Mortal Kombat Series Co-Creator Ed Boon showcases the first short footage of Johnny Cage’s Jean-Claude Van Damme skin for Mortal Kombat 1.
Boon was recently a guest on the popular YouTube show Hot Ones. In this show, guests would eat spicy chicken while being interviewed by the host of First We Feast. One of the questions focused on the Van Damme DLC which was actually “30 years in the making”.
“When we made the very first game, our intention was to make Van Damme: The Arcade Game,” Boon said. “We actually wanted to see the words ‘Van Damme’. Bloodsport was big, and so was Universal Soldier, I think.”
“So we called his people, and we were like ‘we want to make a game based on Van Damme’, and I don’t know if he declined or just never got to him or something like that. But this is, you know, a couple of 20-something-year-old kids who wanted make a video game – I could see how Van Damme would go ‘no, we’re not doing this’.”
“So we tried a number of times, going back and forth with him. This time, we hit the lottery, and we got him. We actually have his voice and he’s going to be the Johnny Cage character, and it’s the absolute full circle moment that we had.”
Mortal Kombat 1 launches on September 19, 2023 on PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch.