Mortal Kombat 1, the following sport in NetherRealm’s 30-year-old preventing sport franchise, is touring again in time, centuries earlier than the occasions of the recognized Mortal Kombat timeline. Regardless of that point shift, collection staple Johnny Cage will make his option to the roster alongside ye olde historic fighters like Raiden, Mileena, Kitana, and Kung Lao.
Much more intriguing is the truth that actor Jean-Claude Van Damme will make an look as Johnny Cage in MK1, due to a personality pores and skin.
Van Damme’s look in Mortal Kombat 1 closes a selected loop in MK’s historical past, as a result of the Belgian martial artist was partly the inspiration for the unique Mortal Kombat and its Hollywood hero, Johnny Cage.
“He was presupposed to be Johnny Cage,” Mortal Kombat collection co-creator Ed Boon mentioned in an interview with Polygon final 12 months. Builders at Halfway pitched the concept to Van Damme, however it by no means panned out, Boon mentioned: “We took photographs of Bloodsport and talked about digitized graphics and the way it’s going to be [Van Damme] within the sport. Sooner or later he handed. However we later inquired, possibly a few occasions, as just lately as, like, [Mortal Kombat 9], if he needed to be in a pores and skin of the sport. For some motive, it simply by no means got here via.” Apparently, Van Damme has modified his thoughts.
“The fiction behind Mortal Kombat was sort of already in improvement even previous to us chatting with Van Damme, and when he ended up not being concerned, we simply sort of marched forward,” collection co-creator John Tobias mentioned in 2019. “So the concept of his involvement was he was both going to play himself within the sport, within the fiction of the sport, or he was going to play a personality within the fiction of the sport. His character is ultimately what grew to become Johnny Cage.”
Cage would finally be performed by martial artist Daniel Pesina within the first two Mortal Kombat video games, and by Linden Ashby within the 1995 Mortal Kombat movie adaptation. (Ashby would later reprise his function as Cage in Mortal Kombat 11, due to NetherRealm’s Klassic MK Film pores and skin pack.) Actor Karl City will reportedly embody Cage within the sequel to 2021’s Mortal Kombat film.
How will Johnny Cage, or some ancestor of his, discover his means lots of of years into the previous? That — and whether or not Van Damme will voice a model of Cage — stays to be seen, however can be revealed when Mortal Kombat 1 launches this September.
Van Damme’s Cage pores and skin can be included with the sport’s Kombat Pack add-on, which is included with the Mortal Kombat 1 Premium Version (priced at $109.99) and Kollector’s Version (priced at $249.99). The usual version of Mortal Kombat 1 will value $69.99 on Nintendo Change, PlayStation 5, Home windows PC, and Xbox Collection X.