Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and a lot of all things tech. And in Monday's episode,
Speaker 1: I covered how the arcade game Mortal Kombat emerged out
Speaker 1: of a company called Midway. That was a company that
Speaker 1: was really a mishmash of several other companies that all
Speaker 1: were in the coin operated amusement biz at elements of
Speaker 1: Midway Manufacturing, Williams Electronics, and Bally all wrapped up in there.
Speaker 1: It's pretty complicated stuff. The two leads in charge of
Speaker 1: developing Mortal Kombat were Williams employees, but then Williams acquired
Speaker 1: Midway and changed the name of that division of Williams
Speaker 1: to Midway Games. And though they didn't necessarily set out
Speaker 1: to make a video game with over the top violence
Speaker 1: and even more over the top fatalities, that game naturally
Speaker 1: evolved in that direction as they developed it and Mortal
Speaker 1: Kombat hit the arcades. In I didn't really talk about
Speaker 1: the structure of the game and how it worked from
Speaker 1: a gameplay aspect very much in that last episode, So
Speaker 1: I'm going to give a very brief overview here. Mortal
Speaker 1: Kombat is modeled after fight tournaments, and really it's a
Speaker 1: lot like fight tournament movies more than actual fight tournaments,
Speaker 1: specifically the sort of gen Claude van Damn variety of
Speaker 1: you know, martial arts tournament films. Players choose one of
Speaker 1: seven characters, and then they go through a series of matches,
Speaker 1: each match lasting up to three rounds. Winning two of
Speaker 1: those three rounds would allow the player to progress further
Speaker 1: up the tournament ladder, and winning two rounds in a
Speaker 1: road just means that you wouldn't even have to play
Speaker 1: through the third round. The controls for the game included
Speaker 1: an eight direction joystick and five buttons. There were two
Speaker 1: punch buttons high and low, to kick buttons also high
Speaker 1: and low, and in the middle a block button. Each
Speaker 1: character had numerous moves that would result from joystick and
Speaker 1: button combinations, and the fatalities at the end of a
Speaker 1: game where you had defeated your opponent, and one year,
Speaker 1: two out of three those relied on specific inputs of
Speaker 1: joystick and button combinations, So, for example, Scorpions fatality and
Speaker 1: Mortal Kombat one was you had to start about half
Speaker 1: a screen away from your opponent, hold the block button
Speaker 1: and then push up on the joystick twice. Then Scorpion
Speaker 1: would pull off his mask, revealing a skull and breathe
Speaker 1: fire out onto his opponent, reducing that person to a skeleton. Now,
Speaker 1: if you were playing the tournament against the actual arcade machine,
Speaker 1: so you know a computer is controlling the second character,
Speaker 1: then a second player could come up and actually interrupt things.
Speaker 1: So player number two walks up, plunks in some quarters
Speaker 1: and then joining in, and that would mean the first
Speaker 1: player would enter into a new match against the second player,
Speaker 1: and whoever won that contest, you know, contest with a K,
Speaker 1: would then proceed through the tournament. So if the first
Speaker 1: player lost, then they would be out of luck and
Speaker 1: the second player could continue to play against the machine,
Speaker 1: or maybe someone else comes up and challenges them. Like
Speaker 1: I said in the last episode, you know, the loser pays,
Speaker 1: the winner stays. If a player gets through the other
Speaker 1: six characters in tournament mode, then they face a doppel
Speaker 1: ganger of their own character, and after that, the player
Speaker 1: has to win three endurance matches, which they face two
Speaker 1: opponents per match instead of just one, though they don't
Speaker 1: face both opponents at the same time. Essentially, you have
Speaker 1: to defeat your first opponent, which and triggers the entrance
Speaker 1: of the second opponent, and if you succeed in doing that,
Speaker 1: then you would go up against a sub boss in
Speaker 1: the game named Goro, who is a massive foe armed
Speaker 1: monster who deals enormous amounts of damage, and if you
Speaker 1: beat Goro, then you go up against the ultimate boss
Speaker 1: in the game, Sheng Sung, and defeating Shank Sung leads
Speaker 1: to an end screen that explains your character's fate after
Speaker 1: winning the Mortal Kombat tournament, and that's where some of
Speaker 1: the early lore came in. You had intro screens as
Speaker 1: well in attract mode. Attract mode is what the arcade
Speaker 1: Biz called the screens that games would show in order
Speaker 1: to kind of entice people to come in and play
Speaker 1: the game anyway. Those would explain who the characters were,
Speaker 1: and then you had your victory screens that gave a
Speaker 1: little more information about them, but at the time it
Speaker 1: was pretty threadbare. Future chapters in the Mortal Kombat saga
Speaker 1: would give a lot more background, as would a lot
Speaker 1: of additional material provided by stuff like comic books and movies,
Speaker 1: and sometimes this would end up having contradictory information, so
Speaker 1: the lore does not always stay in line throughout the
Speaker 1: entire series. For fighting games, I'm not sure you need
Speaker 1: that much background. But then Mortal Kombat has obviously extended
Speaker 1: well beyond just the games. We'll talk about that more
Speaker 1: in a little bit. Mortal Kombat spawned countless imitators, as
Speaker 1: well as inspired game developers from other companies to make
Speaker 1: similarly violent games. Not just fighting games, but other styles
Speaker 1: of games too. Started to get more violent and more
Speaker 1: graphic and gory. While in the golden age of arcades,
Speaker 1: games were kind of more abstract and fanciful. Uh not
Speaker 1: necessarily better, They just, you know, they couldn't be graphic
Speaker 1: because we just didn't have the technology to do it.
Speaker 1: But there was a shift towards more violent and gory
Speaker 1: games upon the success of More Combat. Not that we
Speaker 1: suddenly saw all other types of games just disappear, but
Speaker 1: the trend certainly favored violence and over the top gore.
Speaker 1: While some media coverage took midway to task for releasing
Speaker 1: such a violent game, criticism didn't really pick up until
Speaker 1: the title made its way to home systems, ported to
Speaker 1: the Nintendo and Sega game systems of the time. Nintendo's
Speaker 1: version infamously removed all the blood, replacing it with gray fluid.
