I have never watched that one, and of course now

467
00:28:04,920 --> 00:28:08,200
Speaker 1: we've got the one movie. So those are just three

468
00:28:08,240 --> 00:28:11,639
Speaker 1: examples of Mortal Kombat beyond the arcades. In addition, the

469
00:28:11,640 --> 00:28:15,119
Speaker 1: game inspired a line of toys and clothing lines, uh

470
00:28:15,320 --> 00:28:18,920
Speaker 1: comic book series, I mean, Mortal Kombat became a merchandise

471
00:28:19,119 --> 00:28:23,159
Speaker 1: gold mine. Back at Midway, things were starting to change.

472
00:28:23,200 --> 00:28:26,119
Speaker 1: The home video game market was really exploding, and the

473
00:28:26,160 --> 00:28:29,880
Speaker 1: execs a Midway figured they weren't leveraging that enough by

474
00:28:30,080 --> 00:28:33,359
Speaker 1: licensing their I P out to other companies, because up

475
00:28:33,359 --> 00:28:36,040
Speaker 1: to that point, the strategy was partner with other developers,

476
00:28:36,480 --> 00:28:39,600
Speaker 1: have them create home versions of the arcade games that

477
00:28:39,640 --> 00:28:43,600
Speaker 1: Midway was producing, and in return, those developers would pay

478
00:28:43,600 --> 00:28:47,440
Speaker 1: Midway a licensing fee. But the executives wanted to switch

479
00:28:47,480 --> 00:28:50,160
Speaker 1: things up and start developing games for the home market

480
00:28:50,440 --> 00:28:54,840
Speaker 1: directly through Midway or rather Williams. So in the mid

481
00:28:54,920 --> 00:28:58,640
Speaker 1: nineties the company established a home console game developer division

482
00:28:58,720 --> 00:29:02,960
Speaker 1: within Midway and started producing games in house. As part

483
00:29:02,960 --> 00:29:06,240
Speaker 1: of the effort, Midway acquired a company called trade West,

484
00:29:06,440 --> 00:29:11,240
Speaker 1: transforming into Williams Electronics Incorporated, and then eventually Trade West

485
00:29:11,240 --> 00:29:15,760
Speaker 1: would become Midway Home Entertainment. Trade West was the company

486
00:29:15,880 --> 00:29:19,960
Speaker 1: responsible for some big video game hits, like the infamously

487
00:29:20,160 --> 00:29:25,280
Speaker 1: difficult Battletoads game and the home console version of Double Dragon.

488
00:29:25,800 --> 00:29:28,360
Speaker 1: This would be the early foundation of Midway's home video

489
00:29:28,400 --> 00:29:31,760
Speaker 1: game division. At the same time, the company was still

490
00:29:31,760 --> 00:29:36,400
Speaker 1: producing arcade games coin operated games. The arcade was entering

491
00:29:36,440 --> 00:29:39,000
Speaker 1: a slow decline, but it wasn't yet at a point

492
00:29:39,000 --> 00:29:41,960
Speaker 1: where companies were all ready to just throw in the towel.

493
00:29:42,480 --> 00:29:46,000
Speaker 1: The Williams side of Midway was still producing pinball machines

494
00:29:46,000 --> 00:29:49,160
Speaker 1: branded as either Bally or Williams, and the team's over

495
00:29:49,200 --> 00:29:53,520
Speaker 1: at Midway. We're still working on arcade video machines. One

496
00:29:53,560 --> 00:29:56,800
Speaker 1: of those projects even involved the return of a former

497
00:29:56,960 --> 00:30:00,600
Speaker 1: Midway employee, Eugene Jarvis, who had left company a few

498
00:30:00,680 --> 00:30:03,880
Speaker 1: years earlier. He was developing a race card game called

499
00:30:04,000 --> 00:30:07,720
Speaker 1: Cruise in USA. He had found a partnership with Nintendo,

500
00:30:08,240 --> 00:30:11,360
Speaker 1: but still lacked the resources to get the game finished

501
00:30:11,440 --> 00:30:14,320
Speaker 1: on time and on budget. He was able to bring

502
00:30:14,360 --> 00:30:18,520
Speaker 1: that game under the umbrella of Midway and thus returned

503
00:30:18,520 --> 00:30:22,920
Speaker 1: to Midway and the game would launch in The Mortal

504
00:30:23,000 --> 00:30:25,760
Speaker 1: Kombat team got to work on the third game in

505
00:30:25,800 --> 00:30:30,400
Speaker 1: that series, unsurprisingly called Mortal Kombat three. By this time,

506
00:30:30,800 --> 00:30:33,600
Speaker 1: the team was starting to feel the grind. They kept

507
00:30:33,600 --> 00:30:36,440
Speaker 1: at it, but I'm sure enthusiasm was starting to flag

