Insert Coin (2020) - full transcript

- Midway is the
punk rock, you know.

They're like The Ramones
or The Sex Pistols

of the video game industry,

the guys who are like,

"Oh, this is how you
think we should do it?

"These are the rules that
you think we should obey?

"Well, what if we
go the other way?"

[music]
[character screaming]

- What was the culture
of Midway in the '90s?

And my take on it
was aggressive.

- It's being, pushing the
boundaries of maybe good taste.



- [Character] I love it.

[car screeching]

- I don't think that there
a single gamer that exists

that never played a Midway game.

- They were the only
company, in a lot of ways,

that could make
fantastic sports games

that anyone could
pick up and play.

[character yelling]

- It looked so real to
me, that I was like,

Boop, you just killed me.

[character yelling]

- I remember thinking to myself,
wow, I'm working with gods.

- We made great games.

And at one point,
we led the world.



[gentle music]

- I call it like the Big Bang
of the video game universe.

I mean, we want
from blank screens

to very rudimentary
games like Pong,

to all of the sudden,
we've got Space Invaders,

Pac-Man, Donkey Kong.

You know, we came
out with Defender.

- [Announcer] Within months
of appearing on the market

in 1981, his game Defender shot
to the top and stayed there.

For Williams, the
company that owned it,

his idea was worth $100 million.

- Well, it's sort of the,
it's the ultimate fantasy

where you are the only force
left between evil and good.

- You'd go into a place,

I mean, there'd be
eight Defenders.

People would be standing
in line, you know,

three or four, five deep.

It was a golden era.

But then we got to '84.

All this great stuff
got kind of buried

under like this stinking
pile of shitty clones,

and you know, six-week
Atari 2600 ports.

- Anything was
selling at the time,

as far as the home
market was concerned.

And people started just
shoving garbage out the door.

And at some point in time,

the customer got fed
up with the thing.

- This year's hit is the
next year's firewood.

- It's that tough,
this business?

- It is, I mean
three years from now,

you'll ask somebody
what Defender was,

and they'll go,
hmm, I don't know.

- The consumer got disenchanted
with what was going on

with, I think, the
consumer product.

It affected how things were
going on in the arcades

and how the game's
earnings went down.

And we did backtrack.

- The whole video game
crash, we just kind of like,

wow, man, this is
like game over.

And went back to school for
a couple years in California.

But I just couldn't get the
video game thing out of my head.

So it was like, yeah, man,
we gotta do a new game,

get the band back together.

So back to working at what
was known as Williams.

I just remember him, before
he started doing anything,

coming to New York when
I was still in New York,

talking about the idea of
doing another video game.

- Eugene came in and
wasn't really prepared.

But he knew in his mind
what he wanted to do.

And he wrote down on a big
piece of paper, N-A-R-C.

He held up the piece of
paper, and it says NARC.

And they said, "What's NARC"?

- Guy, you know, protecting
the world from this scourge

of drugs and pushers
and drug dealers.

I felt like video
games was always

in some kind of fantasy
world, you know.

It was always like, oh,
we're men in tights.

We're running around with swords

and casting spells on people,
and spears, and stuff.

And like, why can't a video
game be about something real?

We wanted to make an
impression to the world

that Williams was back.

- My job was in field service.

Like I answered the 800 number.

And I would badger
the programmers at ni

to understand what they did.

So then I would go to college

and I would try to find classes

that somehow matched
what these guys knew

because I wanted to
know what that was.

You know, my goal was
to program a game.

And I just, there's
no way you can learn

You just have to
do it on your own.

- You think about the
casualness of this era,

you know, you're kind of
like putting together a team

and like man, I need a
programmer for this game.

And then, you talk
to a couple people,

and here's some kid, you
know, just got out of college.

Actually, I think he's
still trying to finish

the last couple of
courses [laughs]

- I'm gonna be, this is,

I did visualize that
as the opportunity,

the video game opportunity
of a lifetime for me.

I mean, if Eugene's
starting video

and I'm not on the ground floor,

I mean, if I wait six months
to go do summer school

or whatever, I'm
gonna miss something.

- Jack Haeger was
really the lead artist

and then kind of
the art director.

- Jack has a great history
where he went on to be

one of the founders
of the Amiga.

- What more can you say?

[audience laughing]

- When we started, I guess
there wasn't a clear sense

of what we were going to do.

It was more let's develop
a hardware and a software.

- I always thought
with video games,

when you make them, someone
would come with this great,

like this book, here it is.

This is what we're gonna
make, and we start page one

and we start making it.

It was never like that.

It was like, so what
do you guys wanna do

- At the time, then, the
Japanese games had such,

they had this animation down.

I mean, they had just armies
of incredibly talented artists.

How can you compete?

- I started playing
with video digitization.

That became a huge thing
for me during my career.

The idea of taking actual
images, video images,

and getting them
into a video game,

that was kind of revolutionary.

- The only thing that had
happened like this prior

was a game called Journey.

They actually like digitized
the heads of five frames

of the band members,
and they would like, go.

[video game music]

A normal company, right,
would go out and buy

tens of thousands of
dollars worth of equipment

and cameras and studio
setup and everything.

But no, we worked
for Eugene Jarvis.

He's like, "Yeah, go out, I
bought a camera at Target."

It's like one of these,

you remember those RCA cameras
where you put the videotape

in the side and you
held it like that?

That's what we had,
right, it was [laughs]

- We bought a treadmill
that we were able

to take the top off,
'cause I realized

we would have to film
people walking in place.

And teaching actors how to
be a video game character.

And to my mind, nobody had
done that up to that point.

- Jack Haeger approached
me one day and said,

"Hey, Mark, I got this
concept for this character.

"I think you'd be
perfect for it."

- [Jack Haeger] I came up
with that character

basically from the
old Ironsides TV show

with Raymond Burr
in a wheelchair.

And the wheelchair was
mounted with guns, of course.

- It really was, at the
time, just another day.

I don't think it hit
me till decades lat

that oh my gosh, my
image is still in there.

I have daughters now,
they're gonna see this.

- I did have a question.

At that point, we had
filmed a few characters.

We had filmed the environments.

And I asked, okay, we're,

a rocket launcher is
one of your weapons now.

And I said, "Okay, when a player
fires the rocket launcher,

"what happens?"

And people said,
"What do you mean?"

I go, "Well, I can
make it look real.

"These are real people."

The mission was to
no, make it look real

- The body parts would fly.

I mean, I guess this was one
of the first body part games.

I think maybe the first.

- I remember George was like,

"God, this is so cool,
I can't believe this!

"It's so cool!"

And I came up and I was really
being very gentle about it

and I just said, "I
mean, it is cool.

"But do you think that's
a good thing to put

"in an arcade where
little kids are there?"

- You have to understand,
arcades at that point

were still very
democratic environments.

Any family, any age could
walk in without concern.

- And this escalated
into a huge argumen

And I just remember, it was
a huge, huge screaming match.

And all I'm saying is,

"I'm just saying we
should think about i

"I'm not trying to
limit your creativity

"I'm not trying to censor you."

- You know, I think,
and I think, too,

with a game that involved
realistic content,

when we crossed that
bridge of digitizing life,

the game was no
longer an escape.

- I remember actually a member
of the board of directors

of Williams called the game
a surrealistic nightmare.

And he was really concerned
that there might be some,

you know, negative ramifications
from releasing this game

to the public, and felt that
the game should be canceled.

- With the coin-op business,

you're selling that game
a quarter at a time.

With the home business,
once you sell the cartridge,

if it was back in the old days,

it was a cartridge
that fit into a Sega,

fit into a Nintendo.

And it was a crappy game,
okay, you made your money.

Coin-op, it was one
quarter at a time.

And if that game sucked,
the second quarter

or the third quarter, the
fourth quarter wouldn't happen.

And in our case, we wouldn't
even get out of the test phase.

- We had this magic
number of like $700.

I don't know how
that number came up.

But we wanted to
earn $700 in a week.

That would be, if
we could do that,

we felt like we've
got something.

- So we put it out there.

I remember, actually,

I actually think we
had some champagne.

You know, we were
drinking champagne

in this high school arcade.

- I remember the first
two guys that played it.

They were literally
drug dealers.

I was like [laughs],
these guys walk in.

I'm like, these are
some bad characters.

They're like, oh, check
this out, you know,

and they start playing it.

- The cool thing was the
kids really dug the game.

And just this whole new world
of kind of like reality.

No one had ever seen
anything like that

in a video game before.

- Even with all of the problems
in the software and stuff,

I think the first week,
it earned like $742.

And we're like we've done it!
[triumphant video game music]

We are successful!

Yeah, that was the first
time that we actually started

like going, maybe, you know,
maybe there's something here.

And that's when we
got confident enough

to actually make
a plan to sell it.

I think then management
all of the sudde

all of the sudden,
he actually goes,

"Well, maybe we should order
some parts for this game.

"Maybe we should actually
plan to build this game

"at some point."

- I don't know if they thought
about canceling the game,

but it made so much money,

I think that thought
kind of quickly vanished.

[Reporter] - The new game is called NARC.

It's manufactured by
a company in Chicago

by Williams Electronics.

And it's currently the
number one video arcade game

in the country.

- People were talking
about this game

that was extremely violent.

And people could explode
and this all other stuff.

But it was okay, because they
were drug dealers [laughs]

- [Reporter] For some players,

the carnage is
part of the appeal.

- I love the gore and the blood

and the guts
spilling everywhere.

Then when you hit people,
they go flying through the air

and their heads smash
on the pavement.

It's really cool.

- Still ahead of its time,
Pac-Man sitting next to it,

and things like Donkey Kong.

And now here's NARC.

It was like fast sports
cars, drug dealers

trying to like take you down,

and body parts
flying everywhere.

And it looked like a movie.

[guns shooting]
[characters yelling]

- We weren't aware of
the changing groundswell

and the appetite for

aggressive or realistic
types of games were,

and what NARC brought
to that evolution.

[characters yelling]
[guns firing]

- One of the things that
Williams was so successful

at doing was hiring very
creative, dynamic designers.

But in order to do that,
creative people have a tendency

sometimes to be kind of
off the wall situation.

But we tried to
bring those people in

because we knew that
they could design

the most successful games.

- Ken goes, "Oh, I want
you to meet this guy.

"He's flying in, his
name's Mark Turmell

"He's coming from California."

And here comes this
larger than life dude

tall, big like
permed blond hair.

- What's funny, the
interview process in Chicago

was a little bit crazy because
I was kinda Mr. California.

I had kinda long hair.

And I think I came in there
with some white pants on

and a blue vest, and, you
know, kinda looking funny.

- Pretty much the
conclusion was this guy

you know, like he's
Hollywood, he's crazy

He'll never be able to
actually do any real work.

- No, no.

- They did not wanna hire Mark.

We said, "No, we're hiring Mark,

"whether you like it or not."

- We're going, "Oh,
this is a big mistake."

But you know, actually,
he turned out to be

one of the most brilliant
designers we ever had.

- Even when I interviewed,

I said I wanted to revive
the dual joystick mechanic.

The dual joystick
mechanic of Robotron i

again, it's one of my favorites.

- Crazy thing about Robotron,

I remember when we came up with

that dual stick control
thing, and we felt, okay,

this is going to be
the new standard.

Every video game from now
on will have to have this.

Yet no one copied it.

- Robotron, when I
think about that,

it's sensory overload.

There's so many rainbow
of colors coming at you,

and the sound effects.

And so I was kind
of in that vein

of trying to duplicate
that experience.

And so we started kind of
plugging away at the game.

And it only took maybe
a couple of weeks

before I realized
this John Tobias guy

was just a rock star.

- You know, the first game
I worked on was SmashTV.

The funny thing about it was

I always looked at
it as temporary.

I thought I'm gonna
do this for a while.

I'm gonna save my money.

And I'm either gonna
draw comic books,

or I'm going to CalArts.

- I remember when
we brought him in,

I thought he hated me.

I thought he was like,

'cause he doesn't
smile that much.

He doesn't talk that much.

And I just go, wow, this
guy, I think he hates me.

- I remember thinking
to myself, wow,

I'm working with gods.

I mean, I thought
that these are gods.

And just was super excited
about working with them.

- A big film at the time,
of course, was Running Man.

Robocop was in that same era.

- I'd buy that for a dollar.

- We just had the idea
to take these characters

and turn them into a game show.

- I'd buy that for a dollar.

[video game shooting]

- This consumerism gone
crazy, futuristic world where,

you know, a toaster is more
important than human life.

[cheering]

- You know, Eugene was the king.

We would all go
to him for advice.

- We were just starting
the Boss Master,

which I guess was Mutoid Man.

And we reached the point
where you blew off his head.

- And so I remember creating
the little blood spatters

and watching the characters
onscreen kinda explode.

I remember the first
time I had done it,

I kinda minimized the impact,

because I thought, oh,
that's looking pretty gory,

and I dialed it back.

- I think John was opposed to
just how many bloody chunks

I put on the screen.

- Everybody goes, "Oh, that's
amazing, that's awesome."

And I was going,
"Yeah, it's all right."

Then I go, "You know, multiply
that by 100." [laughs]

- They pushed, hey more,
more blood, more blood.

- This boiling fountain
of blood, you know,

it was like, that's gonna
get people's attention.

But it, oh man, it
looked so alive.

It was just like this cauldron
of just boiling blood.

- He said, "Now, you
know what a game is

I said, "No."

He said, "A game is 100 of
those fucking cool things.

"And now you have one."

And he walked out of my office.

So I was like, okay, so
I'm on the right track.

- In terms of how the
games did earn money,

we call that percentaging.

And that was largely

up to the game designer
to pay attention

to moments in the game

where you might want
to lock down a player,

and you might want to give
them a greater challenge.

- We wanted to crush the player.

And if you're like crushed
by some little guy,

or you get shot in the
back by a ant or something,

I mean, it's like, wait a
minute, that's not fair.

That guy couldn't have
killed me, that guy's a wimp.

But if it's some monstrous
guy that's 30 feet tall

on like tank treads running
around, and he kills you,

it's like, well, you
know, the dude was badass.

I mean, that was a badass dude.

I mean, obviously he's
gonna kill me a few times

before I figure
out how to do it.

You accepted it.

You accepted your death
and gladly paid for more.

- Arcade games were built around

you play for this chunk of time,

and then you give
us another quarter.

It's like, aw man, I was
hoodwinked for decades.

Like people complain about
mobile game microtransactions,

but arcade games were doing
that decades before that

in way more nefarious ways.

- Supposedly, within
SmashTV, was this

Pleasure Dome that

never existed.

- Well, I guess I'm
a bit of a scammer.

I just kind of did it on a whim

because I couldn't bring
myself to just having a message

that said
congratulations, go away,

and never play this game again.

It didn't make sense
to just shun people

- And he figured,
eh, you know what,

we'll just tell them it's there.

And since it's so
late in the game,

the majority of players
will never even know.

[Ernest Cline] - I remember
just feeding mountains

of tokens and quarters
into SmashTV in the arcade

trying to get to the
Pleasure Dome

and could never make it there.

And I figured, well, I
didn't try hard enough.

- So when Ken Fedesna found
out that I had done that

and that there was
no Pleasure Dome,

he said, "You've gotta
resolve it somehow."

And so we put
together a new room,

and we actually supported it.

But of course, not every
distributor or arcade owner

would get the new EPROMS
to upgrade their machine.

- You know, with a lot
of things that happened

in those days, we
may not like it.

But if the game
ended up doing well,

we kind of would shrug
our shoulders and say,

"Okay, well, let's move
on to the next thing.

"Don't do that again."

We wouldn't make that
big of a deal of it

[Ernest Cline] - So I
managed to find a guy

much like myself, who like

had probably spent
his whole life,

like I'm gonna find these
goddamn Pleasure Domes.

And he somehow found a
version of the ROM chips

that had the Pleasure
Domes in them, the upgrade.

I remember getting
this chip in the mail

and swapping it out
and booting it up

and seeing the new version.

And then finally, finally, I
reached the Pleasure Domes.

And it was really just a bunch
of like girls in bikini icons

that you could run
around and scoop up.

[triumphant video game music]

It was pretty...

...lame

Whoever was responsible
for, you know,

for that quest taking
me like 20 years

to reach the Pleasure Dome,
you should just be ashamed.

And if you never reached
the Pleasure Domes,

if you're one of those people,

I will tell you, it was not
worth it once you get there.

It's just a, yeah, just shitty.

All right. [laughing]

- There was a grittiness
about producing product,

about making games at
Williams Electronics,

that I think certainly had an
effect on the types of games

that we produced.

- We were in a big factory.

We had rats coming
through ceilings.

We had water leaks, floods.

It was part of
what Neil fostered,

was a hungry, dirty,
grungy atmosphere.

- Yeah, being in Chicago, I
think it comes out of the grit

of the manufacturing process.

- I think it's a lot to
do with the personalities

of all the people, and the
collective personalities,

as we all kind of went for
the down and dirty sometimes.

- We weren't afraid and we
weren't troubled by the idea

of having people compete,
because, you know,

we thought that it
would be helpful

enhancing their animal spirits,

to really come up
with something special

- When you go back
to the pinball days,

you know, in the '60s and
'70s, and all that other stuff,

you had basically three
major pinball companies.

You had Gottlieb, you had
Bally, and you had Williams.

Bally was the
leaders at the time.

They were the first
ones to come out

with solid state
pinball machines.

They acquired Midway,

and then they were
running the whole thing.

And they then were able
to get Space Invaders,

and of course, Pac-Man,
and all the other stuff

that went on at the time.

- The rivalry between
Bally Midway and Williams

was, you know, a really
longstanding, highly competitive

love/hate, maybe more hate
than love relationship.

- [Reporter] Well, this is
supposed to be Bally's big new,

you know, answer to Pac-Man

and all of that kind of stuff,

the next Pac-Man,
the next generation.

Think you'll ever
play Roto again?

- I probably would, you know.

I'm trying to figure out
what's going on, you know.

- Everyone at Bally
Midway had been

looking at Williams
for years as Them.

They were the other guys.

They did these type of games

that required enormous skill.

And I did games that were
idiot-proof and silly and funny.

- And so we really wanted
to bury those guys.

We wanted to bury Bally Midway.

We felt that they relied on
licensing brands too much.

So we just felt they were
phonies and incompetents

and we were going to
teach them a lesson

- And they were
them and we were us,

and all of a sudden,
now they were buying us.

[Ken Fedesna] - They were
diversifying into

health clubs and casinos.

♪ Bally's, Bally's

- They decided to get out
of the coin-op industry.

So it became available
for us to buy,

and that's why we ended
up purchasing them.

- Yeah, we won the war,
we killed these guys.

And then the crazy thing
is, then we like hired

all their managers and they
became our managers [laughs]

And then it was, I don't
know, it wasn't a year or two

before we had our name
changed to Midway [laughs]

[Neil Nicastro] - We changed the
branding of our video games

from Williams to Midway

because Midway had a
stronger consumer presence.

- I think I could see
Eugene's emotion in it.

We were fighting a
war for our jobs,

to get video started.

It was the Williams name.

And a lot of us, we all
took very much pride

in the Williams name.

- We won this war,
we're Williams.

Why are we Bally Midway?

I mean, they should, Bally
Midway becoming Williams.

And he goes, "You know what,
I paid five million bucks

"for that fucking name,
we're gonna use it."

[laughs]

- The only people that we
were able to actually attract

was Brian Colin and Jeff Nauman,

who had done Rampage
and Xenophobe

prior to the acquisition,
and then came over,

and their first game
with us was Arch Rival,

which was a big
success at the time.

- The income from Arch
Rivals basically paid for

the entire price of the merger.

So really, it was a free deal.

It was actually, Williams
got Bally Midway for nothing.

[laughs]

- I'll have to send you
the waving goodbye photo.

You'll appreciate it.

It shows what people
thought about the buyout.

[George Petro] - I got
a call, my phone rang

and it was Neil
Nicastro, the CEO.

And he goes, "Hey,
what would you think

"about doing a
Terminator 2 game?"

And I was like, "There's
gonna be a Terminator 2?"

- Arrangements were made
for George and I to fly out

to Hollywood to meet with
Jim Cameron and his people

and to show demonstrations

of what our digitizing hardware
and software was capable of.

- We put on this videotape
of us creating NARC.

And Jim Cameron sees it
and he just freaks out.

He's just like, he's
like, "This is awesome."

- Cameron was great.

I mean, it was like, you
guys are making movies

like we are.

- And he just stands up
at one point, he goes,

"Give these guys
everything they need."

And we're like,
Jack and I are like.

- What was interesting
to us when we mad

the Terminator 2 arcade
game is I'm pretty sure

it was the first
movie that ever had

on the set of the movie,

shooting simultaneously
through the movie

the arcade game people.