Speaker 1: That was I guess sweat. Sega's system if you entered
Speaker 1: a code at the beginning of the game, kept all
Speaker 1: that blood in so you can actually enact the the
Speaker 1: blood mode in Mortal Kombat. And that was actually part
Speaker 1: of Sega's campaign, saying that Sega does what Nintendo don't
Speaker 1: cute right. Those home games got the attention of various
Speaker 1: parental groups and politicians, and there followed a great debate
Speaker 1: about video games and their role in corrupting the youth.
Speaker 1: Won't somebody please think of the children? This was extremely similar,
Speaker 1: one might even say identical to previous waves of parental
Speaker 1: concern about such societal threats as rock and or roll music,
Speaker 1: Dungeons and Dragons, and violent movies or TV shows. To
Speaker 1: this day, studies show no correlation between violent video games
Speaker 1: and violent behavior, and suggest that perhaps people who are
Speaker 1: prone to violent outbursts may also like violent video games,
Speaker 1: but that violent video games don't necessarily make people prone
Speaker 1: to violent outbursts. So, in other words, maybe there's some
Speaker 1: sort of relationship here, but there doesn't appear to be
Speaker 1: any causation, and the correlation kind of goes in the
Speaker 1: opposite direction that these groups seem to believe. In other words,
Speaker 1: it's not that violent games make violent people, but that
Speaker 1: violent people might like violent games. The home release of
Speaker 1: Mortal Kombat was one of the events that precipitated the
Speaker 1: creation of the Entertainment Software Rating Board or e s RB.
Speaker 1: The concern about video game violence and its influence on young,
Speaker 1: impressionable minds went all the way up to US Congress
Speaker 1: in and ninety four. In these hearings, which were pretty
Speaker 1: difficult to listen to, it became clear that Congress was
Speaker 1: getting ready to wade into the world of video games
Speaker 1: and potentially start censoring stuff unless the industry guides act
Speaker 1: together and took care of things itself. The response from
Speaker 1: the industry was the e s r B, which would
Speaker 1: have a uniform system to assign ratings to games, which
Speaker 1: would give parents an indication of what sort of content
Speaker 1: the games contained and an estimation of the appropriate age
Speaker 1: of player. So, in other words, you would come across
Speaker 1: a game in a store, there would be a label
Speaker 1: on it and it would tell you, oh, this game
Speaker 1: is not appropriate for young players. For people under the
Speaker 1: age of say, thirteen, so I shouldn't give this to
Speaker 1: you know, a little timmy. And just as a side
Speaker 1: note on this Congress up, it's full of old people,
Speaker 1: like really old people. There are a few younger people
Speaker 1: in Congress too, but not many. And I say this
Speaker 1: as someone who is admittedly a rapidly aging person, and
Speaker 1: old people have trouble keeping up with the way trends change.
Speaker 1: To the old people, video games were just things for
Speaker 1: little kids. They were toys. It didn't occur to most
Speaker 1: of these old people that the young folks who grew
Speaker 1: up with video games in the early eighties were still
Speaker 1: playing video games on more recent systems by the mid nineties,
Speaker 1: and that this meant the young kids were now young adults.
Speaker 1: So to the old people, it was all like five
Speaker 1: and six year olds that were playing Mortal Kombat and
Speaker 1: learning that if you take off your mask you can
Speaker 1: incinerate someone and leave a scorched skeleton in their place.
Speaker 1: Because remember we're talking about realistic violence here. Okay, I
Speaker 1: might be getting a little snarky. I would say that
Speaker 1: there was probably a knowledge gap for parents, so a
Speaker 1: rating system wasn't a bad idea. Necessarily, many parents are
Speaker 1: also rapidly aging people and maybe are unaware that video
Speaker 1: games had sort of changed from the days when you
Speaker 1: were a yellow disc eating dots and avoiding ghosts. So
Speaker 1: a rating system that would let parents know, hey, this
Speaker 1: game might not be right for little Timmy who is five.
Speaker 1: That wasn't necessarily a bad idea, though I would argue
Speaker 1: that if you have a game titled Mortal Kombat and
Speaker 1: the game box shows people fighting each other, then that
Speaker 1: might already be a bit of an indicator. But what
Speaker 1: the heck do I know? Anyway, the moral panic fed
Speaker 1: into the creation of the e s RB, and the
Speaker 1: industry would assign ratings to keep the government out of
Speaker 1: regulating the video game industry. As long as they did it,
Speaker 1: the government would need to. For Midway, this was really
Speaker 1: all great publicity. The company wasn't actually in the business
Speaker 1: of making home video games right now. In fact, it
Speaker 1: wasn't responsible for those home ports. It was still firmly
Speaker 1: in the coin operated arcade game business, so it licensed
Speaker 1: out its titles to other developers, who then went on
Speaker 1: to make the home console versions of the Midway titles.
Speaker 1: But Midway itself was still firmly in the business of
Speaker 1: taking people's money one quarter at a time, or you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes two quarters. Mortal Kombat had sort of gained this
Speaker 1: reputation for being edgy, and that helped push sales. Arcade
Speaker 1: owners and you know, other proprietors who had purchased arcade cabinets.
Speaker 1: We're pretty happy because the games were popular and it
Speaker 1: was possible to recoup the investment of purchasing an arcade
Speaker 1: machine within a few weeks. Meanwhile, back at Midway, the
Speaker 1: plan was to build on success. The Mortal Kombat team
Speaker 1: began working on a sequel pretty much right away after
Speaker 1: the release of the first game. In Midway released other
Speaker 1: games too, not just Mortal Kombat. One of the big
Speaker 1: ones was NBA jam in nine. That game featured two
Speaker 1: on two basketball games with digitized images of players from
Speaker 1: the NBA officially licensed for the arcade game. The team
Speaker 1: used images of various players grabbing pictures of their heads
Speaker 1: looking in directions like up, down, left, right, and diagonal up,
Speaker 1: diagonal down, that kind of stuff. The digitized heads were
Speaker 1: plopped onto, you know, kind of cartoonish bodies, and the
Speaker 1: game featured over the top action, enthusiastic commentary from a
Speaker 1: voice actor and a lot of fast paced action on
Speaker 1: the screen. It also incorporated rubber banding, meaning that if
Speaker 1: you were playing against the computer and you were starting
Speaker 1: to get ahead, then that computer would start to make
Speaker 1: your shots miss and your opponents would start to hit
Speaker 1: their shots. Likewise, if you were falling way behind, well
Speaker 1: and suddenly the computer controlled team wouldn't make as many
Speaker 1: shots and you would be able to catch up. So
Speaker 1: the goal from the games perspective was to keep those
Speaker 1: games close and exciting, and also to keep convincing players
Speaker 1: to plunk in quarters to continue the game to completion.