508
00:30:36,480 --> 00:30:39,120
Speaker 1: a little bit. Once upon a time, the teams would

509
00:30:39,120 --> 00:30:42,200
Speaker 1: move to tackle a totally different game with new challenges

510
00:30:42,280 --> 00:30:46,000
Speaker 1: and new approaches, But Mortal Kombat was a cash cow

511
00:30:46,880 --> 00:30:49,920
Speaker 1: with k's instead of seas, I guess, and leadership at

512
00:30:49,960 --> 00:30:53,280
Speaker 1: Midway saw no reason to stop printing money all of

513
00:30:53,360 --> 00:30:56,560
Speaker 1: a sudden now. The third game saw a couple of

514
00:30:56,600 --> 00:31:00,680
Speaker 1: big changes. For one, several characters were absent, like Onny Cage,

515
00:31:00,760 --> 00:31:03,120
Speaker 1: raid In, and Scorpion. None of them were in the game.

516
00:31:03,680 --> 00:31:06,360
Speaker 1: There were lots of new characters as well, and not

517
00:31:06,520 --> 00:31:10,000
Speaker 1: all of them were big hits. For example, Striker, a

518
00:31:10,280 --> 00:31:14,760
Speaker 1: riot police kind of character, consistently ranks pretty low on

519
00:31:14,800 --> 00:31:18,640
Speaker 1: the Mortal Kombat character lists. The game also introduced a

520
00:31:18,720 --> 00:31:22,120
Speaker 1: run button with a run meter that would deplete as

521
00:31:22,160 --> 00:31:25,600
Speaker 1: you ran, it would refill over time, and the game

522
00:31:25,760 --> 00:31:29,200
Speaker 1: also featured combos, allowing players to string together certain moves

523
00:31:29,360 --> 00:31:34,640
Speaker 1: to create more devastating attacks. Oh in addition to fatalities, bibelities,

524
00:31:34,920 --> 00:31:39,160
Speaker 1: and friendships were the animal itties, which were finishing moves

525
00:31:39,200 --> 00:31:42,320
Speaker 1: in which your character would transform into an animal and

526
00:31:42,360 --> 00:31:46,000
Speaker 1: then slaughter your defeated opponent. You first had to do

527
00:31:46,080 --> 00:31:49,880
Speaker 1: a mercy move before you did that. Mercy was where

528
00:31:49,920 --> 00:31:53,200
Speaker 1: you would give your opponent back a little sliver of

529
00:31:53,240 --> 00:31:57,200
Speaker 1: health just to knock them silly again and then hopefully

530
00:31:57,240 --> 00:32:00,440
Speaker 1: pull off the animal itty. The arcade version, An Immortal

531
00:32:00,480 --> 00:32:05,320
Speaker 1: Comment three, came out on April, and just a few

532
00:32:05,360 --> 00:32:09,560
Speaker 1: months later the company put out home versions out for

533
00:32:09,720 --> 00:32:13,640
Speaker 1: various platforms like the PlayStation, the Sega Genesis, and the Supernintendo.

534
00:32:14,400 --> 00:32:17,760
Speaker 1: At that time, home consoles still couldn't quite match the

535
00:32:17,840 --> 00:32:20,880
Speaker 1: quality of graphics and gameplay you would get at the arcade,

536
00:32:21,200 --> 00:32:24,200
Speaker 1: but that gap was narrowing and the home video game

537
00:32:24,240 --> 00:32:28,040
Speaker 1: market was starting to overtake arcade games. Midway saw its

538
00:32:28,040 --> 00:32:31,680
Speaker 1: flagship arcade division lose ground to the home video game department.

539
00:32:32,080 --> 00:32:35,000
Speaker 1: It was a sign that things were shifting, though Midway

540
00:32:35,120 --> 00:32:37,280
Speaker 1: was not quite ready to throw in the towel on

541
00:32:37,360 --> 00:32:41,240
Speaker 1: coin op machines, just yet when we come back, we

542
00:32:41,280 --> 00:32:44,920
Speaker 1: will wrap up our story about Midway, and this next

543
00:32:45,000 --> 00:32:48,680
Speaker 1: chapter is the most tumultuous out of all of them,

544
00:32:48,680 --> 00:32:51,720
Speaker 1: and that's saying something. But first let's take a quick break.

