Mortal Kombat II - Development and Releases

Development and Releases

According to the project's lead programmer Ed Boon, Mortal Kombat II was "intended to look different than the original MK" and "had everything we wanted to put into MK but did not have time for." In 2012, Boon placed creating the game among his best Mortal Kombat memories, recalling: "When we did Mortal Kombat II, we got new equipment and all that stuff, but it was funny because when we started working on Mortal Kombat II, the mania, the hysteria of the home versions of Mortal Kombat I was literally all around us." Both the theme and art style of Mortal Kombat II are slightly darker, although with a more vibrant color palette employed and a much richer color depth than in the previous game. MKII also strays from the strongly oriental theme of its predecessor, though it does retain the original motif in some aspects, as in some of the music. Finally, the nature of the game became less serious with the addition of trivial and "joke" alternative finishing moves.

To create the character animations for the game, actors were placed in front of a gray background and performed the motions, which were recorded on a Hi-8 videotape, which had been upgraded since the development of the first title from standard to broadcast-quality. The video capture footage was then processed into a computer, and the background was removed from selected frames to create 64 or 128 color sprites. Towards the end of Mortal Kombat II's development, they opted to instead use a chroma key technique and processed the footage directly into the computer for a similar, simpler process. The actors were sprayed lightly with water to give them a sweaty, glistening appearance, while post-editing was done on the sprites afterward to highlight flesh tones and improve the visibility of muscles, which John Tobias felt set the series apart from similar games using digitized graphics. Animations of Shang Tsung morphing into other characters were created by Midway's John Vogel using a computer, while hand-drawn animations were put into effect for other parts of the game, such as the Fatalities. Due to technical limitations, the costumes had to be simple and no acrobatic moves such as backflips could have been recorded.

Care was taken during the programming process to give the game a "good feel", with Boon simulating elements such as gravity into the game's design. Tobias noted that the previous game's reliance on juggling the opponent in the air with successive hits was an accident, and had been tightened in Mortal Kombat II. Boon noted the reason to not completely remove it in favor of a different system of chaining attacks together was to set the game apart from titles such as Street Fighter, and allow for players to devise their own combinations of attacks. Many attacks were kept uniform between characters to prevent from over-complicating gameplay. Due to memory limitations and the development team's desire to introduce more new characters, two fighters from the original Mortal Kombat, Sonya Blade and Kano, whom Boon cited as the least-picked characters in the game, were excluded. A bonus character played by Kyu Hwang was also cut out of the game. In place of Sonya, two new female characters of Mileena and Kitana were introduced so the game would better compete against Street Fighter II.

All of the music was composed, performed, recorded and mixed by Dan Forden, the MK series' sound designer and composer. Mortal Kombat II was the first arcade game to use the Williams DCS sound system. All Mortal Kombat arcade games to follow would use this sound board, dropping the original Mortal Kombat's inferior Yamaha sound board.