Speaker 1: But it did feel a little bit like cheating. There
Speaker 1: was also some legit chicanery going on with the game.
Speaker 1: The dominant team at the time were the Chicago Bulls,
Speaker 1: represented in NBA Jam by Scottie Pippen and Horace Grant.
Speaker 1: But a big rival to the Chicago Bulls were the
Speaker 1: Detroit Pistons, and it turned out that Mark Termel you
Speaker 1: remember from the previous episode that he came into William's
Speaker 1: Slash midway and began work on Smash TV. Well, anyway,
Speaker 1: while he was working on NBA Jam, he decided, as
Speaker 1: a big Detroit Pistons fan, that he was going to
Speaker 1: change the odds a little bit. So if you happen
Speaker 1: to be playing the Pistons against the Bulls, you would
Speaker 1: see that the Bulls players tend to miss shots at
Speaker 1: a critical point in the game, like if it's a
Speaker 1: buzzer beating type of shot, they miss, Whereas if you're
Speaker 1: playing the Pistons and you make a buzzer beating shot
Speaker 1: that would win you the game, you hit it and
Speaker 1: take that Chicago Bowls. Originally, Midway wanted to put a
Speaker 1: bunch of special characters in NBA Jam, including Mortal Kombat characters,
Speaker 1: a sort of Easter eggs, but the NBA objected to
Speaker 1: that idea, so only a few special characters actually made
Speaker 1: it into that first game, and they were all Midway
Speaker 1: employees like John Carlton and Tony Gotsky, and you know,
Speaker 1: Mortal Kombat was a big hit for Midway, but NBA
Speaker 1: Jam blew the doors off it. Midway got a call
Speaker 1: early on when they were testing NBA Jam in a
Speaker 1: few locations around Chicago, and the call said that the
Speaker 1: game was broken, which was a huge issue. I mean, obviously,
Speaker 1: if something is wrong with the game, the team would
Speaker 1: have to come up with a fix before the game
Speaker 1: goes into full production or else they're going to be
Speaker 1: sending out, you know, replacement chips to potentially thousands of
Speaker 1: different proprietors. So the t went out to check on
Speaker 1: the machine to find out what was wrong. They found
Speaker 1: out that the problem was so many people had been
Speaker 1: playing the game that the coin receptacle in the machine
Speaker 1: was over full and it could not accept any more quarters,
Speaker 1: which is actually a pretty darn good problem to have,
Speaker 1: and it indicated that NBA Jam was going to be
Speaker 1: a monster hit. Not all of Midways titles were as
Speaker 1: big of a success, however. There was also Revolution X.
Speaker 1: That game was a shooter game, so the arcade version
Speaker 1: had gun controllers attached to it, so you held a
Speaker 1: little plastic gun and fired at the screen, and the
Speaker 1: targets on the screen were all sorts of different stuff.
Speaker 1: I guess you guys are probably familiar with this type
Speaker 1: of arcade game. Anyway, Revolution X had a really bizarre plot,
Speaker 1: and even more bizarre was the involvement of the band Aerosmith.
Speaker 1: The band actually appeared on screen as characters in the game.
Speaker 1: They would encourage you in between sequel this is uh
Speaker 1: they're acting? Was um not great, but the game was
Speaker 1: really weird. It hadn't share of fans, but overall it
Speaker 1: just didn't, you know, do so well for Midway. But
Speaker 1: let's get back to the Mortal Kombat team. They were
Speaker 1: busy making the sequel to Mortal Kombat, and the bosses
Speaker 1: in charge were making sure that they were covering their
Speaker 1: bases with a real carrot and stick approach in order
Speaker 1: to motivate employees. I'll explain more when we come back
Speaker 1: after these messages. According to Mortal Kombat co creator Ed Boone,
Speaker 1: originally his team was thinking of moving forward on pursuing
Speaker 1: a licensed Star Wars arcade game. Depending on which version
Speaker 1: of the history of Midway you're looking at, this could
Speaker 1: fall either after Mortal Kombat, before Mortal Kombat two, or
Speaker 1: between two and three, or even between three and four.
Speaker 1: It kind of I think a lot of people just
Speaker 1: have mixed up memories and it's hard to place them
Speaker 1: in the correct chronology. But anyway, they were thinking about
Speaker 1: moving on to something else. However, they were told by
Speaker 1: management that that was crazy, that they should make another
Speaker 1: Mortal Kombat game, because that game was exploding in popularity
Speaker 1: and people wanted more, and they thought Oh, that's We
Speaker 1: hadn't even really thought about that because we were so
Speaker 1: used to making a game and then you switch and
Speaker 1: change to develop a totally different game. So their goal
Speaker 1: was to improve upon the original Mortal Kombat. They wanted
Speaker 1: to introduce some new fighters, some new moves, some new stages,
Speaker 1: and new storylines. To that end, the fighting roster went
Speaker 1: from seven playable characters from the first Mortal Kombat game
Speaker 1: to twelve in the sequel. Sonja Blade and Kano, two
Speaker 1: of the original fighters, would actually be unavailable Immortal Kombat too.
Speaker 1: They appeared in the background in the relient in the game.
Speaker 1: They had both been captured by the big bad guy,
Speaker 1: Shao Khan, who was the boss of Shang Sung. That
Speaker 1: was the the big bad guy from the first game,
Speaker 1: so now Seng Sung would serve as a sub boss fight.