545
00:32:59,240 --> 00:33:02,959
Speaker 1: So Midway released the home version of Mortal Kombat three,

546
00:33:03,040 --> 00:33:06,920
Speaker 1: and that actually cheesed off some arcade operators, the people

547
00:33:06,920 --> 00:33:10,320
Speaker 1: who own arcades that had Mortal Kombat three arcade machines

548
00:33:10,360 --> 00:33:12,479
Speaker 1: in them, because they were pointing out that they were

549
00:33:12,520 --> 00:33:16,760
Speaker 1: paying thousands of dollars for each arcade machine cabinet and

550
00:33:16,760 --> 00:33:20,360
Speaker 1: then hoping to recoup those costs as players would shove

551
00:33:20,440 --> 00:33:24,600
Speaker 1: quarters into the machines. But then Midway goes around and

552
00:33:24,680 --> 00:33:27,440
Speaker 1: just within a couple of months throws out the home

553
00:33:27,560 --> 00:33:30,480
Speaker 1: version of Mortal Kombat three. They said, well, now you've

554
00:33:30,640 --> 00:33:33,800
Speaker 1: removed a big selling point we have, which was that

555
00:33:33,920 --> 00:33:36,600
Speaker 1: people had to come to our arcade to play this game,

556
00:33:36,640 --> 00:33:40,280
Speaker 1: and now they don't. So to help appease these customers,

557
00:33:40,600 --> 00:33:43,840
Speaker 1: Midway developed a second version of Mortal Kombat three called

558
00:33:44,000 --> 00:33:48,959
Speaker 1: Ultimate Mortal Kombat three. This version included more characters like

559
00:33:49,040 --> 00:33:52,120
Speaker 1: Scorpion and Katana who had previously been left out of

560
00:33:52,200 --> 00:33:56,720
Speaker 1: Vanilla MK three, and it also included some other gameplay elements,

561
00:33:57,040 --> 00:34:00,360
Speaker 1: and arcade operators who had purchased a Mortal Kombat three

562
00:34:00,360 --> 00:34:04,200
Speaker 1: machine had the option to upgrade to Ultimate Mortal Kombat

563
00:34:04,200 --> 00:34:07,720
Speaker 1: three and no additional charge, so that helped create more

564
00:34:07,720 --> 00:34:09,640
Speaker 1: of a selling point to get people to come in

565
00:34:09,640 --> 00:34:12,920
Speaker 1: and play the arcade games. There would be home versions

566
00:34:13,120 --> 00:34:17,680
Speaker 1: of Ultimate Mortal Kombat three and also Mortal Kombat Trilogy,

567
00:34:18,000 --> 00:34:22,600
Speaker 1: which tried to do similar things, but no home version

568
00:34:22,960 --> 00:34:27,400
Speaker 1: is exactly the same experience as the arcade version. Midway

569
00:34:27,440 --> 00:34:32,160
Speaker 1: management was really keen on using competition within the company

570
00:34:32,200 --> 00:34:35,719
Speaker 1: to fuel development, so there were multiple teams working on

571
00:34:35,800 --> 00:34:39,160
Speaker 1: different games and Midway so the Mortal Kombat team was

572
00:34:39,200 --> 00:34:42,800
Speaker 1: just one group of developers. Within Midway, there were others

573
00:34:42,800 --> 00:34:46,160
Speaker 1: working on other projects, and management had a tendency to

574
00:34:46,239 --> 00:34:48,799
Speaker 1: pit the teams against each other and the belief that

575
00:34:48,880 --> 00:34:52,279
Speaker 1: competition would drive the teams to greater success, but it

576
00:34:52,360 --> 00:34:55,360
Speaker 1: also bred a certain amount of resentment within the company

577
00:34:55,400 --> 00:34:58,600
Speaker 1: between teams. One other team that was working on a

578
00:34:58,680 --> 00:35:03,040
Speaker 1: new fighting game was The game was called War Gods.

579
00:35:03,680 --> 00:35:06,560
Speaker 1: This was in response to new fighting games hitting the

580
00:35:06,719 --> 00:35:11,439
Speaker 1: arcades like Virtua Fighter, which incorporated depth into the game.

581
00:35:11,520 --> 00:35:14,480
Speaker 1: It created a sort of three D element, not that

582
00:35:14,520 --> 00:35:16,680
Speaker 1: you were looking at the game in three D, but

583
00:35:17,040 --> 00:35:21,800
Speaker 1: you could move within this fighting realm uh in three dimensions.

584
00:35:21,840 --> 00:35:23,680
Speaker 1: So the team set out to make a fighting game

585
00:35:23,760 --> 00:35:26,439
Speaker 1: that would be as popular as Mortal Kombat, but using

586
00:35:26,440 --> 00:35:30,279
Speaker 1: this approach to three D gameplay elements, and that ended

587
00:35:30,360 --> 00:35:34,680
Speaker 1: up creating some friction within Midway, particularly as it became

588
00:35:34,719 --> 00:35:38,120
Speaker 1: clear that war Gods was borrowing a lot of elements

589
00:35:38,120 --> 00:35:41,480
Speaker 1: from Mortal Kombat, including certain move sets and the use

590
00:35:41,520 --> 00:35:45,279
Speaker 1: of fatalities that rubbed some of the m K developers

591
00:35:45,320 --> 00:35:48,160
Speaker 1: the wrong way, and the company itself was going through

592
00:35:48,239 --> 00:35:54,640
Speaker 1: yet another change. In Midway acquired Atari Games. Really Williams

593
00:35:54,680 --> 00:35:57,920
Speaker 1: acquired Atari Games. That was one of the fragments of

594
00:35:57,960 --> 00:36:00,239
Speaker 1: the old Atari company from the early day is of

595
00:36:00,239 --> 00:36:03,960
Speaker 1: home video games. That story is a very complicated one.

