Code Like It's 198x

John Tobias

The artist and storyteller of Mortal Kombat

PeopleSource-checked

John Tobias drew his first video game, Smash TV, at Williams, then made Mortal Kombat with Ed Boon: he designed much of its cast, wrote the stories that tied the fighters together, and led the Sub-Zero spin-off Mythologies. He left Midway in 1999, founded Studio Gigante, and later worked at Zynga and Warner Bros. Games.

Every Mortal Kombat fighter had a story, and for the series’ first seven years most of those stories were John Tobias’s. “John usually writes the story lines and how everybody ties in to the game at the end of the development process,” Ed Boon told GamePro in 1997. Boon wrote the code; Tobias, the artist of the pair, shaped how the fighters looked and moved, acted out their moves for the performers in front of the camera, and gave the digitised cast the mythology that kept players arguing over who was related to whom. In 1999 he left Midway to start his own studio, while Boon stayed with the series.

Fast facts

  • Born: 1969.
  • Employers: Williams and Midway until 1999; Studio Gigante, which he co-founded in 2000; Zynga from 2012; Warner Bros. Games San Diego from 2020.
  • First video game: Smash TV (1990), as an artist.
  • Best known for: co-creating Mortal Kombat (1992) with Ed Boon; the series’ character design and storylines up to Mortal Kombat 4; Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero (1997).

Smash TV

Tobias’s first video game was Williams’ Smash TV (1990), the twin-joystick shooter Eugene Jarvis and Mark Turmell built as a spin-off of Robotron: 2084. Jarvis told Retro Gamer that the game “was the result of a collaboration between Mark Turmell, John Tobias and myself”, and that its giant bosses came out of the whole team. The art was Tobias’s alone. “Tobias created the art, pixel by pixel, doing all the 3D rotations and rendering in his head,” Jarvis said. “It was an unbelievable feat that no one would attempt today.”

Mortal Kombat

Mortal Kombat was made by a team of four, led by Boon and Tobias, as Midway’s answer to Street Fighter II. Its fighters were digitised from video of real actors, which made the artist’s job part director, part retoucher. When Nintendo Power visited the team during Mortal Kombat 3 in 1995, Tony Goskie pointed out that many of the moves were “first acted out by John and Ed”. “We show them how to fly across the screen,” Boon joked. Tobias explained that the actors did not need to be martial artists, but “they have to be able to withstand eight hours of jumping, ducking, kicking, hitting and flying across the screen”, and that many moves were improvised during the shoots: “We’ll just get an idea and go with it.” Afterwards each character frame, limited to 64 colours, was retouched by hand by Tobias and Steve Beran.

He also decided who the fighters were. For Mortal Kombat 3 he replaced some favourites with new characters, some of them related to old ones, such as Sheeva, a four-armed warrior of the same race as Goro, while Boon worked out the new moves and the Kombat Kodes. The pair signed their work in other ways too. The hidden fighter Noob Saibot, introduced in Mortal Kombat II, is named after their surnames spelt backwards, and Retro Gamer noted that the heads of Boon, Tobias and other team members could be seen at the bottom of Mortal Kombat II’s pit stage.

Tobias spoke for the games in the press as well. Previewing the home compilation Mortal Kombat Trilogy in 1996, Game Informer quoted him calling it “the best MK ever”.

Mythologies and Special Forces

With the move to 3D in Mortal Kombat 4, Tobias took the series somewhere else. Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero (1997), for the PlayStation and Nintendo 64, was an action adventure with fighting at its heart, set before the first tournament. Nintendo Power called it “the brainchild of MK designer John Tobias”. He told GamePro why it had to be a console game: “Primarily, we wanted to tell a story. Mythologies is more of an adventure game than anything… In an arcade-style game you really don’t have an opportunity to do that.” He chose Sub-Zero because “his past, the back story we gave him, piqued my interest”, and the game introduced new villains who went on to fight in Mortal Kombat 4. Sub-Zero gained new powers by earning experience points, and the backgrounds were real-time 3D, a step up, Tobias said, from Midway’s earlier hardware. The Nintendo 64 version’s end credits read “Mortal Kombat created by Ed Boon & John Tobias”.

Retro Gamer‘s history of the series was unkind to it, counting Mythologies among the series’ “travesties”. Tobias’s next project was a second spin-off, Mortal Kombat: Special Forces, a third-person 3D adventure starring Jax and Sonya that Nintendo Power in March 1999 said he was “hard at work on”. He left before it was finished. Retro Gamer reported that Tobias, “dissatisfied with life at Midway”, left in 1999 and formed Studio Gigante with several other key members of the Mortal Kombat team. Without him, the planned Nintendo 64 version of Special Forces was cancelled and the PlayStation game was rushed out as a budget release in 2000; Retro Gamer called it “widely considered to be the worst ever Mortal Kombat title”. Boon was left in charge of the series.