- We had access to all of
the actors and everything

from the movie.

But like Arnold, we didn't
really have access to him.

He was a little more
expensive, more difficult.

But we had access to his stunt
double that we could use.

And once he put, he had a
prosthetic jaw that he put on,

and he could look
exactly like Arnold.

[shooting]

- What's not commonly known
is that Linda Hamilton

actually has a twin sister,
who's a stunt double

and also her stand-in.

And in fact, at the
end of Terminator 2,

there is a sequence where
the T-1000 replicates itself

as Sarah Connor,

and then the real Sarah
Connor comes behind.

And actually, there's no trick
photography in that shot.

That's actually her
and her twin sister.

So her twin sister came
in and did all the stuff

and was quite happy to do it.

- Robert Patrick
was so enthusiastic,

he kept asking me, "So
it's gonna look like me?"

And I said, "Yes,
it's going to be you.

"We're gonna digitize you."

He goes, "Really?"

"We're gonna videotape you,

"and it's gonna be
you in the game."

I think he was just
as excited about tha

as he was about his
role in the movie.

- [Character] Excellent.

- I think what's really fun
about the arcade experience

with peripherals is
it kind of allows yo

to have a gaming experience

that you might not be
able to get in your house.

Having that thing that
you're holding in your hands

makes it feel more
like a performance.

[Ernest Cline] - That was
one of the most egregious

quarter-sucking games, too.

Like you would get killed
after three seconds

and have to put it
in, but the graphics,

again, it was like graphics
from the movie scanned in.

So you're actually playing
Arnold and fighting the T-1000

and there were elements
from the movie.

So it really felt like
you were in the movies.

- [Character] Hasta
la vista, baby.

- But by the time
you reached the end

and defeated the T-1000,
you had spent more

than it would cost to
watch the movie 10 times.

- See, when a game
went on test, we all,

we all went out and kind of,

we'd go watch it and have
dinner and come watch it.

And the game was
killing people in like,

I mean people were literally
lasting like 18 seconds.

I remember John Tobias one time,

he's like standing next to
it and we're watching it,

and these guys just got wasted.

And he just turns around, he
goes, "That was 18 seconds!

"They died in 18 seconds!"

And it was like, you
know, he's yelling.

I'm like, "Don't tell them
they just lost their money."

It was so funny.

- T2 was a good
success for Midway.

It opened the door for a
more cinematic experience.

- It got Midway to a new level.

It just all of a sudden was
like, this is what it means

to sell a crap ton of games.

And this is what it means
to earn $1,000 a week.

And just, you know, I
mean, it was just nonstop.

- [Character] It's Judgment Day.

- So we released T2, and
it did, it was doing great.

And I think this was
around the holidays

Matter of fact, I
know it was around.

It was New Years Eve.

And our marketing person
called me at home and said,

"Jack, are you available
on New Years Da

"to come downtown to the studio

"and be interviewed by
Entertainment Tonight?"

So I went down the next day,
and there was a reporter there,

and the game was
there, and she was asking

lots of questions
about the development.

Like, "How did you get
Arnold into the game?"

and "Wow, that really
looks like Robert Patrick,"

those sort of questions.

And right in the middle
of it was a question

that was framed very different
than any other question

she had been asking me.

"So in the game, you are
shooting police officers.

"How do you feel about that?"

- It's very clear in the movie

that Arnold never kills anybody.

He shoots them in the knee.

And they fall over and
they're no longer a threat.

And that's exactly what
happens in the game.

[characters crying out]
[shooting]

- And I told her to stop
right then, and I said,

"You need to convey my
answer in its entirety,"

because I felt very
personal about this.

And I said I had family members
who were in the police force

so I took it very seriously.

And what it ended up being was
kind of this real accusatory,

hard-hitting like,
"So how do you feel

"about making a video game
that encourages people

"to shoot cops?"

- And it was, it was
our first experience in

how video games were
directly impacting

the entertainment community,

and through the media,
society as a whole

- You know, in some ways,
I think the old saying is

bad publicity is
never really bad.

It's publicity.

And it gives you some
notoriety and some attention.

And maybe people that
might not have been aware

of the game before have
now become aware of it

because of this free publicity.

So it worked to our
advantage, ultimately

- By the early '90s, I mean,
we were on a roll at Midway,

and the whole NARC technology,

our photorealistic digitization
was just killing the world.

But as studio head, I really
didn't have the cycles

to like do something new.

A dream of mine was what's the
next phase of the industry,

and it's 3D texture mapping.

I could see that that
was going to happen

And I really wanted
to do a driving game

- Go in to work Monday morning,

and the person that had
to office next to me

I noticed was empty.

And I was like, well,
what's going on?

And I noticed a couple
of cubicles were empty.

I called Ken, I'm like, "Did
I miss something?" [laughs]

"Did I miss something
that was going on?

"I don't understand."

And he said, "Oh
yeah, Eugene and Mark,

"they had a project
they wanted to work on.

"But they're gonna work
on it out of house."

And out of house
meant they had quit

and they started
their own company.

And it was like, uh.

- You know, they had
tremendous talent.

And you know, it was
Turmell, Petro, Jack Haeger.

The art side had John Tobias.

- The first time I heard that,

I remember feeling
lost a little bit.

It's almost like your
parent is leaving the house

kind of a thing.

- You know, in true
Williams style,

nobody decided to say anything.

They never sort of like
dealt with the fact

that the manager of the
video department was gone.

They just kind of
left us, you know,

Lord of the Flies style.

- I always looked at him as
being kind of the Godfather

of the industry and sort
of a leader of, you know,

of our studio.

And so when he was walking away,

that was not a good feeling.

Here we've got the Godfather,
the Doctor of Video Games,

Eugene Jarvis, creator of all.

Some call him God.

What do you call yourself?

- Ah, [beep] face.

[laughing]

- [Woman] That's a wrap.

- That's good, that's
a wrap, let's end it.

- In the early '80s,
the games were metaphor.

So it wasn't real space men.

It was little
metaphorical bleeps,

and you know, little
animated sprites

that represented a human
or an alien or a spaceship.

The more you got into
realism, definitely

I think brought in more of the
male aggressive game player.

- The games were louder.

The graphics are more detailed.

There's lots more blood.

Like it feels different.

And that's something
that the companies

were really actively
advertising.

Games have always been violent,

so I'm not saying that
comes out of nowhere.

But it's not the thing

that they were kind of
leading with before, right?

[Neil Nicastro] - I think
everybody by this point

knows the story about
Mortal Kombat.

It wasn't Mortal Kombat
to start out with

And this is probably the
greatest story of Midway

Ed Boon and John Tobias.

[John Tobias]- I think the
first time I met him was...

he was playing his radio
really loud in his office.

He kept coming next door to us,

you know, knocking on
our door and coming in,

sticking his head in and going,

"Hey, is that too loud?

"Sounds too loud."

And he'd go back and lower
his volume a little bit

and he'd come back.

"Hey, is that too loud?"

And you know, so that was the
first time that I met him.

I think my first reaction
was, who the fuck is this guy?

[Neil Nicastro] - We had about
a three-month gap

in the factory's
production line.

And they said, "We
can give you a game."

It was like some
ridiculous break time.

It was like six months.

"A new game in six
months to fill the gap."

"All right, what is it?"

"It's a fighting game."

[John Tobias] - Karate Champ was
a fighting game that I had

played in high school,
and I loved that game.

And I thought, wow,
that would lend itself

to sort of this one-on-one
fighting game idea.

I was a huge martial arts fan.

I loved old Kung Fu movies.

In the early '90s,

there were two up-and-coming
martial arts stars.

There was Van Damme, and
then there was Steven Seagal.

We thought, wow, we have to
get one of those guys involved.

- Not bad kid.

- And we're gonna use
Jean-Claude Van Damme's image

in this game like we, you know,

now have begun doing in
our other video games.

Okay.

- We wanted him to come
in to do some videos

you know, to digitize
him, and things like that

the voiceover, whatever.

What I remember is
he just wasn't cooperative

- This was a filler game for us,

you know, just something
to fill the gap

And excuse my language,
okay, but I said

"Kenny, tell him to go fuck off.

"Tell these guys, make
up their own characters

"and put their own
characters in the gam

"Make a fighting game
with their own characters.

"Forget about
Jean-Claude Van Damme."

- Actually, I thought
that was great.

Like, I thought the freedom to
sort of create our own story

and our own characters and all
those things was appealing.

The first character we
taped on Mortal Kombat

was Johnny Cage.

- I remember first showing up
to the first day

of shooting Mortal Kombat,
showing up to film

and literally having to spend
an hour with John and Ed

cleaning up an area
for us to film,

because there was no room
for us to film anything.

[John Tobias] - When we taped the
Johnny Cage character,

I think we might have
worked on the game

for at least a month before
we taped the second character.

I think the idea was we wanted
to kinda take our learnings

on Johnny Cage and figure
out really what it was

that we were messing with.

If a character threw a kick,
you know, they would always,

they'd wanna throw it
as fast as they could.

And so the problem for us
was it would become a blur.

- John is like, "Bup
can't you float?

"Try to float.

"Hold yourself in the air,

"because it's gonna
come out blurry."

I was like, Bup, really?

- And that was a
learning process.

We didn't walk in
with all the answers.

It was just sort of, we would
tape a character doing moves

and then we'd go back and
work with the actual artwork.

Ed would start to work with
the graphics and the game.

He would kinda come back
with the reality of,

well, we have to do that in
three frames, or four frames.

Speed was super
important to him.

- Then we'd go on our review.

We'd go look at the games.

And it was early on.

When we saw up on the screen,

they had fighters
fighting fast as hell.

[Mortal Kombat music]

[characters yelling
and grunting]

We said, holy shit.

This thing is great.

And what was a six-month
production time

to fill a hole in the factory,

we threw that out the
window and realize

continue where you're going,

because this thing is great.

[characters yelling]

[Game] - Test your might.

Liu Kang, wins.

[applauding]

[John Tobias] - That's
just an obnoxious moment

[Daniel Pesina] - John
wanted to do a ninja

And right away, I
was like, ninja?

Ninja's already been,

you know, everyone's a
ninja, it's friggin' '80s.

But there's, in China
there's these type of ninja.

- The Chinese Ninja Connection
was the name of the book.

It was written as this
historical book about

some order of Chinese
assassins who had

sort of predated
the Japanese ninja.

- So actually, he
bought that book,

and Scorpion and Sub-Zero are
originally from that clan.

- The whole thing was
like, the name was made up.

