'Mortal Kombat' co-creator Ed Boon reveals Scorpion's spear was improvised in the studio.
Mortal Kombat 11
The developer - who also voiced the character in the franchise's early games - has opened up about the "get over here" move to celebrate 30 years since work started on the iconic title.
Sharing a video of him excitedly coming up with the spear, he tweeted: "We certainly did a ton of prep for our video shoots, but some ideas came to us while filming.
"With Scorpion’s spear, it started with “You know what would be a cool ass move?". From there you can be a fly on the wall and see us working through the details.
"One of those details was how fast Scorpion threw the spear, which had to be quick so he could catch opponents by surprise.
"This meant keeping the animation simple & very few frames. We also wanted the spear to pass over a ducking opponent, so we kept it at chest height. (sic)"
Boon added that the team had to get creative with the animation too as they needed to "save memory" back in 1991.
He added: "We were so tight on memory, that we didn’t even capture any motions for the victim reactions. Instead we borrowed from their existing animation frames.
"You can hear us talk about reusing one of the victim’s “knockdown” animations when they initially get hit by the spear.
"We also borrowed the victim’s “fatality dizzy” frames to show they were stunned after being pulled in. Reusing existing animations was one of the many tricks we used to save memory, which was so much more limited in 1991."