Black Mouse
The issues also led to the creation of one of the Thunder God’s signature moves.
It’s a little weird to think that the Mortal Kombat franchise is now 30 years old, but it can certainly feel that way looking at the original game now.
Series co-creator Ed Boon recently released his 3rd video celebrating MK’s 30th anniversary, and this time he’s sharing fun images and stories from Raiden’s motion capture recording for the first. game where they ran into a lot of trouble with the lightning god’s signature hat.
Showing actor Carlos Pesina in full costume on the recording set, everything seems to be going well until they run into the problem of Raiden’s straw hat falling off every time he moves his head too much.
This was especially the case when they attempted to capture the knockdown and wake up animations, which led to the idea of Raiden simply teleporting while standing and getting stuck as a feature of the advancing character.
As incredible as Carlos is, there have been some unexpected challenges involving one of MK’s most iconic costumes…. Raiden’s hat. Specifically Raiden’s hat and the laws of physics.
—Ed Boon (@noobde) May 4, 2022
Disaster almost struck, however, with Pesina performing a forward flip and landing directly on his hat, breaking it.
“This video also features a classic/tragic moment in MK history,” wrote boo on twitter. “You can witness the unintended destruction of Raiden’s hat that happened during our shoot. Imagine how scared we were after the hat was broken! Miraculously, it was able to be repaired and we persevered!”
Eventually, we had to resort to a number of tricks to deal with this (damn🤣) constantly falling hat. The first solution was to simply put the hat back on at the end of each take. Carlos would fall, hold his last pose and @therealsaibot would fix the hat.
—Ed Boon (@noobde) May 4, 2022
It’s great fun to see in action how unexpected problems during game development often lead to creative or innovative solutions, with Boon also confirming that they initially tried to hold the hat in place with a single rubber band.
There’s currently no confirmation as to whether Boon and NetherRealm Studios are planning game content to coincide with Mortal Kombat’s big anniversary, but it’s always great to get a glimpse of how a title that’s changed the industry came together.
We liked this solution (and effect) so much that we ended up giving Raiden a (now iconic) teleport move using the same animation. pic.twitter.com/uV3GvREyYx
—Ed Boon (@noobde) May 4, 2022
You can also find Boon’s latest anniversary video here, detailing how paddle-swapping ninjas were created before they even had names.