Speaker 1: He had been rejuvenated, so in the first game he
Speaker 1: appeared as an old Nan and in the second game
Speaker 1: he appeared as a much younger man. Following Sean Sung
Speaker 1: if you were to defeat him, would be Shao Khan's
Speaker 1: bodyguard Kintaro, who was kind of like a tiger striped
Speaker 1: version of Goro from the first game, and then The
Speaker 1: final boss of the game was Shao Khan himself. New
Speaker 1: characters included women ninja like Molina and Katana. There was
Speaker 1: also a hidden female ninja named Jade. There was a
Speaker 1: monstrous new character named Baraka who could extend blades from
Speaker 1: his arms. There were new male ninja that included Smoke,
Speaker 1: and new Saibot, whom perceptive listeners will recognize is having
Speaker 1: a name that is Boon and Tobias old backward, so
Speaker 1: John Tobias and Ed Boone were the co creators of
Speaker 1: Mortal Kombat, Boon being the lead programmer and Tobias being
Speaker 1: the lead artist. You also had new characters like Jack's
Speaker 1: and Kung Lao, and among the new moves were some
Speaker 1: that were kind of jokes. You still had fatalities, in fact,
Speaker 1: now each character had two different fatalities to choose from,
Speaker 1: but perhaps to poke fun at the reaction to the
Speaker 1: over the top gore from the previous game. UH. You
Speaker 1: also had babilities that would turn the loser into a
Speaker 1: crying baby. And then you also had friendships which uh.
Speaker 1: Instead of the winner slaughtering the loser, the winner would
Speaker 1: do something nice like give a present or a smooch,
Speaker 1: you know, very sweet. On top of that, the developers
Speaker 1: chose to speed up the gameplay from the first game,
Speaker 1: so there was less recovery time between strikes, which amped
Speaker 1: up the energy of the man, which is considerably The
Speaker 1: game was the first Midway Cabinet to use the DCS
Speaker 1: sound system, that was the digital compression system. Williams Electronics
Speaker 1: had developed the DCS for the pinball game line of Williams.
Speaker 1: Uh Those were actually still marketed either as Williams Machines
Speaker 1: or Bally Machines. So funny that in the old days,
Speaker 1: Bally and Williams were competitors. Now they both belonged to
Speaker 1: the same company, but you still had pinball machines that
Speaker 1: were branded either Bally or Williams as if they were
Speaker 1: still competing. The Mortal Kombat team received more resources while
Speaker 1: they were developing the sequel, and while they were busy
Speaker 1: putting it together, they saw that the home version of
Speaker 1: Mortal Kombat was selling extremely well. It's probably a pretty
Speaker 1: good time to be working within that team over at Midway,
Speaker 1: probably feeling pretty good about your work. Making things sweeter
Speaker 1: was that the company was putting in place a kind
Speaker 1: of bonus policy if a game sold really well, then
Speaker 1: the team making that game would get a bonus from
Speaker 1: the revenue generated through the sales. Essentially you're getting like
Speaker 1: a cut. According to the documentary insert Coin, these bonuses
Speaker 1: had a cap of two million dollars, which that is
Speaker 1: a lot of money. But you might ask, well, why
Speaker 1: is it capped? Why was there a limit? Well, according
Speaker 1: to that that documentary where they were interviewing various people
Speaker 1: from Midway, the managers wanted to make sure that the
Speaker 1: developers wouldn't get rich and then just retire because they
Speaker 1: needed those folks to to keep making games so the
Speaker 1: company would keep making money. So they said, well, we
Speaker 1: can't give them more than that or they'll just quit.
Speaker 1: Why would they keep working? So that was the the
Speaker 1: reasoning from the management level of capping the bonuses. So
Speaker 1: the revenue sharing was a carrot. But I also mentioned
Speaker 1: before the break that there was a stick. So in
Speaker 1: this case, the real stick was a non compete clause.
Speaker 1: The employees at Midway were under a non compete agreement
Speaker 1: that said they weren't allowed to just leave Midway and
Speaker 1: work for a compat editor. And while the legality of
Speaker 1: non compete clauses is something that tends to be a
Speaker 1: bit questionable legally speaking, it did give Midway the gateway
Speaker 1: to sue former employees should they try to leave the
Speaker 1: company and work for someone else, And the goal wasn't
Speaker 1: to win the lawsuit. The goal was to discourage former
Speaker 1: employees all by forcing an expensive, lengthy and stressful process
Speaker 1: into the mix, and it helped intimidate existing employees at Midway.
Speaker 1: They would discourage them from following in the footsteps of
Speaker 1: the person who left. So, if you think that sounds
Speaker 1: kind of gross, um in agreement with you. The company
Speaker 1: wanted to keep making hits and for that and he
Speaker 1: had to hold on to talent, and this was kind
Speaker 1: of how Midway went about doing that by giving them
Speaker 1: bonuses and telling them, if you leave and try to
Speaker 1: work for someone else, we will sue you to the
Speaker 1: ends of the earth. Fun times. Meanwhile, there was a
Speaker 1: little bit of a kerfuffle behind the scenes due to
Speaker 1: Mortal Kombat two. Three of the actors who were involved
Speaker 1: in the development Elizabeth Malecki, who had been used as
Speaker 1: the the stand in for Sonja Blade and the first game,
Speaker 1: Catalan Zamyar who played Katana, Molina and Jade, and Dr
Speaker 1: Philip On, who played the Young Shank Sung Immortal Combat Too.
Speaker 1: They all filed a lawsuit against Midway seeking compensation and
Speaker 1: form of royalties. They argue that they should be due
Speaker 1: some of those royalties because of the revenue generated by
Speaker 1: sales of the game. So these were the actors who
Speaker 1: were shot on video and that video was then digitized
Speaker 1: in order to become part of the animation of the games.
Speaker 1: In fact, they were more digitized. They use more of
Speaker 1: the digitized footage in World Combat Too than the stuff
Speaker 1: that they had shot for Mortal Kombat one. This isn't
Speaker 1: that strange in the world of acting to demand royalties.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's pretty much standard procedure. If your work
Speaker 1: is going to continue generating revenue then and it stands
Speaker 1: to reason that you deserve some of that revenue. Um.
