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John Tobias Profile picture
John Tobias
@therealsaibot
I am the REAL Saibot! Co-creator of Mortal Kombat... Contestant on SMASH TV... Artist/Game Developer... Views expressed are my own.
Sep 22, 2022 • 11 tweets • 6 min read
Here’s a recently discovered image of the very first drawing of #MortalKombat’s dragon icon. I designed the icon as both a symbol of our game and its fictional tournament… (thread) #MK30 The image comes from fellow MK artist John Vogel’s video taped footage used to digitize my pencil drawing. We traced over the digitized image with pixels for use in the game… (2/9)
Apr 22, 2021 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
Like Kitana/Mileena, #Scorpion & #SubZero also make a pretty good PB&J. One completes the other. But, if we dig deeper with each, we can uncover individual story arcs...

Let’s sit Scorpion on the couch for a psychoanalysis of his path thru early #MortalKombat games (thread) Scorpion was never a very complex character. His archetype in MK1 was a hunter fueled by revenge. Man on a mission. That singular focus is why he has always worked so well as a character.

We all understand the visceral motivation of revenge... (1/10) Image
Apr 17, 2021 • 16 tweets • 4 min read
Funny thing is, I just realized that Smoke/Jade as secret characters in #MortalKombat 2 may have been part of an elaborate joke on me by @noobde ... (thread) I believe having Smoke and Jade poke out from the trees in MK2’s Living Forest was Ed or Tony Goskie’s idea. Secret characters in MK were a huge part of the mystique that defined the series... (1/14)
Apr 15, 2021 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Motaro’s story was told through Sheeva, and his race of Centaurs were introduced as rivals of the Shokan. Both races had histories w Outworld’s Emperor Shao Kahn, but Motaro’s prominence as a boss in MK3 was meant to imply that he had curried favor... (1/4) We never had a chance to delve into Motaro or his race in detail, but we imagined him as an opportunistic leader who took advantage of Shokan defiance to Kahn’s throne. We also had hoped that we could explore Edenian politics post-Kahn’s rule... (2/4)
Apr 6, 2021 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
#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) 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)
Apr 1, 2021 • 14 tweets • 3 min read
I thought that Michael Grimm being Johnny Cage’s original name was MKHistory101. But, so many players today weren’t even born when the early games were released...

So, here’s a history lesson on how your favorite nut punching Hollywood action star came to be... (thread) Immediately after the thought of doing a 1v1 fighting game smacked me and Ed Boon in the face, we wanted to tie a license to it. Seemed like the best way to get a project approved by Midway management... (1/13)
Nov 28, 2020 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
The name was inspired by the Mongolian warlords Ghengis and Kublai Khan. And, although we never explicitly state it, much like the mongols our intention was that Kahn was a title. So, there could have been Kahn’s before Shao and there could be Kahns after (thread)... In old MK, we never explored Shao Kahn’s backstory other than his relationships with Shang, Kitana/Mileena, Sindel and any drama related to the current tournaments. I preferred keeping his origin vague because it kept the focus on his actions specific to Edenia and Earth...
Apr 19, 2020 • 12 tweets • 2 min read
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...