596
00:36:04,080 --> 00:36:06,880
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant of Stuff you should know Fame joined me

597
00:36:06,920 --> 00:36:09,120
Speaker 1: for a couple of episodes about the history of Atari

598
00:36:09,160 --> 00:36:13,600
Speaker 1: where we tried to unravel all that. It is crazy complicated,

599
00:36:13,880 --> 00:36:17,279
Speaker 1: but anyway. Also in Williams launched an I p O

600
00:36:17,600 --> 00:36:21,000
Speaker 1: for Midway Games and just spun off Midway so that

601
00:36:21,080 --> 00:36:24,880
Speaker 1: the arcade in Pinball, parts of what had been w

602
00:36:25,239 --> 00:36:28,640
Speaker 1: m S, the parent company, would now exist as its

603
00:36:28,680 --> 00:36:33,040
Speaker 1: own independent entity, with the rest of w MS, the

604
00:36:33,080 --> 00:36:38,280
Speaker 1: old Williams company, focusing really on casino games. The Williams

605
00:36:38,320 --> 00:36:40,960
Speaker 1: also ended up including all of the I P for

606
00:36:41,280 --> 00:36:44,840
Speaker 1: old Williams based arcade games like Defender and Joust. In

607
00:36:44,920 --> 00:36:51,000
Speaker 1: that deal, w MS transferred its stake in Midway to

608
00:36:51,600 --> 00:36:56,360
Speaker 1: WMS shareholders, So now Midway was truly an independent company.

609
00:36:56,480 --> 00:36:59,960
Speaker 1: And while it was an independent company, Midway in WMS

610
00:37:00,000 --> 00:37:03,280
Speaker 1: would still share some of the same you know, facility

611
00:37:03,360 --> 00:37:06,319
Speaker 1: space and also some of the same executive leadership for

612
00:37:06,320 --> 00:37:09,399
Speaker 1: a while. But this began the process of the two

613
00:37:09,400 --> 00:37:13,799
Speaker 1: companies parting ways. Neil Nicastro became the CEO of the

614
00:37:13,840 --> 00:37:17,719
Speaker 1: new independent company. Neil is the son of Louis Nicastro,

615
00:37:18,120 --> 00:37:22,319
Speaker 1: who was responsible for purchasing Williams Electronics from another company

616
00:37:22,360 --> 00:37:24,399
Speaker 1: many many years ago. You might have heard me talk

617
00:37:24,440 --> 00:37:28,120
Speaker 1: about that. In the first part of this series, the

618
00:37:28,280 --> 00:37:32,040
Speaker 1: MK team was working on Mortal Kombat four, which would

619
00:37:32,040 --> 00:37:34,239
Speaker 1: be the final game in the series that would be

620
00:37:34,280 --> 00:37:38,279
Speaker 1: released as a coin operated arcade machine. Now, for the

621
00:37:38,320 --> 00:37:40,880
Speaker 1: first game in the series, ed Boone had served as

622
00:37:40,920 --> 00:37:44,360
Speaker 1: the soul programmer, but the projects were getting a complex

623
00:37:44,440 --> 00:37:46,640
Speaker 1: enough that he actually needed to bring on a couple

624
00:37:46,680 --> 00:37:49,759
Speaker 1: of extra people to help him out as code developers

625
00:37:49,800 --> 00:37:53,920
Speaker 1: co programmers. This version of Mortal Kombat would rely more

626
00:37:53,920 --> 00:37:57,600
Speaker 1: heavily on straight up computer animation, so they ditched the

627
00:37:57,640 --> 00:38:01,759
Speaker 1: digitized version. They were no longer using video of actors

628
00:38:02,040 --> 00:38:08,240
Speaker 1: to create characters. They were creating three dimensional, rendered animated models. Uh.

