John Tobias With More MK1 Origin Stories: Series Name, Dragon Logo And More

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John Tobias With More MK1 Origin Stories: Series Name, Dragon Logo And More

Post by Roy Arkon »

In just above a couple of weeks, Mortal Kombat will celebrate it's 30th anniversary, and we got yet another origins story en route to the occasion, this time from John Tobias, with the main topic being origins of the iconic MK dragon logo, and how it led to various other stuff being given and made for the series, including the Mortal Kombat name.

Tobias starts the story by sharing a recently discovered image of the first drawing of the MK dragon logo, followed by how fellow MK team member, John Vogel, used the digitized graphics system of Mortal Kombat 1 to literally digitize the drawing into the character select screen of the game.
Tobias then shares that the original planned for the game was supposed to be "Dragon Attack", a name that came for a song by the iconic band Queen, of which Ed Boon is huge fan of (and they were even given a reference through Rain's 2nd Fatality in Mortal Kombat 11 Ultimate). That is, of course, until both Boon and Tobias changed the title to Mortal Kombat. Tobias also shares that this was the inspiration for using a dragon as the symbol for the tournament, although not as the logo for the whole series at that point yet.
Tobias continues the story by saying that the idea of using the dragon symbol as the overall logo for the series came from a golden dragon statue that was on the desk of Ken Fedesna, the general manager of Midway at the time. This also led to the addition of the golden dragon statue at MK1's Shang Tsung's Throne Room stage as well as the dragon on the side panel for the game's Arcade machine.
As you can see, the original logo had the dragon facing left. However, until Mortal Kombat II, the logo was used facing both sides for the Arcade machines. With Acclaim's console releases of the games, the MK choose to keep only the right version of the logo as they could've only use one for marketing purposes. Tobias then shares that the final design for the dragon icon was an attempt at replicating the yin yang symbol, which represented balancing of the furies- a core part of MK’s early fiction
Tobias ends the story a couple of extra notes: Firstly, he tells the he almost tossed the sketch for the dragon icon thanks for his sister, and finally, he shares a picture of the same golden dragon statue that was used for the logo, that was found by Boon 30 years later.
This is a classic case of the domino effect, as one idea have led to so many other things that we are know and familiar with in the MK series. Looks like the dragon has indeed scorched a ton of land, and marked it's territory by a flame that still burns strong for 30 years, and nothing is going to extinguish that flame.

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Re: John Tobias With More MK1 Origin Stories: Series Name, Dragon Logo And More

Post by Gambid »

These are really so cool.
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