The whole story was
gonna be bullshit.

- You have people
out there who care

about the lore of Mortal Kombat.

You have people that
can go through, lik

well, this is
Sub-Zero's brother,

and he's not wearing
the mask here.

And this is original Sub-Zero,

and then there's
classic Sub-Zero.

They can run all that stuff down

because those characters
have just become so iconic

over the years.

I mean, wrestling was stealing
stuff from Mortal Kombat.

Glacier, the wrestler,
was just Sub-Zero

[video game yelling
drowning out announcer]

[Announcer] -
Combination of styles.

[John Tobias] - You know,
while I may have created

maybe the visual qualities
of the characters,

you know, the back-
story and whatnot,

really, the core of the
product was its playability.

And that started with Ed.

That always came from him
sort of playing the game.

And he would sit in
his office for hours

and call people in to kind of,

"Hey, try this, hey, try that."

- His games reflect
his personality.

I think his games bring
out the way Ed really feels

about things, because
his nature is outrageous.

- There was a period
at the end of a match

where you kind of got a free
hit off of your opponent.

And we wanted to kind of
put an exclamation on it.

For us, it was always, hey,
watch me go do an uppercut.

Somewhere along the way,

Ed put in Johnny Cage punching
off the opponent's head.

- I was like, you can't,
I was like, in shock.

I was like, you can't do that.

Holy cow, it looked so real
to me, that I was like,

Boop, you just killed me.

- [Game] Cage wins.

- And he was like, "Yeah,
isn't that really cool?"

And I was like, "Dude,
you can't do that

And he goes, "We can
do whatever we want

And I was like, looked
at him, I was like

"You're right, we can"
because no boss has ever let,

I've never seen a boss
hanging out with us.

We can shoot whatever we want,
and that's what they get.

- I was never telling Ed
Boon, "Hey, don't pull that,

"don't decapitate
that guy's head."

Instead, you know, I would,
I remember suggesting to him,

"Can't you do a fatality where
you rip the guy's leg off

"and beat the crap out
of him with his own leg?"

[character yelling]

From a management
standpoint, we also believed

that's what the customer wanted.

- He buried it in some
button, joystick combination

that he thought no one
would ever discover.

I remember the players
discovered it right away.

Like it was the first
weekend, they discovered it.

And we were there at some
point watching the reactions.

- Oh, everybody kind of, when
they saw the fatalities...

[characters yelling]

They knew this was
something different.

- We knew right then,
there, that there was no way

we were going to ever
take those things out.

And if anything, we
need to give them more.

- Back in the day, I had
a little piece of paper

that had all of the combos for
the fatalities written down.

I mean, obviously you have to
memorize them at some point.

But I would like whip that
little cheat sheet out

and like quickly type
in all the buttons

to make sure I got it.

- They've got this
game, Mortal Kombat,

and you could kill people.

And I was like, I didn't,

it's hard to even know
what that even meant.

But I'm like, all right, dude.

I'm gonna go, we're
gonna check this out

And sure enough, in the back
of this skateboard shop,

they had an MK machine.

And I just took one
look at it and was like.

- [Game] John Cage.

- They are killing people.

- It was like a big
F-U to everybody.

It was like, oh,
you don't want us

to make video games like this?

Well, how about we
turn it up to 11

and just make that even worse
than anything you could imagine?

I'm sure they were all
just laughing heartily.

- You know, we're doing
the stuff with Liz.

She's athletic, kickass.

- Then she goes up into that.
- Yeah.

- Okay.
- Then pose.

- Right!
- Yeah!

- We're going to
go into fatality.

And Liz looks at him and goes,

"I'm not going to do a fatality.

"Why can't I just give him
like a flower or something,

"and peace and love?"

[character yelling]

- [Game] Sonya wins, fatality.

- And then, of course,
came the brutalities,

the babalities, which
were so ridiculous

and the friendships.

- By the end of
its production run,

the first Mortal
Kombat game, I believe,

ended up selling
about 27,000 units.

- And I guarantee if you
ask Ed and John separately,

there's no way they had a vision

that it was going to go
the way that it went.

I mean, none of us did.

None of us could imagine
that you could sell

that many games
again in our era.

[music]

- Being a nerd and
being aspirational

about the games
industry in general,

from a young age,
I knew some names.

I knew Mark Cerny had
created Marble Madness.

And I remember
hearing these stories

about a guy named Mark Turmell,

who had created Toy
Bizarre for Activision.

- [Announcer] Mark is one of
nation's leading designers

of home video software,

a former boy wonder
who did not burn out

A creative computer whiz with
a dinosaur-like age of 23,

he's still cranking out video
games for the home market.

How many teenagers, after all,

make it into People Magazine

and find themselves
in other articles

described as the hottest
designer in the industry?

- I love golf.

I go on streaks on golf.

I get addicted and
then I get frustrated

But I love basketball
and gambling.

- So when I recognized
Mark Turmell's name

in the credits of NBA Jam,
that was a revelation.

I know that guy.

I don't know that guy,
but I know that guy!

I remember, I remember hear,

whatever happened
to Mark Turmell?

Oh, he's making one of
the greatest arcade games

of all time.

[Mark Turmell] - The rules of
basketball are so perfect

You've got a three-point line.

You've got timers
for the shot clock.

You've got periods that
we can tighten up to be

the right timeframe.

So just the inherent
rules of basketball

made for really a
great product strategy

- People have asked me
about the influence of

Arch Rivals on
NBA Jam, obviously,

'cause a lot of the same
game-playing mechanic.

We were first.

But all I really know
is that I've been told

that Mark Turmell was a fan.

- You know, I think maybe
I've played that game

three or four games
total in my life.

It's just not a game
that appealed to me with,

you know, you kinda
pull the pants down.

They had a punch.

- He asked us about our interest
in doing licensed products,

officially licensed products.

And we were resistant,

mainly because on my side was,

I didn't want to do
photographic stuff.

I wanted to keep doing cartoons.

I felt that's where
the humor was gonna be.

- Neil Nicastro came
into my office one day,

and he said, "How
come you're not pursuing

"the NBA license?

- If they're the real
basketball players

that's what the players
are going to want to be.

They're going to want to,

they have their
favorite basketball stars

They want to play as
those basketball stars.

That what we have to do.

- Made the pitch.

- [Announcer] Williams
Electronics is
currently developing

an arcade-based, four-player
video basketball game,

one which employs lifelike
digitized graphics.

First, basketball players
are videotaped in the studio

performing hundreds of moves.

Artists digitize this footage
into individual frames,

which are stored and
played back in sequence,

or animated to create a
video basketball player

capable of performing
on command.

Well, the NBA's
immediate reaction was,

hey, thanks, but no thanks.

Their kind of understanding
or perception

of the arcade business
was rooted there

in Times Square, which was a
very seedy area at the time.

And they did not want
the NBA logo presented

in that atmosphere.

- I remember a
comment internally

"Don't they realize how much
money they're gonna make?"

Seriously, I mean, we're not
even gonna cover the salary

of one player, let's face it.

The NBA will continue whether
they do a game with us or not.

- So our video guy,
once again, he said,

"I can solve this."

He went out to family
entertainment centers

around Chicago and
he took videos to sho

what a real arcade is like.

We sent that back to the NBA

to tell them this is what
it's like, not Times Square.

They accepted that,
they understood,

and they started talking
deal terms with Roger Sharpe.

- Understand and appreciate
that there's never been

a professional sports
team licensed in coin-op.

- Well, the logistics of
getting all the players

in our studio, and then the
logistics of having them do

every animation over
and over and over again,

because there was a
few hundred animations,

and the logistics of
then going through

and stripping out all
those, it couldn't be done.

Like there's just no way.

- [Man] Okay, all
right, that's good.

- We figured out
a system for using

an attachment system
that games typically used

for putting like different
types of guns or weapons

or props in characters' hands.

[Mark Turmell] - And so Shawn
Liptak trimmed off a head

and he pasted that
head on to prove

that we could kind of change
up a different flesh tone,

a different look.

- There were 16 different head
angles that we had to use,

one looking forward, one
looking up, one looking down,

one looking left,
one looking right,

one looking left up, one
looking left down [mumbles],

all the way around.

- And again, this is
before the internet

This is before, you know, any
easily accessible resource.

So we were looking at VHS tapes

of the biggest
dunks of all time,

looking at the athletes
and trying to trim out

their faces at these
different angles.

- We thought, hey, why
don't we put our heads in.

Like let's be in
the game ourselves.

How cool would that be?

That's worth doing the
game right there for.

We got, you know,
everybody from around

who wanted to be in there.

And we'd get them
into the studio,

and we'd shoot all our angles.

And then there was one
guy that we worked with,

Sheridan Oursler, who came in
with a derby hat on his head.

And we're like, "Hey Sheridan,
you want us to shoot you

"with that hat on your head?

He was like, "Yeah,
yeah, this is my derby."

And so we go, "Okay."

And so we shot him with
a derby on his head

and put him in the game

and like didn't
think anything of it.

And then I think we
put the game on test

And people freaked out
because it was a person

with a derby.

You've never seen a
person with a derby

playing a basketball
game before.

So like within a
few weeks, you know,

throughout the arcades
that we had it on test in,

everybody's playing Sheridan's
head with a derby hat.

- [Game] Go up,
delivers the special!

- Funny, because
we got NBA license,

but people liked playing
the special characters

more than they liked
playing the NBA players.

- Well, we were
doing things now,

like putting in the
Mortal Kombat characters.

[NBA Jam music]

- The NBA had a fit

when they saw there were
Mortal Kombat characters.

[characters yelling]

- And I thought, oh gamers
are gonna love that.

A little crossover,
thing, that's great.

And so Mark says that on
the record in an interview,

and I go and I type it up.

And a week-and-a-half later,
I get a phone call from Mark,

which I'm not expecting.

And he goes, "Yeah, I
needed to follow up with you

"on something that came
up in our interview.

"Remember that thing
about the Mortal Kombat

"secret characters
in Tournament Edition

I'm like, "Yeah, I'm
looking forward to that."

He goes, "Yeah, we've been
on the phone with the NBA,

"and they're, they're not
really into the idea." [laughs]

- And it was not
a good situation.

And we had to scramble
very, very quickly

to produce a new set of
ROMs that did not have

the Mortal Kombat
characters in them.

- [Game] Get that outta here!

- That traditional
gaming audience

that wants to find secrets,

that needs to collect
every coin in the game,

that wants to know every
secret warp in every level,

that absolutely was catnip

to all of the hard-core
gamers that were like,

"Well, I know something
you don't know."