Speaker 1: It's the reason why organizations like the Screen Actors Guild
Speaker 1: exists in order to help guarantee fairness when it comes
Speaker 1: to compensation for work. But Midway argued that the actors
Speaker 1: were all in a work for higher status and thus
Speaker 1: not eligible for royalties. The judge found in favor of Midway,
Speaker 1: and those actors would not return for Mortal Kombat three,
Speaker 1: which meant the company had to either leave them out
Speaker 1: or recast those roles with new actors. They also had
Speaker 1: to get a new Johnny Cage. Daniel Pasina, the actor
Speaker 1: who had served as the model for Johnny Cage, as
Speaker 1: well as sub Zero and some others, had also sued Midway.
Speaker 1: Passina was seeking compensation for the use of his likeness
Speaker 1: in the home versions of Mortal Kombat Too, which we're
Speaker 1: selling really well. He and his fellow actors had been
Speaker 1: paid a flat hourly rate. Passina says that for the
Speaker 1: first Mortal Kombat it was fifty dollars an hour, which
Speaker 1: ended up being a paycheck of a few thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: and for the second game it was seventy five an hour,
Speaker 1: but like the other actors, there were no guarantees of
Speaker 1: royalties or a cut of any of the homes sales. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: the court found in favor of Midway, saying that only
Speaker 1: six percent of players surveyed felt that Passina resembled Johnny
Speaker 1: Cage in the games, which would mean that his likeness
Speaker 1: wasn't terribly important. Moreover, the judge essentially said that Possina
Speaker 1: wasn't famous enough for his likeness to have been a
Speaker 1: selling point. For Midway, So in other words, no one
Speaker 1: was rushing to buy the game because Daniel Possina was
Speaker 1: in it. Thus no one was trading upon Possina's likeness
Speaker 1: or fame. Ouch Carlos Posina, Daniel's brother, was working for Midway,
Speaker 1: still was working for them as an art lead, but
Speaker 1: he was also the person who portrayed Raydon in those games.
Speaker 1: And then he helped out on a project called Tattoo Assassins,
Speaker 1: which was a planned fighting game from Data East that
Speaker 1: was meant to be a sort of Mortal Kombat competitor,
Speaker 1: and Daniel Passina had been tagged to work on it,
Speaker 1: and perhaps as a punishment, the character that Carlos Pasina
Speaker 1: portrayed in the first two Mortal Kombat games that being
Speaker 1: raid in would be absent in Mortal Kombat three. Pessina
Speaker 1: would stay on it Midway, but I bet it was
Speaker 1: awkward that, you know, he had been associated with a
Speaker 1: planned game to compete with the company's flagship fighting franchise.
Speaker 1: By the way, Tattoo Assassin never came out. It was planned,
Speaker 1: but it was never released. At the same time, Midway
Speaker 1: developers were getting noticed within the gaming industry and beyond,
Speaker 1: and that interest did give the employees a little bit
Speaker 1: more leverage when it came to negotiating salaries and benefits. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was the non competing there, but those can only
Speaker 1: last so long, and that was giving them the chance
Speaker 1: to say, hey, these other companies are really interested in me.
Speaker 1: If you don't, you know, if you don't help work
Speaker 1: with me to to come up with an agreeable compensation plan,
Speaker 1: I'll leave waited out and then I'll work for them.
Speaker 1: So there was some leverage that the employees had as well.
Speaker 1: It wasn't all a one way street with Midway holding
Speaker 1: all the cards. Something else that was taking shape in
Speaker 1: the mid nineties was the movie adaptation of Mortal Kombat,
Speaker 1: directed by Paul W. S Anderson, who also directed the
Speaker 1: movie Event Horizon. That's a movie that we've talked about
Speaker 1: on Tech Stuff several years ago. We I watched it,
Speaker 1: I think for the first time for that episode to
Speaker 1: talk about the science and tech in that movie. It
Speaker 1: was wacky anyway. The Mortal Kombat movie stitched together a
Speaker 1: narrative about the tournament and Shang Sung and the various fighters.
Speaker 1: It's a cheesy, schlocky movie. I can't exactly recommend it.
Speaker 1: But it did help illustrate how Mortal Kombat had become
Speaker 1: a legitimate cultural touchstone beyond just the arcades. A sequel
Speaker 1: came out for that movie in was called Mortal Combat Annihilation.
Speaker 1: I have never watched that one, and of course now
Speaker 1: we've got the one movie. So those are just three
Speaker 1: examples of Mortal Kombat beyond the arcades. In addition, the
Speaker 1: game inspired a line of toys and clothing lines, uh
Speaker 1: comic book series, I mean, Mortal Kombat became a merchandise
Speaker 1: gold mine. Back at Midway, things were starting to change.
Speaker 1: The home video game market was really exploding, and the
Speaker 1: execs a Midway figured they weren't leveraging that enough by
Speaker 1: licensing their I P out to other companies, because up
Speaker 1: to that point, the strategy was partner with other developers,
Speaker 1: have them create home versions of the arcade games that
Speaker 1: Midway was producing, and in return, those developers would pay
Speaker 1: Midway a licensing fee. But the executives wanted to switch
Speaker 1: things up and start developing games for the home market
Speaker 1: directly through Midway or rather Williams. So in the mid
Speaker 1: nineties the company established a home console game developer division
Speaker 1: within Midway and started producing games in house. As part
Speaker 1: of the effort, Midway acquired a company called trade West,
Speaker 1: transforming into Williams Electronics Incorporated, and then eventually Trade West
Speaker 1: would become Midway Home Entertainment. Trade West was the company
Speaker 1: responsible for some big video game hits, like the infamously
Speaker 1: difficult Battletoads game and the home console version of Double Dragon.
Speaker 1: This would be the early foundation of Midway's home video
Speaker 1: game division. At the same time, the company was still
Speaker 1: producing arcade games coin operated games. The arcade was entering
Speaker 1: a slow decline, but it wasn't yet at a point
Speaker 1: where companies were all ready to just throw in the towel.
