Toru Iwatani is a god among men in the gaming industry. "When comes together well, there is very little that is more gratifying," Boon told Edge Magazine in 2006.
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He has reinvented the series from its simplistic roots into a deep, well-rounded fighter that's seen upgrades that include everything from the use of weapons and fully-realized quest modes to online head-to-head match-ups and fighters with dynamically-switching fighting styles - and audiences continue to eat it up. Though John Tobias left the Midway team in 2000, Boon has continued to create and oversee each new Mortal Kombat project. At its height, Mortal Kombat was such a popular and influential fighter that even Midway itself started ripping its own game off, joining the already-sizeable number of clones that tried to capitalize on the MK formula (War Gods anyone?). In fact, it was the heavily-criticized emphasis on blood and gore that spawned the first real debate on violence in videogames that also led to the eventual creation of a rating system to help inform parents about which games may be suitable for their kids. Sporting a dissimilar combat engine, block button and the innovative "Fatality" match-enders, the violent puncher created or seriously influenced many gaming trends that still stand today - not just in the genre, but the industry as a whole. The explanation behind the MK sensation? It was an entirely different experience from Street Fighter altogether. John Tobias and Ed Boon were tapped as the men who could pull it off - with Tobias handling much of the design and Boon wielding his programmer's wand to create the overnight success, Mortal Kombat. It all started when Midway decided to capitalize on the success of eventual rival Capcom and its blockbuster slugger, Street Fighter II, by creating a unique fighting game of its own. If you considered yourself the latter, then you have Ed Boon to thank for it. In the heyday of arcade fighters, there were two kinds of people: those who played Street Fighter and those who played Mortal Kombat. Reynolds' apparently tireless pursuit of building strategy games (he seems far more comfortable in a development environment than heading up the company itself) appears to be paying off, as THQ announced that it is scooping up the developer and publishing all future endeavors. Subsequent expansions have followed, which Reynolds has helped craft in addition to providing coding duties on the 360 version of Catan and taking over for Ensemble Studios for their second Age of Empires III Expansion, The Asian Dynasties. Perhaps in part because of that, Reynolds eventually sold his stake in Firaxis and went on to found his own dev house, Big Huge Games, which struck gold with Rise of Nations and publishing deal with Microsoft. While at MicroProse (and then later at Firaxis), Reynolds studied under Meier and eventually began heading up full-blown sequels featuring key advancements in AI - one of Reynolds' fortes - though they still carried their eponymous creator's name. Given his degrees in European History and Philosophy, it makes more than a little sense that Reynolds would gravitate toward strategy games - particularly the kind that Sid Meier was making a name for himself in. Although Meier, Reynolds and Jeff Briggs all left MicroProse in the mid-90s for Firaxis, Reynolds and Briggs never quite achieved the same kind of name recognition as Meier, due in no small part to Meier's name being plastered over just about everything that comes out of the Maryland-based developer. Brian Reynolds may not be as synonymous with development house Firaxis as fellow co-founder Sid Meier, but he's been every bit as instrumental in the success of their games, including franchises like Civilization and Alpha Centauri.
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