629
00:38:08,280 --> 00:38:12,000
Speaker 1: The big addition in Mortal Kombat Fur, apart from new

630
00:38:12,239 --> 00:38:14,759
Speaker 1: characters who were part of the roster, was now that

631
00:38:14,920 --> 00:38:17,440
Speaker 1: characters also had weapons that they could use with certain

632
00:38:17,520 --> 00:38:22,000
Speaker 1: move combinations. Before m K four hit arcades, the Home

633
00:38:22,120 --> 00:38:25,600
Speaker 1: Video Game Division released a side scrolling game called Mortal

634
00:38:25,680 --> 00:38:31,120
Speaker 1: Kombat Mythologies sub Zero. As the name suggests, this game

635
00:38:31,239 --> 00:38:34,600
Speaker 1: was focusing on the Sub Zero character, and it was

636
00:38:34,640 --> 00:38:38,640
Speaker 1: a big departure from the fighting game format. The PlayStation

637
00:38:38,760 --> 00:38:42,120
Speaker 1: version also had live action cut scenes, pushing this game

638
00:38:42,160 --> 00:38:46,239
Speaker 1: into the general realm of FMV games, a category that's

639
00:38:46,320 --> 00:38:49,400
Speaker 1: near and dear to my heart. They also fm V

640
00:38:49,560 --> 00:38:52,239
Speaker 1: games tend to be terrible, but I will say the

641
00:38:52,280 --> 00:38:55,360
Speaker 1: cut scenes for Sub Zero we're not as cringe e

642
00:38:55,760 --> 00:38:58,160
Speaker 1: as a lot of other FMV games, though I still

643
00:38:58,520 --> 00:39:02,440
Speaker 1: found them pretty awkward with fairly low production value. The

644
00:39:02,480 --> 00:39:05,600
Speaker 1: game itself got mixed reviews, largely because it was seemed

645
00:39:05,600 --> 00:39:09,040
Speaker 1: to be a punishing experience to play, with a very

646
00:39:09,080 --> 00:39:13,840
Speaker 1: steep learning curve. Both Mortal Kombat Mythologies and Mortal Kombat

647
00:39:13,920 --> 00:39:19,000
Speaker 1: four launched in nine seven. Mythologies went to the home market,

648
00:39:19,400 --> 00:39:22,680
Speaker 1: Mortal Kombat four went to arcades. Around the time m

649
00:39:22,800 --> 00:39:26,040
Speaker 1: K four hit, John Tobias was eager to start to

650
00:39:26,120 --> 00:39:28,920
Speaker 1: look into doing something new. He had worked on a

651
00:39:29,000 --> 00:39:31,400
Speaker 1: lot of Mortal Kombat titles and he hoped to branch

652
00:39:31,440 --> 00:39:33,919
Speaker 1: out and make some games that he wanted to make.

653
00:39:34,480 --> 00:39:37,520
Speaker 1: So he began to think about that, and he chose

654
00:39:37,600 --> 00:39:41,400
Speaker 1: to resign from Midway in the late nineties, and he

655
00:39:41,520 --> 00:39:43,920
Speaker 1: left to found his own game studio. Sadly, that did

656
00:39:43,920 --> 00:39:46,879
Speaker 1: not stay in business for very long and it would

657
00:39:46,960 --> 00:39:50,160
Speaker 1: close up shop as well. But this is where Tobias

658
00:39:50,239 --> 00:39:54,160
Speaker 1: kind of says bye bye to Midway now. He left

659
00:39:54,160 --> 00:39:57,880
Speaker 1: the company just as Midway was transitioning away from arcade

660
00:39:57,920 --> 00:40:02,360
Speaker 1: machines entirely. The arcade business in general was slowing way down.

661
00:40:02,400 --> 00:40:06,319
Speaker 1: The home video game market was clearly more profitable. More

662
00:40:06,360 --> 00:40:09,000
Speaker 1: people were buying games and staying home to play them

663
00:40:09,040 --> 00:40:12,520
Speaker 1: on home consoles than going someplace and playing a stand

664
00:40:12,600 --> 00:40:16,839
Speaker 1: up coin fed arcade machine. The last coin arcade game

665
00:40:16,920 --> 00:40:20,120
Speaker 1: Midway would release would be The Grid, which was a

666
00:40:20,160 --> 00:40:24,640
Speaker 1: first person shooter style multiplayer game that the Mortal Kombat

667
00:40:24,719 --> 00:40:27,600
Speaker 1: team actually developed, and from why I understand it was

668
00:40:27,640 --> 00:40:31,640
Speaker 1: sort of a reinvigorating experience to work on something new. However,

669
00:40:32,120 --> 00:40:34,560
Speaker 1: the title did not sell very well for Midway. It

670
00:40:34,560 --> 00:40:37,440
Speaker 1: was kind of a flop for Midway. Not a not

671
00:40:37,560 --> 00:40:43,080
Speaker 1: a creative flop, but a commercial flop. In Midway shut

672
00:40:43,120 --> 00:40:47,120
Speaker 1: down the pinball division of its arcade business, so you

673
00:40:47,120 --> 00:40:50,840
Speaker 1: wouldn't get any more new Bally or Williams tables coming out.

