Thursday, June 5, 2014

Mortal Kombat

Originally composed by Dan Forden from Mortal Kombat the arcade


Here's a change of pace for sure.  Allow me to set the scene...

It's 1992 and Mortal Kombat has just been released into the world.  I'm 11 years old and a frequent patron of Aladdin's Castle of Ingram Park Mall and Diversions, the popular chain of arcades in San Antonio.  I am obsessed with the game.  In complete love with the art style, animation, game play, and sound, I relish every opportunity to play it on nights when my Dad takes me and my brother there with five bucks each and hours of adventure and battle ahead of us.  And when I'm not doing this, I'm at home reading everything I can about the game in GamePro, GameFan, EGM, etc, and drawing the characters fighting one another. 

At one point, I even made a flip book from a little Post-It sized notepad that my Dad must've taken home from work.  It featured a brief round between Sub-Zero and, my favorite character, RAIDEN (no, not "Rayden" as he was called in some of the later home console releases!) that ended with a somewhat original finishing move.

So now it's 2014 and Annie has found this flip book among some of my things and brought it to life through painstaking photography.  When she asked me to give it sound, I leapt at the chance because not only was it an opportunity to collaborate with her, but an opportunity to collaborate with myself through time! 

What I ended up with was a simple chip version of the original "Bridge" music used in the "Pit" area of the game since I thought a lo-fi sound would compliment the lo-fi production quality of my little 22 year old movie.  This was a lot of fun, and thank goodness for pack-ratting!

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