The small story in the big one is sometimes also interesting. Like what is hidden behind the logo of the famous Mortal Kombat license.
The co-creator of Mortal Kombat alias John Tobias, wanted to come back to the emblematic logo of the license and what is hidden behind its creation. Because yes, a logo is sometimes everything and it is clear that that of MK is recognizable among a thousand. Everything happens on his account Twitter :
Mortal Kombat: the origins of a logo
Here’s a newly discovered image of the very first drawing of the #MortalKombat dragon icon. I designed this icon as a symbol of our game and its fictional tournament…
The inspiration to use a dragon as a fictional tournament symbol came from “Dragon Attack”, which was in contention for our game’s title before @noobde and I changed it to “Mortal Kombat”. Here is my marker sketch of the brand logo…
Thus, we learn that the original pencil drawing of Tobias was digitized by Tobias himself and Mortal Kombat artist John Vogel. John Tobias later clarifies that the name “Dragon Attack” comes from the passion of Ed Boon (the other creator of MK) for the Queen song of the same name. Everything overlaps. If the name changes, the idea of a dragon persists.
Between love of music and statue on a desk
In fact, the inspiration for the Mortal Kombat logo itself for its design, besides Ed Boon’s love of the Queen song, seems to come from a dragon statuette on a desk in Midway’s studio (original developer of the license):
The inspiration for the dragon icon’s design began when John Vogel saw a golden dragon statue on Midway’s general manager Ken Fedesna’s desk.
I had thought of creating an image to represent the fictional tournament, but also to mark the game with a symbol… like the ‘S’ of Superman or the bat symbol of Batman.
The least we can say is that the bet is clearly successful since as much thanks to films as to video games, the Mortal Kombat logo has become cult. Surprisingly, the entire logo could have looked totally different when Tobias’ sister mistook the dragon design for a seahorse. However, the team wanted to stick to its guns and we now know the rest of the story. A wise decision.