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Ed Boon
Ed Boon by Gage Skidmore.jpg
Boon in 2023
Born
Edward Boon

(1964-02-22) February 22, 1964 (age 61)
Occupation Game programmer, director, philanthropist, voice actor and producer
Years active 1987–present

Edward Boon (born February 22, 1964) is an American video game programmer, voice actor, and director. He worked at Midway Games for more than 15 years. Since 2011, he has been with NetherRealm Studios, a company under Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment.

Boon is best known for creating the very popular Mortal Kombat video game series. He made this series with John Tobias. He also helped create the Injustice series. In 2009, IGN named him one of the top 100 game creators of all time.

Life and Career of Ed Boon

Ed Boon finished high school at Loyola Academy in Wilmette. He is of Hispanic descent, from the Dominican Republic. He studied mathematics and computer science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He earned a special degree called a Bachelor of Science.

After college, he started working at Williams Entertainment. He joined their pinball game department. For two years, he worked on about 20 different pinball games. During this time, people called him the "Mortal Master." This was an early hint about his future famous game.

Creating Mortal Kombat

Ed Boon is the co-creator of the Mortal Kombat fighting game series. He created it with John Tobias. Boon was the main programmer for the series. Tobias was the main designer. Their partnership ended when Tobias left Midway in 2000.

Boon named some characters in the series after his own family. He named Sonya and Tanya after his sisters, Sonia and Tania. Another character, Noob Saibot, was named by reversing parts of Boon and Tobias' last names. Ed's younger brother, Mike Boon, is also a programmer. He has been part of Ed's team since Mortal Kombat 4.

Voice Acting and Awards

In 2009, IGN ranked Ed Boon as #100 on their list of "Top 100 Game Creators." This was because of his important work on the Mortal Kombat series. He still works closely on the Mortal Kombat games and other projects related to them.

Ed Boon has also done voice acting and motion capture work for the games. He is most famous for the "Come here!" and "Get over here!" lines. These are spoken by the character Scorpion in every game. He also voiced Scorpion in the first two movies, Mortal Kombat and Mortal Kombat Annihilation. Because of this, the 2008 Guinness World Records Gamer's Edition gave him a world record. It was for being the "longest-serving video game voice actor."

In 2018, a Mortal Kombat arcade game was shown at an art exhibition. It was part of the Chicago New Media 1973–1992 exhibition.

Games and Media by Ed Boon

Ed Boon has worked on many video games and other media projects. Here are some of the most notable ones.

Video Games

Year Title Role(s)
1990 High Impact Football N/A
1991 Super High Impact N/A
1992 Total Carnage Voice of General Akhboob
1992 Mortal Kombat Designer, programmer, voice of Scorpion, Reptile, Shang Tsung (announcer)
1993 Mortal Kombat II Designer, programmer, voice of Scorpion, Smoke, Noob Saibot, Liu Kang, and Jax
1995 Mortal Kombat 3 Designer, programmer, voice of Smoke, Liu Kang and Jax
1995 Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Executive producer, designer, programmer, voice of Scorpion
1996 Mortal Kombat Trilogy Designer, programmer
1997 Mortal Kombat 4 Designer, programmer, voice of Johnny Cage, Raiden, Kai, Scorpion and Jax
1999 Mortal Kombat Gold Project lead, voice of Cyrax
2001 The Grid N/A
2002 Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance Team lead, game design, programming, voice of Scorpion
2004 Mortal Kombat: Deception Project lead, game design, programming, voice of Scorpion, Reiko, Sub-Zero and Noob Saibot
2005 Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks Executive producer, voice of Scorpion
2006 Mortal Kombat: Armageddon Creative director
2008 Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe Creative director, team leader
2011 Mortal Kombat Team leader, creative director, additional voices
2011 Batman: Arkham City Lockdown Creative director
2013 Injustice: Gods Among Us Creative director, team leader
2013 Batman: Arkham Origins N/A
2015 Mortal Kombat X Creative director, team leader
2017 Injustice 2 Creative director, team leader
2019 Mortal Kombat 11 Creative director, team leader
2023 Mortal Kombat 1 Creative director, team leader

Media Projects

Year Title Role(s) Note(s)
1995 Mortal Kombat Scorpion (voice)
1997 Mortal Kombat Annihilation
2006 Drawn Together Episode: "The One Wherein There Is a Big Twist: Part 2"
2011 Mortal Kombat: Legacy Ed Goodman cameo appearance in first-season episode "Johnny Cage"

See also

Kids robot.svg In Spanish: Ed Boon para niños

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