Studio Gigante

Studio Gigante set up in Chicago in 2000 with four people, all from Midway: Tobias as president and lead game designer, Josh Tsui, Dave Michicich and Mark Penacho. By February 2004 it had 35 staff and a new office on North Ravenswood Avenue, Reel Chicago reported. Its first game was a fighting game, Tao Feng: Fist of the Lotus (2003), published by Microsoft for the Xbox, with breakable scenery and fighters whose arms and legs could be broken, weakening their punches or kicks. Edge gave it 5 out of 10, and Electronic Gaming Monthly’s reviewers were cooler still: “Ineffective blocking and generic characters do not a quality fighter make.” The studio’s second game was a licence, WWE WrestleMania 21 (2005), for THQ on the Xbox. According to Wikipedia, Studio Gigante closed in 2005.

Later work

Tobias worked as a consultant for some years after Studio Gigante. In September 2012 Zynga hired him as creative director of its San Diego studio, where he rejoined his Smash TV colleague Mark Turmell, Game Informer reported. In January 2020 he announced on social media that he was “building the WBGames San Diego Studio”, a mobile games studio owned by Warner Bros., the company that had bought Mortal Kombat when Midway collapsed. The series he co-created is now made by Boon’s NetherRealm Studios, part of the same group.

Sources

  • Retro Gamer issue 35, 2007, pp. 61–62, “The Making of Smash TV”: Eugene Jarvis on Tobias’s art and the collaboration with Mark Turmell; Smash TV as Tobias’s first video game; released 1990.
  • Retro Gamer issue 40, 2007, pp. 27–33, “Blood Simple: the history of Mortal Kombat”: the four-man team led by Boon and Tobias; the team’s heads in the Mortal Kombat II pit; Mythologies and Special Forces; Tobias leaving Midway in 1999, “dissatisfied with life at Midway”, to form Studio Gigante; Special Forces (2000), the cancelled Nintendo 64 version and the budget release.
  • Nintendo Power issue 72, May 1995, pp. 23–25: the Mortal Kombat 3 team; Tobias on filming the actors; moves acted out by Tobias and Boon; 64-colour frames retouched by Tobias and Steve Beran; new characters such as Sheeva.
  • Game Informer issue 42, October 1996: Mortal Kombat Trilogy preview quoting Tobias.
  • GamePro issue 107, August 1997, p. 30: Ed Boon interview (“John usually writes the story lines”). Pp. 31–32: Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero feature and interview with John Tobias.
  • Nintendo Power issue 100, September 1997: Mythologies preview, “from the mind of John Tobias, co-designer of Mortal Kombat”. Issue 102, November 1997: “the brainchild of MK designer John Tobias”.
  • Nintendo Power issue 106, March 1998: password for the end credits of Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero on the Nintendo 64, pictured reading “Mortal Kombat created by Ed Boon & John Tobias”.
  • Nintendo Power issue 118, March 1999: Special Forces in development, with Tobias “hard at work on this one”.
  • Nintendo Power issue 79, December 1995: Noob Saibot named after “Boon and Tobias, the game’s creators”.
  • Edge issue 124, June 2003: Tao Feng: Fist of the Lotus review (Xbox; Microsoft; Studio Gigante). Issue 125, July 2003: score of 5.
  • Hyper issue 117, July 2002: Tao Feng: Fist of the Lotus (Studio Gigante; breaking arms and legs).
  • Electronic Gaming Monthly issue 169, August 2003: Tao Feng review scores and verdict. Issue 189, March 2005, p. 58: WrestleMania 21 preview (THQ; Studio Gigante, “creators of fighting flop Tao Feng”).
  • Ed M. Koziarski, “Game developers Gigante move into expanded space, grow to 35 staffers”, Reel Chicago, 24 February 2004 (web, secondary): founded 2000; founders and roles; staff numbers; Tao Feng. https://reelchicago.com/article/game-developers-gigante-move-expanded-space-grow-35-staffers/
  • Jim Reilly, “Zynga Hires Mortal Kombat Co-Creator John Tobias”, Game Informer, 17 September 2012 (web, secondary). https://gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2012/09/17/zynga-hires-mortal-kombat-co-creator-john-tobias.aspx
  • “John Tobias joins WB Games San Diego”, Mortal Kombat Online, 29 January 2020 (web, secondary; reports Tobias’s own post). https://www.mortalkombatonline.com/t/classic/john-tobias-joins-wb-games-san-diego/45Lo8fLNp1Ej
  • “John Tobias”, Wikipedia (web, secondary): birth date; consultancy after Studio Gigante; Studio Gigante’s closure in 2005. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Tobias

See also

Checked. Verified against primary sources and signed off by a person.