The equipment upgrade that happened for MK2 had nothing to do with MK1’s success. We didn’t just run out and buy a pricier camera because we fell into cash... (thread)
I need to clarify this narrative about what led to the upgrading of our equipment after MK1 because the stories being told are not accurate and discount the work done by devs at our studio who were not directly on our MK team...
So, here’s a long thread because we all have more time to read...
We used hi-8 cameras that were high end consumer grade for the time, because all video signals were analog back then and hi-8 worked fine for images that would end up digitized anyway...
The software that we used to process the images was developed before I even joined Midway by a programmer named Warren Davis. Warren’s work was behind the scenes and instrumental in our ability to make the first MK, NBA Jam, T2, etc...
Warren had already been working with our studio art director, Jack Haeger, to improve the studio’s proprietary software and equipment...
Jack was a big driver in updating the lighting/studio space to use actual bluescreen capture and newly available digital cameras had a direct digital signal, which eliminated the analog color bleed that kept us from using blue screen on digitized pixel art in the past...
The story that we used a shitty camera (or that we used my dad’s camera the way some people tell it) because we had no budget is not true...
Yes, Midway management was stingy with budget. Yes, our stage was in a space shared with storage in the back of a pinball manufacturing plant...
But, guys like Warren and Jack and everone at the studio working behind the scenes to improve our development software and hardware contributed to our success by helping to improve the technology and techniques we used to develop our games...
Was a different world back then. Not like today where development software is everywhere and available to everybody. So, the work done in-house by programmers and hardware and mechanical engineers was instrumental back in the days of coin-op development...
Had to get that out into the etherverse because there are lots of innaccurate stories being spread about the development of the early MK games that should be corrected.
And also I have more time to care about this kinda stuff than I have in the past ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
And also I have more time to care about this kinda stuff than I have in the past ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