- [Game] No way!

Jackson [cheering
drowns out words]

- Having actual announcers,

I couldn't push them
into the high energy part

of being an announcer voice

for a quarter-at-a-time
video game

in an arcade setting.

- I had never done
any voiceover before.

I had never done any
sports work before,

related to acting or voiceover.

It was just acting
work, stage work,

and work at Second City.

- So I got Tim in.

And he was kinda doing
his Marv Alpert

but really, he
just became himself

and became that actor.

- It was like this.

John came in, gave me a script.

He said, "Big," he said, "Loud,"

and I went, "He's on fire,
rejected, boom shakalaka!

"He's heating up!"

And that was about it. [laughs]

- And think about
making that system work

We're talking about a
system that is calling

the play-by-play action,
splicing in player names,

at different levels
of inflection.

- The reason for the
different inflections is

just for that variety
of before a shot,

after a shot, in the
middle of a shot.

Pippen for three!

Pippen with the dunk!

Pippen with the monster jam!

Pippen, Pippen, Stockton,
Stockton, Stockton!

- [Game] Rebound,
Jams it in!

- And there used to be a game
called Run and Gun by Konami

that was the first game that
actually the camera work

seemed to like follow
you down the court

I go down, I listened
to that game,

and I hear the guy
go, "Nice shot."

- [Game] Fakes him up, put
it up, three, yes, good shot.

Way to go.

- What is this guy?

Is he medicated or something?

That's not how you
call a basketball gam

I go down to the
other end and hear,

"Get that stuff outta
here, rejected!"

And I could feel the
effect that my voice had

on that extra amping
up of the situation

So sometimes I'd
sneak up behind him,

guy would take a shot,
and I'd go, "Ugly shot!

"Puts up a brick!"

or "Get that stuff outta here!"

He'd turn around and go,
"Hey, you sound like the guy!"

And I'd go, "I am
the guy, dude."

- Eugene Jarvis always
told me, you know

make sure the player
gets more powerful.

Never take something
away from him.

But what if we, you know,
put the player into a mode

where he's on fire and
everything's a swish?

And we knew right away that
there was a mechanic there

that made sense.

- And I was saying,
"Oh, that's unrealistic.

"That's not cool, it's
gonna be fantasy then.

"People aren't gonna take
it seriously," or whatever.

And they're like, "No,
no, it's video game.

"It's totally video
game, it's totally cool.

"It's totally cool!"

And I'm all like [muttering]
"It's not gonna be cool at all.

"Nobody's gonna like that."

- He said, I won't
give you the art.

I won't give you flame art.

So I actually went
back into SmashTV

and took the flame explosions,
attached them to the ball,

and we started the Smoke
Mode and the On Fire.

- First time that we
had seen in the arcade,

and these kids who are
playing the game already

for a couple weeks had
seen, you know, On Fire,

and slamming and
shattering the backboard

and the guy just went, "Ah!"

Raised his arms up in
the air, "Oh, hell no!"

And ran around the
arcade, inside.

He ran around four times.

Everybody screamed.

Everybody was like, "Ah!"

They're holding their
heads like they just saw

the Second Coming.

And we were like looking at
each other, like oh my God.

It's just such an
iconic part of,

and just felt so good
to see people get

that excited about something.

We're like, yeah, I think
it's gonna be pretty cool.

- This is bad, man, this is bad!

[NBA Jam music]

- If you're playing
against the computer

it's never going to allow
you to get too far in front.

You'll start missing shots.

Or the computer will
start missing shots a lot,

if the score's too far in front.

So it doesn't allow the
scores to get too far apart,

and it keeps the excitement of,

oh, I can so overtake
you, the last minute,

the last throw, I can win!

- If you're in the
fourth quarter,

and you have, you know,
just a few seconds left

and have an opportunity
to tie the game,

to have it go into overtime,

and take a shot at the buzzer,

the chances are so much higher

from the half court line

than it would be
from laying it up

at any other point in the game.

- Rubberbanding is,

I don't know if that
was a Mark Turmell call,

or what the deal was,

but the rubberbanding in NBA Jam

and then later in NFL
Blitz, and Showtim

and all that sort of stuff,

it's almost evil.

But also, it makes for
really heightened moments

of like, oh man, we
went to overtime again!

What are the odds!

Turns out the odds
are pretty good.

- [Game] At the
buzzer, he scores!

- We were getting calls
about games that were broken.

I said, "What?"

Because that's
one of the things,

you put a game on test,
you know, it's gotta work.

And to have a game
that's not working,

it's like the
height of stupidity.

- The game was supposedly down.

We said, "What the
heck's going on here?

So we go out there,

and you couldn't put any
more quarters in the game.

- It had accumulated
so many quarters,

it had jammed the coin mech

and you couldn't put
any more quarters i

- [Announcer] Unheard
of collections.

At all of our test locations,

NBA Jam is collecting between
124 and 167 percent

of what Mortal Kombat did
during its first six weeks.

- Jurassic Park was the
biggest film at the time,

and it was breaking all
kinds of earning records.

It made $350 million.

And that was a milestone
that people said

we can't believe it,
it's incomprehensible.

And here comes NBA Jam,
and Mark said, I said,

"Can you tell me about how
popular this really is?"

"I can tell you this.

"NBA Jam made a
billion dollars."

And I said, "In quarters?"

- Anybody that just liked
games and liked sports

and walked around a mall
would hear and see that game,

because in malls,
they were like arcades

and there was always
groups of people around.

And you're like, what's that?

- And when people
were playing together,

they're probably more
likely to keep playing,

because you can't just
walk off from your friend

that you're playing with.

- Whereas some
games are abstract,

or some people just don't
want to blast aliens,

or they don't want
to fight other people

the idea of, it's
like basketball,

but without all of
those pesky rules.

That becomes a very
appealing thing to people

that would be into sports,

but wouldn't be caught
dead in an arcade

But here, this is
the perfect gateway.

[game announcer yelling]

John Tobias - The home versions
of the early Mortal Kombat games

were released by Acclaim.

- Mortal Kombat!

- I remember seeing
TV ads for the games

that partly fueled
the kind of concern

that parents had
about Mortal Kombat,

because it always emphasized
gangs of like young kids

running around streets
yelling, "Mortal Kombat!"

- Mortal Kombat!

- I think parents felt
there was a revolution

about to happen, because
that's how it was portrayed

in the marketing materials.

That somehow their kids were
involved in this weird thing,

and suddenly they turn around

and it'd be like a
1984 kind of situatio

where all of the parents
would be thrown into jail

and kids would run amuck.

- You know, the home
games, when they came out,

they were marketed, I think,
to a younger audience.

- You know, when we filmed it,

we didn't film it
for a home version.

We filmed it for arcade.

And who is, you
know, at the arcade?

Kids with their own money.

- Actually, when I think back

of all of the time
I spent in arcades,

I don't remember seeing too
many moms walking around.

- [Reporter] After a $10
million advertising campaign,

Mortal Kombat, debuting
in home video today,

is expected to sell two
million copies at $50 a pop,

a horrifying
possibility for parents

who can't believe the game
makers are fantasizing

about decapitation and murder.

- So now moms and dads
are looking at their kids

playing this game, and they
see heads being decapitated,

skulls being pulled
off of bodies.

- I don't know think
we'll have this at home.

- You don't think so?

- No, they're too violent.
- You look a little startled.

- Yeah, it's a little
too violent, I think.

- That's pretty bad.

That's just plain gross.

- I'm sure moms were walking
through the living room

and looking at the
game that their

kids were playing, and writing
a letter to their Congressman

like, "I bought
Mortal Kombat thinking

"it was a fun fighting game."

- It's crazy to me how some
people don't see the humor

in Mortal Kombat.

I mean, one of the
taglines is Toasty!

What game does that?

I think that humor was
essential to its success,

because without it, I think
it just would have been

almost violent for the
sake of being violent.

- Seeing Mortal Kombat
held up as a scapegoat

for societal ills
was a direct parallel

to what rock-and-roll
had gone through

through the '50s
through the '70s,

what comic books had
done in the '50s.

It was the latest thing
for the previous generation

to blame society's
problems on and say,

"These kids today, they're
gonna ruin the world."

- [Reporter] Children
of different ages.

And that is exactly what--

- Many companies would
shudder when they see

their product talked about
in an unfavorable light

by a US senator.

- The game narrator instructs
the player to finish,

and I quote, "finish
his opponent."

The player may then
choose a method of murder,

ranging from ripping
the heart out

to pulling off the
head of the opponent

with spinal cord attached.

- I personally delighted in it,

because we saw a clear
effect every time someone

was making a big deal in the
press about Mortal Kombat,

it was on TV, we saw the sales
in the home product jump up.

And if we happened to have
something in the arcade,

you know, it was probably also
seeing the benefit of a jump.

- And we hope very
much that you step ba

and take into account

our counter-responsibilities
as citizens here,

and not only as people
who are employed

to maximize profits.

- Then you had the issue
of Nintendo and Sega.

- We were starting to encroach

on Nintendo's share of market.

And one of the reasonswas that we were appealing

to an older age group.

And part of that older age
appeal became Mortal Kombat

in its original form.

- the Nintendo version
was very neutered

The blood was turned
into like a sweat.

- People who played it
knew what was happening.

So I thought that was
a silly thing to do

And I thought it
detracted from the game

So I was committed that
we were going to show

all the blood that existed
in the arcade version

of Mortal Kombat.

- It had that blood code.

It had two codes.

It had the A-B-A-C-A-B-B,
the main blood code,

and then it had
the builder code,

down-up-left-left-A-right-down

for the cheat menu.

And then you could get Reptile
and do all this other stuff.

And yeah, so the Genesis
version was the version,

as far as anyone I
knew was concerned.

This NES version
was just a wreck.

- We wanted to be different.

We wanted to be edgy.

We wanted to make the
point that we weren't

this nice, clean, young kids
company that Nintendo was.

- Sega used the slogan like,
we do what Nintendon't.

Nintendo would never do this

because they're so
family-friendly.

But we do other things.

And there's something like

really delightfully
salacious about that

- We outsold the
Nintendo version by
about five to 10 times

more than what sold on
the Nintendo system.

- Will you ever draw
the line where you say

it's too violent?

- Yeah, there's, of course,
we're gonna draw the line,

sure, yeah.

[metallic slicing]
[body parts plopping]

- [Game] Scorpion
wins, fatality.

- There's an ad for a
poster in the Attract Mode

for Revolution X.