Speaker 1: The Williams side of Midway was still producing pinball machines
Speaker 1: branded as either Bally or Williams, and the team's over
Speaker 1: at Midway. We're still working on arcade video machines. One
Speaker 1: of those projects even involved the return of a former
Speaker 1: Midway employee, Eugene Jarvis, who had left company a few
Speaker 1: years earlier. He was developing a race card game called
Speaker 1: Cruise in USA. He had found a partnership with Nintendo,
Speaker 1: but still lacked the resources to get the game finished
Speaker 1: on time and on budget. He was able to bring
Speaker 1: that game under the umbrella of Midway and thus returned
Speaker 1: to Midway and the game would launch in The Mortal
Speaker 1: Kombat team got to work on the third game in
Speaker 1: that series, unsurprisingly called Mortal Kombat three. By this time,
Speaker 1: the team was starting to feel the grind. They kept
Speaker 1: at it, but I'm sure enthusiasm was starting to flag
Speaker 1: a little bit. Once upon a time, the teams would
Speaker 1: move to tackle a totally different game with new challenges
Speaker 1: and new approaches, But Mortal Kombat was a cash cow
Speaker 1: with k's instead of seas, I guess, and leadership at
Speaker 1: Midway saw no reason to stop printing money all of
Speaker 1: a sudden now. The third game saw a couple of
Speaker 1: big changes. For one, several characters were absent, like Onny Cage,
Speaker 1: raid In, and Scorpion. None of them were in the game.
Speaker 1: There were lots of new characters as well, and not
Speaker 1: all of them were big hits. For example, Striker, a
Speaker 1: riot police kind of character, consistently ranks pretty low on
Speaker 1: the Mortal Kombat character lists. The game also introduced a
Speaker 1: run button with a run meter that would deplete as
Speaker 1: you ran, it would refill over time, and the game
Speaker 1: also featured combos, allowing players to string together certain moves
Speaker 1: to create more devastating attacks. Oh in addition to fatalities, bibelities,
Speaker 1: and friendships were the animal itties, which were finishing moves
Speaker 1: in which your character would transform into an animal and
Speaker 1: then slaughter your defeated opponent. You first had to do
Speaker 1: a mercy move before you did that. Mercy was where
Speaker 1: you would give your opponent back a little sliver of
Speaker 1: health just to knock them silly again and then hopefully
Speaker 1: pull off the animal itty. The arcade version, An Immortal
Speaker 1: Comment three, came out on April, and just a few
Speaker 1: months later the company put out home versions out for
Speaker 1: various platforms like the PlayStation, the Sega Genesis, and the Supernintendo.
Speaker 1: At that time, home consoles still couldn't quite match the
Speaker 1: quality of graphics and gameplay you would get at the arcade,
Speaker 1: but that gap was narrowing and the home video game
Speaker 1: market was starting to overtake arcade games. Midway saw its
Speaker 1: flagship arcade division lose ground to the home video game department.
Speaker 1: It was a sign that things were shifting, though Midway
Speaker 1: was not quite ready to throw in the towel on
Speaker 1: coin op machines, just yet when we come back, we
Speaker 1: will wrap up our story about Midway, and this next
Speaker 1: chapter is the most tumultuous out of all of them,
Speaker 1: and that's saying something. But first let's take a quick break.
Speaker 1: So Midway released the home version of Mortal Kombat three,
Speaker 1: and that actually cheesed off some arcade operators, the people
Speaker 1: who own arcades that had Mortal Kombat three arcade machines
Speaker 1: in them, because they were pointing out that they were
Speaker 1: paying thousands of dollars for each arcade machine cabinet and
Speaker 1: then hoping to recoup those costs as players would shove
Speaker 1: quarters into the machines. But then Midway goes around and
Speaker 1: just within a couple of months throws out the home
Speaker 1: version of Mortal Kombat three. They said, well, now you've
Speaker 1: removed a big selling point we have, which was that
Speaker 1: people had to come to our arcade to play this game,
Speaker 1: and now they don't. So to help appease these customers,
Speaker 1: Midway developed a second version of Mortal Kombat three called
Speaker 1: Ultimate Mortal Kombat three. This version included more characters like
Speaker 1: Scorpion and Katana who had previously been left out of
Speaker 1: Vanilla MK three, and it also included some other gameplay elements,
Speaker 1: and arcade operators who had purchased a Mortal Kombat three
Speaker 1: machine had the option to upgrade to Ultimate Mortal Kombat
Speaker 1: three and no additional charge, so that helped create more
Speaker 1: of a selling point to get people to come in
Speaker 1: and play the arcade games. There would be home versions
Speaker 1: of Ultimate Mortal Kombat three and also Mortal Kombat Trilogy,
Speaker 1: which tried to do similar things, but no home version
Speaker 1: is exactly the same experience as the arcade version. Midway
Speaker 1: management was really keen on using competition within the company
Speaker 1: to fuel development, so there were multiple teams working on
Speaker 1: different games and Midway so the Mortal Kombat team was
Speaker 1: just one group of developers. Within Midway, there were others
Speaker 1: working on other projects, and management had a tendency to
Speaker 1: pit the teams against each other and the belief that
Speaker 1: competition would drive the teams to greater success, but it
Speaker 1: also bred a certain amount of resentment within the company
Speaker 1: between teams. One other team that was working on a
Speaker 1: new fighting game was The game was called War Gods.
Speaker 1: This was in response to new fighting games hitting the
Speaker 1: arcades like Virtua Fighter, which incorporated depth into the game.
Speaker 1: It created a sort of three D element, not that
Speaker 1: you were looking at the game in three D, but
Speaker 1: you could move within this fighting realm uh in three dimensions.
Speaker 1: So the team set out to make a fighting game
Speaker 1: that would be as popular as Mortal Kombat, but using
Speaker 1: this approach to three D gameplay elements, and that ended
Speaker 1: up creating some friction within Midway, particularly as it became
Speaker 1: clear that war Gods was borrowing a lot of elements
Speaker 1: from Mortal Kombat, including certain move sets and the use
Speaker 1: of fatalities that rubbed some of the m K developers
Speaker 1: the wrong way, and the company itself was going through
Speaker 1: yet another change. In Midway acquired Atari Games. Really Williams
Speaker 1: acquired Atari Games. That was one of the fragments of
Speaker 1: the old Atari company from the early day is of
Speaker 1: home video games. That story is a very complicated one.
