‘More like… Wah… GET OVER HERE!’
A fascinating piece of video has surfaced on Ed Boon’s Twitter account, which sees the Mortal Kombat co-creator spontaneously invent one of the most recognisable and iconic moves in fighting game history: Scorpion’s Spear.
The clip, which was uploaded by Boon to announce the 30th anniversary of the gory fighting franchise, is pulled directly from the motion capture sessions used for the original 1992 Midway release, Mortal Kombat. In the video, series creators Ed Boon and John Tobias are busy shooting actor Daniel Pesina, (in costume as Scorpion), capturing a variety of animations and martial-arts maneuvers to be later digitized into the game.
In a flash of inspiration, Ed Boon seemingly invents the famous special move on the spot, comically exclaiming “Do ninjas have some sort of ropes?… Like an arrow or whatever… it stuck into the other guy and dragged him across the… and then just went ‘BAM’ and nailed him.” Pesina attempts the throw-and-drag maneuver several times under Boon’s direction, with Ed — in a moment he was born for — suddenly blurts out “But more like… WAH!… Get over here…”
And just like that, Boon created not only one of Mortal Kombat‘s most recognized emblems, but perhaps the single most recognizable move in fighting games, (behind Street Fighter‘s Hadoken). It’s funny how life works like that; Ed Boon posits and shoots an idea, and it eventually typifies a franchise, spawns a timeless quote, and eventually gets him landed in the Guinness Book of World Records as “Longest-serving video game voice actor.” I guess the lesson here is to always throw your inspiration out there, you just never know what is going to hit.
Ed Boon will appear at the DC FanDome event this coming weekend. It is unknown if any reveals are planned.
Mortal Kombat will be 30 years old in 2022. But 2021 marks 30 years since we actually BEGAN working on the game. To celebrate, it seemed like a fun idea to share some behind-the-scenes stuff. This clip shows how we created Scorpion’s iconic (GET OVER HERE!) spear move. (1 of 9) pic.twitter.com/3f1tdvjG9R
— Ed Boon (@noobde) October 12, 2021