And since playing through
that game start to finish,

I've been one button click
away about four times

from buying that poster on Ebay.

It's got the girl with
the New World Order,

no was it, the New Order?

But yeah, that game,

I would really like to know,

I'm looking forward to
watching this finished product,

because I hope you have the
story about how that game

came to be in there,
because...what the hell?

[George Petro] - I got this
speech two times from Neil

It was like, "Okay, you can
do whatever you want, but,"

[laughs] "it comes from
these three choices,

"sports, driving,
fighting, or gun.

"You can't do sports,
you can't do driving,

"and you can't do fighting.

"So take your pick."

It was, so I guess we're
doing another gun game.

It was supposed to be
Generation X with Public Enemy.

That was the original
concept, yeah.

So two things happened.

Number one, we got a letter
from, I believe it was Marvel

that said, "We own
Generation X, so back off."

- I remember George being
very, very angry about that.

He wanted to put into Generation
I remember him saying,

"You know what, I'm so
pissed at this, I'm so angry,

"I think we should put
some sort of superhero

"all in yellow spandex that
you get to shoot a lot."

- The second was
is Public Enemy,

who would have
nothing to do with us.

So, don't know why.

So we had to really like,
okay, strike one and two.

So what are we going to do now?

So we changed the
name to Revolution X,

and we started thinking really
hard about who we would have.

We knew we wanted
music in the game.

- Initial premise was that
we were going to get bands,

plural, together,

we do country-western

do hard rock.

Do this, do this, and it
was just like, seriously?

- Our marketing person, Roger
Sharpe, God love him, said,

"Jack, how would
you like to go out

"and speak with Aerosmith?

"What do you think
of Aerosmith?"

And I'm like, my God,
Aerosmith is awesome.

And I loved their music.

I bought their music with my
own money since I was a kid.

- So we got in front of a camera

and just like made our pitch.

Jack was really good.

I was horrible on the pitch.

It was like, we're
super pasty white.

And we're just like,
hey, we're from Chicago

and make video games.

We wanna use you
in a video game.

And I go, "This is
gonna go zero far."

- Hi guys, I'm Jack Haeger.

- Hi, George Petro.

- And we're from Williams
Bally Midway in Chicago,

makers of exciting and new
pinball and video games.

There were things I heard
on the radio at that time

that were dealing with
the impact of music

on youth culture and how
it literally saved lives

and gave meaning to
every generation.

They can't go to their parents,

because their parents didn't
grow up with computers.

They don't know what's
happening in the world

or what's gonna happen
in the next 20 years.

It's a real difficult
time to grow up.

But the one stable thing that
has always kept kids sane

is their music.

- You know, you're this youth
that's getting like oppressed,

and Aerosmith becomes
your guiding light

They leave clues all
through the world

and they leave these videos.

You just go to see them
at an underground club.

You get right
close to the stage.

Aerosmith's jamming.

All of the sudden, these New
Order troops come on the stage

and push Aerosmith
off of the stage.

And it's like, what
happened, you know,

and you guys are
like, whoa, come on,

you know, get away from me.

And you decide, hey,
I'm gonna fight this

So you use your gun,
you're shooting everybody.

So we did it, we wrapped
up the video tape,

sent it to their management.

And like a week later,
they called, they go,

"Yeah, the band saw
it, they love it.

"They wanna do it, they're in."

So we, um, we're like, what?

- Aerosmith has always
been one of those bands

that was the most eager
to take digital risks.

They did a game for PC

that was a virtual
guitar, early, early on.

This was way before Guitar Hero

or any of the other guitar
abstraction music games.

So when Revolution
X became announced,

all of my friends were
like, "Wow, Aerosmith!"

I'm like, this is what they do.

They were the risk takers.

They thought digital
entertainment was fun.

That seemed like a
perfect fit to me.

Besides, I'm sure they looked
at Journey back in the day

and said, "We can do that."

[video game music]

[George Petro] They showed up.

We got this big bus that they
came from the airport in.

Steven Tyler was the
first guy off the bus.

He had watched everything.

- There's Steven Tyler up there,

and George is just saying,
"Do this and do that."

I mean, he's doing
whatever we ask.

- [Director] Action.

- Hey, come on in.

You got your wings,
welcome home.

- Yeah, we didn't
have a drum set,

because I remember the
drummer had to air drum.

And we said, we're gonna
build your drum set digitally.

Remember where all
your drums are, so,

and he would play
them, because I mean,

he's a professional
drummer, so he just.

[Aerosmith music]

- [Director] Cut! Cut!

- We had a whole looping
session with the band.

So we would take all the,

we took all the footage,

and then we sent it to
the sound department

and they brought up the footage.

- This is all like combat stuff,

I mean, like heat of the
battle kind of, "No, no, no!"

Stuff like that, so you know,
pretty high energy level,

and that kind of yelling stuff.

About that long, too.

Give me just three
or four of them.

- No, no, no, no!

- [Man] That's great.

Can you give me one that's like
really deep in your throat,

like a "No!"

- No!

- [Man] That's cool, all right.

- Awesome.

- [Man] Excellent.

- Excellent.

- [Man] All right!

- All right.

- [Man] Rock and roll!

- I'm not gonna say that.

- [Man] Okay, I'm sorry.

That's just too much.

- I think, oh, like rock and
roll, it's like, come on.

- [Man] Okay, fair enough.

♪ Sweet

- These guys are maggots.

They're putting
chemicals in all our foo

♪ Emotion

- Aerosmith looks like
they had half an hour

to come in and sit
down and go like,

you know, it's just
like, "Yeah, all right!"

And then the keys fly
out of the screen.

You get the videotape
in put it in.

Here's Steven Tyler going like,

"You did good, now go do this."

That stuff is so corny,
but like kind of amazing.

- It's a gun game, but what
if the gun shot compact discs.

And it's a crazy idea, I
know, makes little sense.

- The sound of a CD launching
like a grenade launcher,

[mimics shooting]

like that is part of the
core experience to me.

And I can listen
to that all day.

- So much of the
discussion of should it be

Revolution X: Music as a Weapon

or Revolution X: Music,

was it Music as a Weapon or
Music Is the Weapon? I think

There was this humongous
amount of email

going backwards and forwards
about whether it should be

Music as a Weapon.

Who the hell cares?

- Unfortunately, people have
come to use Revolution X

as a punchline.

I still unironically
like it [laughs].

- It doesn't match up to T2.

It just didn't have the,

T2, who had so much momentum
because of what it was,

the movie, the robots.

You know, Revolution X
was just kind of our,

you know, our sort of creation.

- We had this thing where
we were supposed to take

a quarter every 45 seconds.

That was what you
were aiming to do

with these arcade games.

NBA Jam and Mortal Kombat
did that, actually.

But most of the
other games didn't.

And you ended up having to
try and make story games

really, really difficult to
be constantly taking money.

Well, there's only
so much difficulty

that someone's going to
do to pay for it once,

because you play through once

and it costs you
an arm and a leg,

and you don't wanna do it again.

- But the game just didn't earn.

I mean, it's all
about the earnings.

It always is about the cash box.

How does the cash box, is it
filled or isn't it filled?

What's my return
on investment?

I paid 4,000 or
$5,000 for a game.

I would expect the
operators are looking

for a little return
on their investment

in six to nine months.

- We all realized
that we bit off a lot

in combining such major talent
with a cinematic experience.

And flying by the seat
of our pants game design

wasn't going to hack
it in the future.

- As video games are
moving towards movies,

this is definitely a step
in the right direction.

That's what I
think is different.

It's history, man,
history in the making

- One thing that I think
really sunk it home

for a lot of these guys
who were still at Midway

was that Eugene Jarvis,

who used to be one of
their fellow coworkers,

had left Midway.

And I think that kind of
put in each of their minds

that there's opportunities
for their talent.

- At one point, we were
contacted by Universal Studios.

- They wanted to spin a
story around this new thing

called GameWorks that they
were trying to start off.

- [Announcer] GameWorks,

the ultimate
entertainment destination.

Games, drinks, music, and food.

- And so they were looking
for people to develop

their location-based
arcade game.

- So we go on this
ridiculous trip

where the Universal jet that
Steven Spielberg flies on

is showing up at Midway Airport,

and we're all to get on
it and like fly out to,

fly out to California.

And it was, it was the
best experience ever.

Number one, it turns out you
can get to LA in like two hours

if you fly really fast.

We meet with the
president of Universal.

We have lunch with
him in the commissary

Like, here's all these
goofy video game guys.

- So I was usually the guy
that would have the balls

to like propose some numbers,

or you know, paint the picture.

- It was just the
epitome of Mark,

just throwing out
these huge numbers

that they're gonna demand.

And it was fun, because it
was like this confidence

with these guys that they
realize they were the value.

- I remember hearing all of
the rumors of competitors

courting our guys.

- Some of the guys would
be getting comments,

innuendos, and remarks
from management

about your obligation to
the employee agreements.

Well, what would
happen if they left.

- If they were gonna
screw us and leave,

we're gonna sue the
crap out of them,

because we created this
contractual relationship,

which prevented them from
working for a competitor

for at least a year
after they left us.

- And it was more about
making your life difficult

than it was about the
clause actually being legal.

It was about suing you

and you having to
defend yourself,

and him having
more money than you

and being able to
outspend you with lawyers,

just making your life difficult.

So other employers
didn't want to hire you.

- In the pinball area,

when a bunch of guys
left our pinball business

to work for an upstart,

we unleashed our legal dogs

on everybody associated
with that to sue them,

take them to court, and make
their lives so miserable

that they would just
eventually throw up their hands

and say, "We give up."

- You know, he really felt
ownership over all of us.

You know, he would
yell and say, you know

"Get your ass back here!

"What are you doing?"

He was pretty strong
in his opinions.

- Although the Universal
deal didn't get penned,

it did produce the negotiating
point and motivation

for Midway to pay these guys
what they really were worth

and recognize the value that
they really were bringing

to Midway's role and
placement in this industry.

[John Tobias] - I remember Ed
and I were in the studio

and Larry Kasanoff was brought
through by Ken Fedesna.

And Larry was familiar with
Midway through Terminator 2.

- I heard through the
grapevine that Midway

was testing an arcade
game that was on track

to beat our Terminator 2 record.

We couldn't have that.

So partly, just to keep in
touch on a friendly basis,

and partly out of
competitive spirit,

I went to play it.

And I played the game in
Neil Nicastro's office

on the arcade for 15 minutes.