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant of Stuff you should know Fame joined me
Speaker 1: for a couple of episodes about the history of Atari
Speaker 1: where we tried to unravel all that. It is crazy complicated,
Speaker 1: but anyway. Also in Williams launched an I p O
Speaker 1: for Midway Games and just spun off Midway so that
Speaker 1: the arcade in Pinball, parts of what had been w
Speaker 1: m S, the parent company, would now exist as its
Speaker 1: own independent entity, with the rest of w MS, the
Speaker 1: old Williams company, focusing really on casino games. The Williams
Speaker 1: also ended up including all of the I P for
Speaker 1: old Williams based arcade games like Defender and Joust. In
Speaker 1: that deal, w MS transferred its stake in Midway to
Speaker 1: WMS shareholders, So now Midway was truly an independent company.
Speaker 1: And while it was an independent company, Midway in WMS
Speaker 1: would still share some of the same you know, facility
Speaker 1: space and also some of the same executive leadership for
Speaker 1: a while. But this began the process of the two
Speaker 1: companies parting ways. Neil Nicastro became the CEO of the
Speaker 1: new independent company. Neil is the son of Louis Nicastro,
Speaker 1: who was responsible for purchasing Williams Electronics from another company
Speaker 1: many many years ago. You might have heard me talk
Speaker 1: about that. In the first part of this series, the
Speaker 1: MK team was working on Mortal Kombat four, which would
Speaker 1: be the final game in the series that would be
Speaker 1: released as a coin operated arcade machine. Now, for the
Speaker 1: first game in the series, ed Boone had served as
Speaker 1: the soul programmer, but the projects were getting a complex
Speaker 1: enough that he actually needed to bring on a couple
Speaker 1: of extra people to help him out as code developers
Speaker 1: co programmers. This version of Mortal Kombat would rely more
Speaker 1: heavily on straight up computer animation, so they ditched the
Speaker 1: digitized version. They were no longer using video of actors
Speaker 1: to create characters. They were creating three dimensional, rendered animated models. Uh.
Speaker 1: The big addition in Mortal Kombat Fur, apart from new
Speaker 1: characters who were part of the roster, was now that
Speaker 1: characters also had weapons that they could use with certain
Speaker 1: move combinations. Before m K four hit arcades, the Home
Speaker 1: Video Game Division released a side scrolling game called Mortal
Speaker 1: Kombat Mythologies sub Zero. As the name suggests, this game
Speaker 1: was focusing on the Sub Zero character, and it was
Speaker 1: a big departure from the fighting game format. The PlayStation
Speaker 1: version also had live action cut scenes, pushing this game
Speaker 1: into the general realm of FMV games, a category that's
Speaker 1: near and dear to my heart. They also fm V
Speaker 1: games tend to be terrible, but I will say the
Speaker 1: cut scenes for Sub Zero we're not as cringe e
Speaker 1: as a lot of other FMV games, though I still
Speaker 1: found them pretty awkward with fairly low production value. The
Speaker 1: game itself got mixed reviews, largely because it was seemed
Speaker 1: to be a punishing experience to play, with a very
Speaker 1: steep learning curve. Both Mortal Kombat Mythologies and Mortal Kombat
Speaker 1: four launched in nine seven. Mythologies went to the home market,
Speaker 1: Mortal Kombat four went to arcades. Around the time m
Speaker 1: K four hit, John Tobias was eager to start to
Speaker 1: look into doing something new. He had worked on a
Speaker 1: lot of Mortal Kombat titles and he hoped to branch
Speaker 1: out and make some games that he wanted to make.
Speaker 1: So he began to think about that, and he chose
Speaker 1: to resign from Midway in the late nineties, and he
Speaker 1: left to found his own game studio. Sadly, that did
Speaker 1: not stay in business for very long and it would
Speaker 1: close up shop as well. But this is where Tobias
Speaker 1: kind of says bye bye to Midway now. He left
Speaker 1: the company just as Midway was transitioning away from arcade
Speaker 1: machines entirely. The arcade business in general was slowing way down.
Speaker 1: The home video game market was clearly more profitable. More
Speaker 1: people were buying games and staying home to play them
Speaker 1: on home consoles than going someplace and playing a stand
Speaker 1: up coin fed arcade machine. The last coin arcade game
Speaker 1: Midway would release would be The Grid, which was a
Speaker 1: first person shooter style multiplayer game that the Mortal Kombat
Speaker 1: team actually developed, and from why I understand it was
Speaker 1: sort of a reinvigorating experience to work on something new. However,
Speaker 1: the title did not sell very well for Midway. It
Speaker 1: was kind of a flop for Midway. Not a not
Speaker 1: a creative flop, but a commercial flop. In Midway shut
Speaker 1: down the pinball division of its arcade business, so you
Speaker 1: wouldn't get any more new Bally or Williams tables coming out.
Speaker 1: The pinball machine was practically abandoned at this point. But
Speaker 1: then Gary Stern, the son of Sam Stern, who was
Speaker 1: once an executive at Williams. So you heard me talk
Speaker 1: briefly about Sam Stern in the previous episode. Anyway, Gary
Speaker 1: Stern would found Stern Pinball, thus keeping that technology alive.
Speaker 1: Since then, we've had a few other companies that have
Speaker 1: grown to produce pinball machines, but for a while, Stern
Speaker 1: was really the only game in town, so to speak.
Speaker 1: And um, yeah, I've gotten a chance to speak with
Speaker 1: Gary Stern a couple of times. Interesting guy, very passionate
Speaker 1: about the coin operated and pinball industries, and fun to
Speaker 1: talk to. Midway also changed the name of Atari Games
Speaker 1: to Midway Games West, but that division only remained in
Speaker 1: operation for a couple more years before Midway shut it
Speaker 1: down in two thousand three. Didn't eliminate it, but it
Speaker 1: was effectively mothballed. By two thousand one, Midway had shut
Speaker 1: down its entire arcade division and focused solely on developing
Speaker 1: for the home video game market. This meant the company
Speaker 1: would let go some employees who weren't really able to
Speaker 1: transition over to the home market, but the company would
Speaker 1: stay in business while longer releasing several titles for various systems.