674
00:40:51,160 --> 00:40:54,279
Speaker 1: The pinball machine was practically abandoned at this point. But

675
00:40:54,360 --> 00:40:58,120
Speaker 1: then Gary Stern, the son of Sam Stern, who was

676
00:40:58,160 --> 00:41:02,200
Speaker 1: once an executive at Williams. So you heard me talk

677
00:41:02,280 --> 00:41:06,280
Speaker 1: briefly about Sam Stern in the previous episode. Anyway, Gary

678
00:41:06,320 --> 00:41:12,360
Speaker 1: Stern would found Stern Pinball, thus keeping that technology alive.

679
00:41:12,960 --> 00:41:15,239
Speaker 1: Since then, we've had a few other companies that have

680
00:41:15,320 --> 00:41:18,440
Speaker 1: grown to produce pinball machines, but for a while, Stern

681
00:41:18,600 --> 00:41:21,600
Speaker 1: was really the only game in town, so to speak.

682
00:41:22,080 --> 00:41:24,759
Speaker 1: And um, yeah, I've gotten a chance to speak with

683
00:41:24,760 --> 00:41:28,760
Speaker 1: Gary Stern a couple of times. Interesting guy, very passionate

684
00:41:28,800 --> 00:41:33,200
Speaker 1: about the coin operated and pinball industries, and fun to

685
00:41:33,239 --> 00:41:37,880
Speaker 1: talk to. Midway also changed the name of Atari Games

686
00:41:37,920 --> 00:41:41,840
Speaker 1: to Midway Games West, but that division only remained in

687
00:41:41,920 --> 00:41:44,680
Speaker 1: operation for a couple more years before Midway shut it

688
00:41:44,719 --> 00:41:49,200
Speaker 1: down in two thousand three. Didn't eliminate it, but it

689
00:41:49,239 --> 00:41:54,040
Speaker 1: was effectively mothballed. By two thousand one, Midway had shut

690
00:41:54,080 --> 00:41:57,719
Speaker 1: down its entire arcade division and focused solely on developing

691
00:41:57,719 --> 00:42:00,600
Speaker 1: for the home video game market. This meant the company

692
00:42:00,640 --> 00:42:03,239
Speaker 1: would let go some employees who weren't really able to

693
00:42:03,280 --> 00:42:06,640
Speaker 1: transition over to the home market, but the company would

694
00:42:06,640 --> 00:42:10,920
Speaker 1: stay in business while longer releasing several titles for various systems.

695
00:42:11,280 --> 00:42:14,040
Speaker 1: Mortal Kombat would live on as a series of games

696
00:42:14,080 --> 00:42:17,880
Speaker 1: released to home and handhold held consoles UH that included

697
00:42:17,920 --> 00:42:22,600
Speaker 1: sequels like Mortal Kombat Deadly Alliance, which was a sequel

698
00:42:22,640 --> 00:42:26,000
Speaker 1: to Mortal Kombat four and You. Also had spinoffs like

699
00:42:26,080 --> 00:42:30,480
Speaker 1: the universally loathed Mortal Kombat Special Forces for the PlayStation,

700
00:42:30,719 --> 00:42:34,360
Speaker 1: which followed the Adventures of Jack's and was pretty terrible

701
00:42:35,080 --> 00:42:38,800
Speaker 1: on the financial front. Things were not looking great for Midway.

702
00:42:39,080 --> 00:42:41,320
Speaker 1: The company had been in a bit of decline before

703
00:42:41,360 --> 00:42:44,000
Speaker 1: getting out of the arcade business. You might argue that

704
00:42:44,040 --> 00:42:47,560
Speaker 1: they got out a little too late, or that they

705
00:42:47,560 --> 00:42:51,040
Speaker 1: did not invest enough in the home video game market

706
00:42:51,520 --> 00:42:54,759
Speaker 1: to make a good presence there um. In fact, this

707
00:42:54,880 --> 00:42:56,879
Speaker 1: was all coming to a head not long after the

708
00:42:56,920 --> 00:42:59,719
Speaker 1: company first had its I p O. So it goes

709
00:43:00,040 --> 00:43:01,960
Speaker 1: look on the stock market, and not long after that

710
00:43:02,080 --> 00:43:07,200
Speaker 1: starts to enter serious financial difficulty. In night, the company

711
00:43:07,320 --> 00:43:10,680
Speaker 1: had boasted a profit of sixty five million dollars. In

712
00:43:10,760 --> 00:43:14,760
Speaker 1: nine the operating profit had fallen to eight point three

713
00:43:14,840 --> 00:43:17,279
Speaker 1: million dollars, which is not the way you want to

714
00:43:17,320 --> 00:43:21,400
Speaker 1: see that number go from year to year. In fact,

715
00:43:21,880 --> 00:43:25,040
Speaker 1: was the last year Midway would post an operating profit

716
00:43:25,120 --> 00:43:28,480
Speaker 1: at all. Even after shuttering down the arcade division to

717
00:43:28,520 --> 00:43:32,880
Speaker 1: focus exclusively on the home market, the company still saw losses.