It was Mortal Kombat, and
I turned to him afterward,

and I said, "If you give
me the rights to this,

"I guarantee you, I promise you,

"I will make it in every
medium in the world,

"movies, TV, animation,
music, live stage

"you name it, 'cause
I think this Star Wars

"meets Enter the Dragon."

And Neil said, "You're crazy."

I went home and I wander
around our arcade in Westwood,

and I was hanging around
the Mortal Kombat game.

And a little 11-year-old
kid slaps a quarter down,

and he looks up and
he challenges me,

and then he beats me.

And he was so
empowered, you know,

"You lose, Sub-Zero
wins," and I lost,

and that kid was thrilled.

And I thought, I'm gonna
make this into a movie.

- I was an aspiring filmmaker.

I grew up in the
north of England,

and then discovered
no one made movies

in the north of England.

So I moved to London and then
discovered no one in London

made the kind of movies I loved.

So I ended up moving to LA.

And the first movie I
did when I moved to LA

was Mortal Kombat.

And I had become
really obsessed with it

when I played it in
arcades in London.

- Paul Anderson had a
tremendously great, great,

great manager who kept
calling me and saying,

"You gotta see this guy's film."

And I thought, this guy's done
some small, British art film.

There's no way.

But in Paul's small,
British art film,

there was one three
minute fight scene.

And I liked the energy
of the fight scen

[hard rock music]

[man yelling]

- It's always a cultural clash
with the video game company

and the movie people, again,
because the video game people

are used to not having
to make story decisions.

Left, right, center, fine.

It's what, remember,
you the audience want.

The movie, you have to make
decisions for the character.

So they were
incredibly involved,

but it was always a little
bit of that, you know,

odd two cultures
meshing scenario.

It always is.

It still is with any video
game company and movie company.

- The first thing I
remember was thinking

well, how are these
guys gonna change

what we produced.

- The question in
Mortal Kombat was

what to do with the
finishing moves,

because they were
extraordinarily violent

It would have made
the movie Rated R,

which would have negated a
lot of kids from seeing it.

And it would have
made you lack empathy

with the main character.

If Johnny Cage ripped
people's spines out

in a movie, which is more
real than a video game,

you wouldn't have liked him.

- I think they ended
up being PG, right?

Weren't the Mortal
Kombat movies PG?

You can't make a
Mortal Kombat movie

and have it be accurate
unless it's like NC-17.

And then it's gonna
play in art houses,

and who's gonna go
see Mortal Kombat

in an art house?

Me, I probably would, but...

- Well, the most difficult
thing in the movie

was actually Goro.

- Good ol' Goro, the
last great physical

animatronic character
didn't work quite as well

as we wanted to.

So we had to cut down
some of the lines of Goro.

- The producers had
committed to him

before I became
involved in the movie.

So they're already building him.

And you know, ultimately,
I don't know whether

I would have gone
in that direction.

You know, we built Goro.

It was like, it was
a man in a suit,

who then on his shoulders
wore big, animatronic torso

with another two arms.

And of course, he just
broke down all the time.

Goro became like the
biggest diva on set

We're always waiting for Goro.

- So we go and we decide
we're gonna show Neil Nicastro

the movie before it comes out.

So we bring out this, some
bad copy of the movie,

and we show it to him.

He looks at me, he goes,
"Based out of 10, maybe a 3."

And so, he just hated the movie.

- And I remember thinking,

when they did the first trailer
and they used that music

and they basically just
showed these characters.

[Mortal Kombat music]

- [Announcer] Kano.

Liu Kang.

Raiden.

Johnny Cage.

Scorpion.

Sub-Zero.

Sonya.

- It's not terribly imaginative.

I was a little disappointed,
to be honest

And then I saw it
play in cinemas.

And I was sitting in the cinema,

and there's a couple of
Mortal Kombat fans, obviously,

in front of me.

And they loved it.

They loved it.

And what they loved
was that you could s

they were making a
mental checklist.

Scorpion, tick.

Sub-Zero, tick.

Raiden, tick.

And they actually said
that to one another.

It's like, oh,
they're all there.

- [Man] Mortal Kombat!

[Mortal Kombat theme music]

- [Announcer] Kombat begins.

- So now it comes the
most nerve wracking time

in the life of a movie
producer or director.

The movie's essentially done,

and now you're waiting
for it to be released.

- [Reporter] Mortal Kombat
as a video game

is already a two billion,
with a B, dollar business.

The take is going up this
weekend with the debut

of the feature film
based on the game,

starring Christopher
Lambert as Raiden.

- New Line calls me up and says,

"I've never seen
numbers like this.

"We're breaking records
all over the world."

You go, oh, thank goodness.

And then you have
a great weekend.

- I mean, he was a
very smart producer.

This guy got Mortal
Kombat, you know,

and set it up as a movie,

when a lot of people,
I think, were doubting

whether it was good idea to
adapt video games or not.

- Did Neil ever own up
to his prediction to me

that I was crazy and it
would be an utter failure?

I don't think he did.

I think he probably
owes me that.

[Neil Nicastro] - We
had a very entrepreneurial

compensation structure so that
if you were running a team,

and that game became
very successful,

you were gonna make
a lot of money.

Guys were walking away with
million-dollar checks, plus.

- They had a limit of how
much bonus money

they would ever pay
you over one title.

I think it was $2 million.

And as Neil explained
it, it's like,

"Well, I'm not gonna pay you
any more than $2 million,

"because the moment I do,

"you don't need to
come into work anymore

"And I want you to carry
on making games for us."

- Each team was
really competitive.

Ed Boon and I were
kind of at the top

of the competition scale.

I don't know if
this is true or not,

but Ken Fedesna actually told me

that when it came time
to negotiate contracts,

Ed wanted to make
sure he had a salary

that was one dollar
higher than my salary

- We were talking about
the compensation structure

and how some may view that as

creating a bad atmosphere
where you're pitting teams

against each other.

And I could understand
and appreciate that.

Some people think
that is destructive.

But I think those are the
same, you know, thoughts

that think that communist
consciousness works,

that we have a
desire to work hard

for the benefit
of our fellow man.

I think that's bullshit.

- Everybody, every
designer, every developer

on the Williams, and
I'm still to this day,

I think of them as
the Williams side,

were very, went out of their
way to make us feel welcome,

but in a way that
was very different

from what we were used
to at old Bally Midway.

I mean, guys like
Eugene and Jack Haeger

and Ed and Mark, all would
come up to us and say,

"Hey, this is the
way it works here,"

and "Glad to have you guys.

"You're gonna do
great stuff here,

"but don't go talk to them.

"They're not doing it right."

- And it would just push them.

People have that drive.

It would just push
them to do better

because the people that just
wanna help everybody else out,

they typically don't
have that burning desire

to prove something.

- If you look at thehistory of the department,

we started out with nothing.

And we had to build this
whole department, and get,

I mean, we were nobody,

and we were fighting like
the Ataris of the world.

And there was a point
when we all were together.

Like everybody's like clicking.

We're all working
with each other.

And then, you know,
I'll be very honest,

success came and screwed
the whole thing up.

- Footage came from
the Tokyo Game Show.

- [Game] Ready, go!

[fighting and punching]

- And the footage was
of Virtual Fighter

And the moment that was seen,

everybody looked at
each other and went,

"We need to be doing this."

And then forced their turn.

This was when Mortal
Kombat 3 was happening.

They turned to Ed, and
Ed's like, "I'm not ready.

"I'm elbow-deep in
Mortal Kombat 3.

"I'm not doing this."

And so this other team that
was making a tank game

decided, we're gonna
make a fighting game

[inspirational musical burst]

- We were making a fighting
game in the company

that made Mortal Kombat.

And I think that was
a huge challenge,

because I think a
lot of people thought

War Gods was going to be
Mortal Kombat 4, or whatever.

And it was not.

- You know, it seemed
like thematically,

they were a little closer,
too close to Mortal Kombat.

- It was unadulteratedly
a ripoff of Mortal Kombat.

They used all exact
control mechanisms

with the joysticks
and the buttons.

It was just, it was no
beating around the bush.

This was Mortal
Kombat, but in 3D.

[characters yelling]

- Nobody had it.

Nobody has a corner
on ideas, you know?

Just kind of ideas
come and flow,

and we needed to do what
was best for the department.

But it could get very
difficult sometime

- People would
walk past an office

where some of the Mortal
Kombat guys were in there.

If you were on
the War Gods team,

they would literally shut
the door in your face.

- Did we get any help from
the MK guys on War Gods?

And that answer is zero.

- It was, it was ugly. [laughs]

- You know, that's the way,

you know, the way
management pitted the teams

against each other.

That kind of didn't
help the situation.

- I think I remember
one of the reviews,

we all had a good
chuckle at this,

one of the reviews was
War Gods, God Awful.

[dance music]

[Eugene Jarvis]- Well, we had
been working on Cruis'n project

for, God, I don't know, maybe,

I guess two-and-a-half,
maybe only three years.

You know, we were
running out of money

and kind of over budget
and over time [laughs]

- At the time, Nintendo
was touting their Ultra 64.

[Announcer] - Project Reality.

Leagues beyond any
currently available

or anticipated hardware,

Project Reality will bring
to home video players

the same types of
astounding visual effects

seen in movies,
like Terminator 2.

- They were making
a push just to show

that we've got this
incredibly powerful,

polygon generating
new video game system

- So the Ultra 64 was really
vaporware at the time.

They didn't have anything.

They were a year away.

So they came to Neil Nicastro
and they came to Williams

and said, "Listen,
what do you guys have

- You know, went to
Eugene, and I said,

"Hey Gene, if I can get
you this amount of money,"

I think it was "give
me all your rights

"to the home side of it."

Eugene says "Yes,
if you get me X.

"I'll be happy with that."

And then we ended up getting
another figure from Nintendo

that was like a
big multiple of X.

- And so we decided

rather than going broke, that
we would go back to Midway.

[laughs]

- So Nintendo was bragging
that it was going to based

on the N64 and
everything else and stuff

Well, of course, showing
it at the CES Show

was not running on N64.

It wasn't anywhere near N64.

- You know, we kinda had to
swallow hard on that one,

because it was, it
was our hardware.

It was hardware that
we created in there

And they were labeling
it the Nintendo hardware.

- [Announcer] Only
on Nintendo Ultra 64.

- Nintendo system being
in the Cruis'n game?

Somebody in their marketing
department made that up

after the fact.

