Ed Boon Shed Light on How Developers Choose the MK Roster

The universe of Mortal Kombat is enormous, and many characters are part of it. Unfortunately, not every fan favourite made it to the Mortal Kombat 1 roster, even though the addition of Kameo fighters allowed us to meet more familiar faces.

In an interview with Chicago Mag, the co-creator of Mortal Kombat Ed Boon, shed some light on the selection process:

"There’s a number of factors that come into play. To some extent, there are certain staple characters that will likely always be in a Mortal Kombat game — characters like Raiden, Liu Kang, Sub Zero, and Scorpion. But then again, there’s close to 100 characters that we’ve represented in MK at some point. We always launch with about 20 characters, so obviously there’s about 75 characters who don’t make the cut.

There are some really passionate and sometimes angry players who campaign nonstop to have their favorite character put into the game. Popularity is a big factor, but we also like to give characters a rest, so that they can be missed. It’s sort of like a “absence makes the heart grow fonder” kind of thing."

Such a rotation makes the community dream of different additions to the roster. We, for example, came up with the nine characters that would be great Mortal Kombat Kameos.