Thread by @therealsaibot

#MortalKombat has always trafficked in rumors and mystery. But, our choices behind character ‘deaths’ in the early games were always calculated...

Not the end of match Fatality kind of deaths. I’m talking about the not returning in a sequel fiction altering kind... (thread)

https://twitter.com/anarchydave55/status/1379231235302637568

Lots of things changed for us between MK1 and MK2. One thing that didn’t change was a memory limitation. While we had more of it for MK2 we still didn’t have quite enough, which forced us into hard choices... (1/10)

Ed and I wanted to add as many new characters to the MK2 roster as possible. This meant that we were going to have to leave a couple behind. How to make that choice? (2/10)

We added character select audits so we could see was how many times each character was chosen. Ed also added a secret button tap sequence that let us walk up to any coin-op game in any arcade, tap in the button sequence and access the audit menu from the attract mode... (3/10)

Ed and I got into the habit of checking audits every time we encountered an MK coin-op in the wild. We started paying attention to character popularity, but our data was limited to games that we accessed in the Chicago area... (4/10)

Our choice to cut Sonya and Kano from MK2 was purely based on MK1 game audits. But, we learned even back then that players had emotionally attached themselves to their fav characters... (5/10)

The outcry from players missing Kano and Sonya in MK2 fueled their return in MK3. Johnny Cage (despite rumor and nonsense) was cut because he was the least selected character in MK2; as were, believe it or not, Raiden and Baraka... (6/10)

Kitana, Mileena, and Scorpion were not cut from MK3. They were held back in anticipation of our Ultimate MK3 release a few months later. UMK3 was a free upgrade for arcade operators to quell issues around MK3’s home release by keeping the arcade game fresh for players (7/10)

MK Trilogy was our first direct to home MK release, and while it was really an extension of UMK3, it was free from the memory limitations that had dogged us in our coin-op games. So, we used the opportunity to bring back Johnny Cage and Raiden, etc... (8/10)

MK’s fiction was directly effected by character cuts. We twisted and turned and patched and did everything we could to explain away why a character was gone and it got even worse when we tried to explain why they came back... (9/10)

I apologize for the roller coaster of fiction used to navigate character deaths/undeaths in those early games...

But, if I were the finger pointing type, I’d point my finger at 90’s Chicago MK players. They were the real deciders of who lived and who died ✌️(10/10)