Speaker 1: Mortal Kombat would live on as a series of games
Speaker 1: released to home and handhold held consoles UH that included
Speaker 1: sequels like Mortal Kombat Deadly Alliance, which was a sequel
Speaker 1: to Mortal Kombat four and You. Also had spinoffs like
Speaker 1: the universally loathed Mortal Kombat Special Forces for the PlayStation,
Speaker 1: which followed the Adventures of Jack's and was pretty terrible
Speaker 1: on the financial front. Things were not looking great for Midway.
Speaker 1: The company had been in a bit of decline before
Speaker 1: getting out of the arcade business. You might argue that
Speaker 1: they got out a little too late, or that they
Speaker 1: did not invest enough in the home video game market
Speaker 1: to make a good presence there um. In fact, this
Speaker 1: was all coming to a head not long after the
Speaker 1: company first had its I p O. So it goes
Speaker 1: look on the stock market, and not long after that
Speaker 1: starts to enter serious financial difficulty. In night, the company
Speaker 1: had boasted a profit of sixty five million dollars. In
Speaker 1: nine the operating profit had fallen to eight point three
Speaker 1: million dollars, which is not the way you want to
Speaker 1: see that number go from year to year. In fact,
Speaker 1: was the last year Midway would post an operating profit
Speaker 1: at all. Even after shuttering down the arcade division to
Speaker 1: focus exclusively on the home market, the company still saw losses.
Speaker 1: In two thousand two, it was a fifty two million
Speaker 1: dollar operating loss. Ouch In two thousand three, Neil nic
Speaker 1: Castro stepped down as head of Midway. He still remained
Speaker 1: on the chair as the chair of the board, but
Speaker 1: he stepped down as as president. He was replaced by
Speaker 1: a man named David F. Zucker, who had previously served
Speaker 1: as president of Playboy Enterprises, publishers of the Playboy magazine. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Zucker didn't exactly reinvigorate Midway's financial performance. In two thousand four,
Speaker 1: there was a twenty five million dollar loss. In two
Speaker 1: thousand five, it was a one hundred eight million dollar loss.
Speaker 1: This was grim stuff. Now. Zucker served as president of
Speaker 1: Midway for four years or so, but the company telling
Speaker 1: up a few hundred million dollars in losses in that time.
Speaker 1: It was not a good look, as they say. And
Speaker 1: in two thousand eight, Zucker got the boot and Booty
Speaker 1: got the the position. Matt Booty, that's actually his name.
Speaker 1: He was the guy who became the interim president of Midway.
Speaker 1: Zucker also became one of the defendants in a class
Speaker 1: action lawsuit that alleged that Midway executives had misled investors
Speaker 1: with regard to the company's performance. The court ultimately found
Speaker 1: that all the defendants were not guilty on the basis
Speaker 1: that the prosecution failed to link investor losses to direct
Speaker 1: actions taken by company leadership. Sumner Redstone, the late billionaire
Speaker 1: and majority shareholder in Viacom CBS invested heavily in Midway
Speaker 1: back in two thousand four, essentially getting shareholder control of
Speaker 1: the company. But by two thousand eight he cashed out
Speaker 1: and he sold all his shares to an investor named
Speaker 1: Mark Thomas. Every reference I could find to Mark Thomas
Speaker 1: referred to him as a mysterious investor, so I like
Speaker 1: to think that he was like in a tan trench
Speaker 1: coat and a fedora or something. Anyway, he bought sunder
Speaker 1: Redstones shares for just a hundred thousand dollars. That was
Speaker 1: pennies on the dollar for what Sumner had paid for
Speaker 1: those shares. However, that price tag also carried with it
Speaker 1: the debt of Midway, which amounted to about seventy million dollars.
Speaker 1: By this point, the company was already in a death spiral.
Speaker 1: In two thousand nine, it entered bankruptcy, and that was
Speaker 1: the real beginning of the end, or maybe the end
Speaker 1: of the end. I guess the beginning of the end
Speaker 1: was really back in the late nineties, Warner Brothers Entertainment
Speaker 1: swooped in and purchased Midways assets, including the Mortal Kombat
Speaker 1: intellectual property. Oh And while the Atari Games, Midway West
Speaker 1: had been shut down it was technically still among the
Speaker 1: company's assets. That meant that Warner Brothers took possession of
Speaker 1: Atari Games for a third time. I told you that
Speaker 1: Atari story is bonkers. And out of all the folks
Speaker 1: over at Midway, really only the Mortal Kombat team was
Speaker 1: able to transition over to work for Warner Brothers. Most
Speaker 1: of midways facilities were shut down, but that core team
Speaker 1: survived the purge, and initially they were to join Warner
Speaker 1: Brothers Video game publishing arm which was called Interactive Entertainment
Speaker 1: UH and they became known as w B Games Chicago.
Speaker 1: But in twos the group reincorporated into nether Realm Studios,
Speaker 1: still part of Warner Brothers. The first game it published
Speaker 1: in and can you guess what that game was? If
Speaker 1: you said a soft reboot of Mortal Kombat, you are correct.
Speaker 1: The studio has developed several games, not all of them
Speaker 1: are Mortal Kombat titles. There's also the Injustice games, which
Speaker 1: are fighting games that feature d C Comics characters in them.
Speaker 1: The play style is a lot um it's a lot
Speaker 1: like Mortal Kombat. There's a lot more to be said
Speaker 1: about the story of Midway. Remember that began back in
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties or earlier, depending on how you look
Speaker 1: at it, and it ended rather than ceremoniously in two
Speaker 1: thousand nine or so. But there are a lot of
Speaker 1: other things I didn't really touch on and related stories
Speaker 1: that I hope to cover in future episodes of tech
Speaker 1: Stuff to kind of talk about the whole industry of
Speaker 1: coin operated entertainment, as well as the complicated history of
Speaker 1: different video game developers and the companies that they've worked
Speaker 1: for and the relationships they've had with one another. But
Speaker 1: for now, I think it's time to step back from
Speaker 1: this storied company and this topic, and we'll shift our
Speaker 1: focus to something else next week. In the meantime, if
Speaker 1: you have suggestions for things I should talk about on
Speaker 1: tech Stuff, please reach out and let me know what
Speaker 1: those are. The best way to do that is over
Speaker 1: on Twitter. To handle for the show is text Stuff
Speaker 1: H s W and I'll talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.