718
00:43:33,400 --> 00:43:36,280
Speaker 1: In two thousand two, it was a fifty two million

719
00:43:36,400 --> 00:43:40,920
Speaker 1: dollar operating loss. Ouch In two thousand three, Neil nic

720
00:43:40,920 --> 00:43:44,560
Speaker 1: Castro stepped down as head of Midway. He still remained

721
00:43:44,560 --> 00:43:46,799
Speaker 1: on the chair as the chair of the board, but

722
00:43:46,880 --> 00:43:49,759
Speaker 1: he stepped down as as president. He was replaced by

723
00:43:49,760 --> 00:43:53,440
Speaker 1: a man named David F. Zucker, who had previously served

724
00:43:53,480 --> 00:43:59,280
Speaker 1: as president of Playboy Enterprises, publishers of the Playboy magazine. Anyway,

725
00:43:59,360 --> 00:44:05,120
Speaker 1: Zucker didn't exactly reinvigorate Midway's financial performance. In two thousand four,

726
00:44:05,920 --> 00:44:08,680
Speaker 1: there was a twenty five million dollar loss. In two

727
00:44:08,719 --> 00:44:13,120
Speaker 1: thousand five, it was a one hundred eight million dollar loss.

728
00:44:13,640 --> 00:44:17,040
Speaker 1: This was grim stuff. Now. Zucker served as president of

729
00:44:17,040 --> 00:44:20,040
Speaker 1: Midway for four years or so, but the company telling

730
00:44:20,120 --> 00:44:23,200
Speaker 1: up a few hundred million dollars in losses in that time.

731
00:44:23,640 --> 00:44:26,400
Speaker 1: It was not a good look, as they say. And

732
00:44:26,440 --> 00:44:30,120
Speaker 1: in two thousand eight, Zucker got the boot and Booty

733
00:44:30,280 --> 00:44:33,839
Speaker 1: got the the position. Matt Booty, that's actually his name.

734
00:44:33,880 --> 00:44:37,000
Speaker 1: He was the guy who became the interim president of Midway.

735
00:44:37,360 --> 00:44:40,400
Speaker 1: Zucker also became one of the defendants in a class

736
00:44:40,400 --> 00:44:45,000
Speaker 1: action lawsuit that alleged that Midway executives had misled investors

737
00:44:45,000 --> 00:44:48,880
Speaker 1: with regard to the company's performance. The court ultimately found

738
00:44:49,040 --> 00:44:52,120
Speaker 1: that all the defendants were not guilty on the basis

739
00:44:52,160 --> 00:44:56,680
Speaker 1: that the prosecution failed to link investor losses to direct

740
00:44:56,719 --> 00:45:01,920
Speaker 1: actions taken by company leadership. Sumner Redstone, the late billionaire

741
00:45:01,960 --> 00:45:07,120
Speaker 1: and majority shareholder in Viacom CBS invested heavily in Midway

742
00:45:07,160 --> 00:45:11,200
Speaker 1: back in two thousand four, essentially getting shareholder control of

743
00:45:11,200 --> 00:45:14,640
Speaker 1: the company. But by two thousand eight he cashed out

744
00:45:14,880 --> 00:45:17,720
Speaker 1: and he sold all his shares to an investor named

745
00:45:17,800 --> 00:45:22,520
Speaker 1: Mark Thomas. Every reference I could find to Mark Thomas

746
00:45:22,600 --> 00:45:26,520
Speaker 1: referred to him as a mysterious investor, so I like

747
00:45:26,600 --> 00:45:28,840
Speaker 1: to think that he was like in a tan trench

748
00:45:28,920 --> 00:45:32,280
Speaker 1: coat and a fedora or something. Anyway, he bought sunder

749
00:45:32,320 --> 00:45:36,440
Speaker 1: Redstones shares for just a hundred thousand dollars. That was

750
00:45:36,680 --> 00:45:40,480
Speaker 1: pennies on the dollar for what Sumner had paid for

751
00:45:40,520 --> 00:45:44,319
Speaker 1: those shares. However, that price tag also carried with it

752
00:45:44,400 --> 00:45:48,600
Speaker 1: the debt of Midway, which amounted to about seventy million dollars.

753
00:45:49,520 --> 00:45:52,440
Speaker 1: By this point, the company was already in a death spiral.

