Gamesmaster talks to Mortal Kombat's creator, Ed Boon

Q: What are the core principles that each Mortal Kombat game is built around?

The core idea is always to introduce something that differentiates this game from not only the other Mortal Kombat games, but also other fighting games. Sometimes thats one, two or three big things: like in Mortal Kombat 9 we had been 3D before so we said lets go back to 2D, lets bring all these old characters that we havent seen in a while back in. And also to tell a really elaborate story was a big goal for that game too.

Q: Why is now the right time to bring in character variations?

A lot of attention in Mortal Kombat 9 went into eSports, EVO, tournament kind of stuff; features that the hardcore guys are really going to get into. And in talking to a lot of them, what they talk about is what they call match-ups. Like theyll say Scorpion is a good match-up for Raiden, Raiden is a bad match-up for Mileena, then they rank all the characters.

Q: The cinematic, B movie campaign was arguably MK9s strongest feature. Wheres that headed this time around?

Well, you know, ironically we never promoted that in MK9. It just was there and it took people by surprise: it was like, oh my God, what is this?, you know? And, quite honestly, back then I was saying we should be jumping up and down talking about this!

Q. How do you see the health of the traditional beat-em-up at the moment?

Obviously in the 90s it was the category of games, and then over time I think they got too complicated I think a number of games came out that required that you study them, take a college course, and then you are at the entry level. And people just dont have that kind of time to invest; they just want to have fun. So there was a few years where they were just too complicated.