[video game music]

- When the Nintendo
thing came along,

it enabled us to come
back and really ha

a longer runway for
us to finish the game

And the advantage that
we had by doing that was,

I'm not saying that we
were doing it in a bubble.

But we weren't amongst
the Turmells of the world

and the Boons of the
world, and so on,

that could give us
valuable information.

- And they were kinda
brutal on our game

I mean, the Cruis'n USA.

I remember Fedesna was
like, "Yeah, snoozin'."

That was his term for it.

- I do remember that.

But I don't remember
who gave it that name.

But it had to be one
of the other guys.

It wasn't me that gave
it the name Snoozin'.

- Here was the guy
that abandoned them

in the coming back.

And it was a little bit
awkward for a while.

- Oh, when that game
came in, it was garbage.

It was like, it
was such garbage.

And Eugene knew it, too.

That's why he came back in.

He was wise enough
to know he needed,

you know, he needed that punch,
that he would get Turmell.

I mean, Turmell would
sit around that ga

and just write stuff.

You know, I would talk about it.

- We got that energy,
like that negative vibe,

like, you know, like
ooh, you know, like

and then we got movin'
and it was cool.

It was really cool to
get that frank input.

What really hurts is
the truth [laughs]

- The common denominator
in everything that we did

was that we all
worked for Eugene.

And we all like, we all
grew up on Eugene's games.

Ask Mark Turmell, Eugene fan.

Ask Ed.

You know, we all
worked for Eugene.

He was our guy, you know?

He was Stan Lee, man. [laughs]

- Cruis'n was a huge
commercial success.

But critically, actually,
it took a lot of flack,

because it was more of a
casual player's driving game.

Actually appealed
a lot to girls.

Like teenage girls loved
the driving mechanic

and loved, you know,
like pre-drivers,

like practicing
for their license.

- The startup cost to going
to play a fighting game

is high, right, like
everyone's paying attention,

and you're having to
play with another person.

You're probably looking for a
slightly different experience.

You might be lookingfor a machine

that's not as crowded
so you can go play

and kind of be left alone.

- You know, we just
took all this flack,

that we were sellouts,
and our game sucked,

and there was no skill.

And you know what's crazy is
I look at Cruis'n USA today

and from today's
standards, which is,

I guess 28-odd years later.

The game actually is
horribly difficult [laughs]

So if you put it out
in an arcade today,

people would refuse to
play it, it's so hard.

[voice speaking on overhead]

[music]

- When I interviewed Ed and
John about Mortal Kombat 3,

we had already spoken
a few times before

and I said, you know,
"You're on your third game.

"Are you tired?"

And they actually did
sound a little bit tired.

- [Ed Boon] To some degree,

we've become like a
Mortal Kombat factory

in the sense that we
know exactly how to
do the backgrounds.

We know exactly how
to do characters.

We know how to do all the
throws, and the filming.

We're just like
an assembly line.

- [Dan Amrich] Right.

- [Ed Boon] So in that respect,
we're like, you know,

you kinda wish at getting
a chance to do something

completely different.

- Apparently, there
was at the time a pitch

for a Star Wars game.

And when we started
talking about

what that potential
Star Wars game could be,

on the record, they lit up.

They were so happy.

And I could tell, these guys
need their batteries recharged.

They needed to shift
gears out of Mortal Kombat

to keep Mortal Kombat
interesting for themselves.

And I really believe that
that's what The Grid became.

The Grid was a six-player
competitive death match game

with completely
different controls.

- And then it had all
these sensibilities

that came from SmashTV.

- Good luck.

You'll need it.

- You've got two minutes
to get five points.

Good luck!

Mike Mika - It was trying to
be this thing that was creating

a sport out of this
new kind of interfac

a new kind of way to play.

It had all the makings
and the trimmings

of what would be a
big e-sport today,

but all the way
back in the '90s.

- We'll get people
here that it's like,

hey, we're gonna be
on The Grid all night

If anybody's saying we need
to be off, let us know,

just because we just
wanna grind out and play

for six hours of The Grid.

- The Grid was Ed
Boon having fun.

He really did, he
let it all out.

He let himself do
something different.

And you can see that
there's a joy in that game,

of him being able to shift gears

and stretch a different
part of his design brain.

I always see it as sort
of Ed Boon's vacation game

that he worked so hard on

that it was not a
vacation at all.

- We only sold 550 Grids,
it was, approximately.

There was nothing.

Grid earned terribly
as a single unit.

If you had four or
the six units togethe

The problem there was, though,

you gotta buy four cabinets
or four sets of electronics

and everything else.

So now in order to
get the earnings,

which you're talking about,

you had to invest, instead of
X, you had to invest 4X.

- You know, the operators
expected every game

that comes out has
to earn, you know,

so much money per week.

There was no way that every
game was going to come out

and earn two grand a week.

It just wasn't going to happen.

- All management
wanted to do was just,

they wanted to stamp out.

Basically, if they
could have stamped ou

more Mortal Kombats,
you know, in a row,

that's what they would've done.

- We went to the well too many
times with the same mechanics

or not enough innovation.

- But it was in the late
'90s I saw the warning signs

that things may be
getting more difficult

in the coin-op area.

- The consoles for the home
get more sophisticated.

The CD-Rom is a hugely
important technology.

And it brings that kind
of arcade-style graphics

into the home.

- I could feel that what
we could do as a company

on the hardware side wasn't
going to be able to approach

that what a whole team of
engineers could pull off.

- Console gaming really
changed how I felt about games

because I was able
to take my time.

I was able to play
games without somebody

looking over my
shoulder and judging

whether I was good or not.

And I was able to experiment.

I was really happy when
consoles came about,

because then there
were games for me, to

Whereas in a arcade, there is,

you know, if I weren't
good at Street Fighter,

you know, the whole sort of
experience kind of stopped

at a certain level.

- I think the other
thing that had a huge impact

was the internet.

So the social aspect
of the arcade,

where that's where you would
go and trash talk your buddy

and friend, you could
now find ways to do that

playing your game, but
also via the internet.

- In fact, I remember an
operator telling me once,

when the Monica Lewinsky
conversation got published

on the internet, that he saw
a decline in his audience.

Like, it seems weird,
but the internet became

like this entertainment factor.

- I did not have sexual
relations with that woman.

- And people stopped
going to arcades.

- So it was that period
of time where, you know,

you feel yourself being,
you see your future,

and your future looks crappy.

And you feel

somewhat paralyzed to
actually make a change.

I'd say that's probably
the crappiest time.

- You know, Neil basically
had a meeting and he said,

"Hey, I think the
days are numbered

"for the coin-op business."

- So the writing
was on the wall.

Things started falling
apart very quickl

And you had this millions
of dollars of overhead

in coin-op and it
was decided, okay,

we're gonna get out of coin-op

because there's so
much more money,

theoretically to be
made, on the consume

than there was in coin-op.

And that was the end of coin-op.

Pinball first, then came Midway,

as far as coin-op was concerned.

- Games were focused
direct-to-consumer now.

You know, Sony, et cetera.

And it took all of the
arcade mechanics out.

It took the ways that
we percentaged games,

the way we would bring
a player through a game.

Certainly, consumer development
is a lot more complex

and requires, you know,
higher structure in a team,

and more team members.

But that did change what
Midway was for all those years

in the '80s and '90s.

- When you look at it sort of
in the grand scheme of things,

it was fairly short-lived.

My career at Midway
spanned, I think,

a little bit longer
than maybe a decade.

And I experienced the
rebirth and then the death

of an industry.

- You know, we had
this great thing,

and it was kind of like
the party was over.

You know, it was just
like, it's two AM.

Everybody's got a headache.

And we had, what a ride we had.

But they're closing
up the disco, man.

And you go home with a
headache, and that was it.

[video game music]

- There was just nothing
like the experience

of going to an arcade.

It was like a dark cave
filled with simulators

that were like portals
to other realities

Like I could pilot a
starship over here,

or kill drug dealers over here,

or be a NBA champion.

You know, any fantasy
that you could have

you could go and
put in a quarter

and live out that fantasy.

- Whenever you think
of arcade style,

an arcade-style product,
a fast-paced product,

I think that was birthed by a
lot of what we were producing.

- You cannot plan that
coalescing of the talent.

Just the way everybody
came together,

you know, that made all
these games is so ridiculous.

Nobody planned that.
Nobody wrote on a

piece of paper, now I
need a Mark Turmell.

Now I need an Ed Boon type.

Now I need a Eugene
Jarvis, or whatever.

- Remember who's
creating these games.

Guy from Michigan, guy from
California, guy from Illinois.

And as they're, they
went through their life,

playing all these
different things,

they said, "You know,"
their brains are turning,

"Wouldn't it be interesting
if you could do this?

"Wouldn't it be interesting
if you could do that?"

Then these guys grow up, and
they come knocking on the door,

or they get a job working
for a company like Midway

or Williams, and
somebody says to them,

"Okay, what's your idea?"

"Oh, I got this brilliant idea!

"I want to do this!"

"Okay."

[upbeat video game music]

- I definitely put in code to
have Pistons score in

late periods at a higher rate,
than the Bulls

Because in that era,
it was Pistons Vs Bulls

[Josh Tsui] So you're a
Detroit fan working in Chicago

- Yeah, I was a Piston
fan living in Chicago

and I had to watch the Jordan
era unfold night after night

So I did my little part
to make the Pistons

better than the Bulls.
At least in NBA JAM

- I first discovered the game
when I went to church

and I was going across the
street to get some candy

and I ran into this brand
new game that showed up

called Mortal Kombat

Blew my mind, I saw this
one person playing and...

it was the perfect balance
between gore and competitiveness

and a chance for a a nerdy
little Asian kid to actually...

be toe to toe against all
kinds of different people

I hated going to church, so
every Sunday...

I would tell my mom I'm going
to church all of a sudden

When I would go, I would
go across the street

and play this videogame,
literally for 2 hours straight

My mom didn't have a clue,
but all of a sudden...

She didn't know why I
loved church so much

- It was the mid 90s and I was
approached by a PC programmer

about doing a
possible skate game

I went with him to
pitch to publishers

and we ended up at Midway

It was probably the most
defeating meeting I ever had

The whole meeting
felt contentious,

it was almost like we
were wasting their time

They said, "Skateboarding
is not even popular

"why would anyone want to play...

...a videogame based
on skateboarding?"

I've been in plenty
of pitch meetings

I didn't necessarily
expect everyone to

or there'd be bidding
war for our game

but at the same time I didn't
expect to be just beat down

I think I needed to go
through that, it me up to

for what became Tony
Hawk's Pro Skater