754
00:45:52,680 --> 00:45:56,319
Speaker 1: In two thousand nine, it entered bankruptcy, and that was

755
00:45:56,400 --> 00:45:59,759
Speaker 1: the real beginning of the end, or maybe the end

756
00:45:59,760 --> 00:46:01,400
Speaker 1: of the end. I guess the beginning of the end

757
00:46:01,480 --> 00:46:06,440
Speaker 1: was really back in the late nineties, Warner Brothers Entertainment

758
00:46:06,520 --> 00:46:10,720
Speaker 1: swooped in and purchased Midways assets, including the Mortal Kombat

759
00:46:10,800 --> 00:46:15,200
Speaker 1: intellectual property. Oh And while the Atari Games, Midway West

760
00:46:15,239 --> 00:46:18,359
Speaker 1: had been shut down it was technically still among the

761
00:46:18,360 --> 00:46:21,560
Speaker 1: company's assets. That meant that Warner Brothers took possession of

762
00:46:21,560 --> 00:46:25,239
Speaker 1: Atari Games for a third time. I told you that

763
00:46:25,280 --> 00:46:29,360
Speaker 1: Atari story is bonkers. And out of all the folks

764
00:46:29,400 --> 00:46:32,960
Speaker 1: over at Midway, really only the Mortal Kombat team was

765
00:46:33,000 --> 00:46:36,279
Speaker 1: able to transition over to work for Warner Brothers. Most

766
00:46:36,320 --> 00:46:39,800
Speaker 1: of midways facilities were shut down, but that core team

767
00:46:40,160 --> 00:46:43,960
Speaker 1: survived the purge, and initially they were to join Warner

768
00:46:44,000 --> 00:46:48,200
Speaker 1: Brothers Video game publishing arm which was called Interactive Entertainment

769
00:46:48,800 --> 00:46:52,000
Speaker 1: UH and they became known as w B Games Chicago.

770
00:46:52,480 --> 00:46:56,960
Speaker 1: But in twos the group reincorporated into nether Realm Studios,

771
00:46:57,040 --> 00:46:59,880
Speaker 1: still part of Warner Brothers. The first game it published

772
00:47:00,200 --> 00:47:05,000
Speaker 1: in and can you guess what that game was? If

773
00:47:05,040 --> 00:47:08,960
Speaker 1: you said a soft reboot of Mortal Kombat, you are correct.

774
00:47:09,719 --> 00:47:12,919
Speaker 1: The studio has developed several games, not all of them

775
00:47:13,120 --> 00:47:17,120
Speaker 1: are Mortal Kombat titles. There's also the Injustice games, which

776
00:47:17,160 --> 00:47:21,000
Speaker 1: are fighting games that feature d C Comics characters in them.

777
00:47:21,080 --> 00:47:23,960
Speaker 1: The play style is a lot um it's a lot

778
00:47:24,000 --> 00:47:27,600
Speaker 1: like Mortal Kombat. There's a lot more to be said

779
00:47:27,840 --> 00:47:30,960
Speaker 1: about the story of Midway. Remember that began back in

780
00:47:30,960 --> 00:47:33,319
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties or earlier, depending on how you look

781
00:47:33,360 --> 00:47:36,239
Speaker 1: at it, and it ended rather than ceremoniously in two

782
00:47:36,320 --> 00:47:38,200
Speaker 1: thousand nine or so. But there are a lot of

783
00:47:38,200 --> 00:47:40,680
Speaker 1: other things I didn't really touch on and related stories

784
00:47:40,680 --> 00:47:42,520
Speaker 1: that I hope to cover in future episodes of tech

785
00:47:42,600 --> 00:47:46,600
Speaker 1: Stuff to kind of talk about the whole industry of

786
00:47:46,640 --> 00:47:52,920
Speaker 1: coin operated entertainment, as well as the complicated history of

787
00:47:52,920 --> 00:47:56,520
Speaker 1: different video game developers and the companies that they've worked

788
00:47:56,520 --> 00:47:59,120
Speaker 1: for and the relationships they've had with one another. But

789
00:47:59,200 --> 00:48:01,640
Speaker 1: for now, I think it's time to step back from

790
00:48:01,680 --> 00:48:05,480
Speaker 1: this storied company and this topic, and we'll shift our

791
00:48:05,520 --> 00:48:08,719
Speaker 1: focus to something else next week. In the meantime, if

792
00:48:08,719 --> 00:48:11,440
Speaker 1: you have suggestions for things I should talk about on

793
00:48:11,560 --> 00:48:14,120
Speaker 1: tech Stuff, please reach out and let me know what

794
00:48:14,200 --> 00:48:16,319
Speaker 1: those are. The best way to do that is over

795
00:48:16,360 --> 00:48:19,440
Speaker 1: on Twitter. To handle for the show is text Stuff

796
00:48:19,760 --> 00:48:23,600
Speaker 1: H s W and I'll talk to you again really soon.

797
00:48:28,800 --> 00:48:31,839
Speaker 1: Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more

798
00:48:31,920 --> 00:48:35,279
Speaker 1: podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,

799
00:48:35,440 --> 00:48:38,600
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.