Kool Stuff[7]: Floor to Ceiling - Arcade1Up on Mortal Kombat's 30th Anniversary
This post is part of Kool Stuff, a companion book to Long Live Mortal Kombat: Round 1 (now on Kickstarter!) that contains interviews I was unable to do before hitting Long Live MK’s deadline. Subscribe to Episodic Content to keep up with news on Long Live MK, and to follow along with Kool Stuff as new chapters are published.
Like every kid who dropped quarters into arcade games in the '80s and '90s, I grew up dreaming of owning a machine. Once, my mom gave her blessing for me to buy one. All I had to do was save up. I grinned for an entire day at the thought of coming home from school, throwing my backpack down, and racing to play Mortal Kombat II the way it was meant to be played, with the joystick and X-layout of buttons that Ed Boon and Mortal Kombat envisioned.
What I didn't know, and what Mom probably didn't know either, was that arcade cabinets were and still are expensive. I saved up for my NES by doing household chores for nine months. There are photographs of me counting crumpled dollar bills and what seemed like a thousand coins on my bed. The deal was simple. I'd save up the hundred bucks for a Control Deck, as Nintendo called it, and Mom would cover sales tax and buy me my first game. (The joke was on her, because the NES I wanted came with the dual Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt combo cartridge—sorry, Game Pak—so she'd be buying me my third game. Score!)
I suspect I'd have had to save up significantly longer than nine months to buy a Mortal Kombat II cabinet. It ran for around five grand, and my paper route paid a kingly sum of $40 every two weeks.
Arcade1Up made my dream and the dream of so many others come true by offering replicas of arcade games for a fraction of the price. I remember getting excited about their Street Fighter II machine, but I was ecstatic the first time I laid eyes on the MK cabinet: That Mortal Kombat II key art and marquee, the first three titles in the series, plus a few others thrown in to round out the package.
Arcade1Up has released its Mortal Kombat cab in myriad forms, and this year, they're adding one more, a re-designed model featuring the original MK's artwork in celebration of the franchise's 30th anniversary.
Well… most of the artwork.
Like many fans, I noticed the absence of Master Daniel Pesina on the side of Arcade1Up's cabinet. I wasn't angry, just confused. Arcade1Up was known for getting everything right: the right classics, the right companion games to go with them, the right marquee artwork. So what was the deal here?
Cyrus Rosenberg, the company's senior licensing manager, was kind enough to take time out of his packed Game Developers Conference schedule to talk to me about what's involved in attaining the license to a franchise as popular as Mortal Kombat, how Arcade1Up chooses marquee titles and companion games, how the 30th anniversary cabinet was designed, and more.
David L. Craddock: What is your title at Arcade1Up, and what has it been like to help put out all these classic games?
Rosenberg: I'm a senior licensing manager. Arcade1Up is a really interesting landscape because I've always been passionate about video games. But I would say I'm one of the first generations who came into games late, in the sense that I'm only 24. A lot of my nostalgic experience for games have to do with the GameCube and Xbox 360. I wound up going to college majoring in game design, and I found Tastemakers, LLC [parent company of Arcade1Up], and while I had dabbled in retro games, I really got to dive headfirst into the pantheon of retro gaming through working at this company. I've been with Arcade1Up for about three years now, and retro is almost all I think about at this point. I've become a convert, so to speak.
Craddock: You have a valuable perspective because you're someone who has to recognize the value of these classic games like the original Mortal Kombat coin-op titles while not having had the formative experience of playing them in arcades, right?
Cyrus Rosenberg: I had several events at arcades near where I grew up, but the arcade definitely wasn't a regular spot. What's interesting is when I touch these retro games, it doesn't come from an immediate place of nostalgia, it really comes from a gameplay quality and endurance, and I know that's not the norm [for someone in my position].
“If we deliver the experience as it was 30 years later, if we're able to achieve something even close to that, that makes our entire day.”
Craddock: I'd like to delve into your licensing work. Given your background, do you feel it's easier for you to put together pitches for brands that are still active today, such as Mortal Kombat, versus an IP that's been on ice for a while like Golden Axe, for example?
Rosenberg: I think it really helps. From a licensing perspective, when an IP has endured culturally, it means there's more of an audience for it, and that means it's easier for retro products to get made. We're passionate about all sorts of games. We have people in our office who are as passionate about Root Beer Tapper as they are bigger brands like Mortal Kombat. But Mortal Kombat is a major franchise, which gives it legs, and that's really fun to kind of work with.
There's so much legacy content. I would say the most the first Mortal Kombat I got seriously into was Mortal Kombat 9, so I won't even front. I spent an entire summer just playing that game. I didn't get good, of course, but there was something about it, a sense of rebellion. It was the most violent game I'd seen at around 10, 11 years old. Then I discovered Mortal Kombat 1, II, and 3 on Steam, and I played them and thought, "These are really the most some of the most incredible games," and we've been thrilled to be re-releasing them because there's still such a passion for where the franchise started. And those games are as mechanically complex and fun to play as any modern game. I think that's why they've endured so long.
Craddock: One thing I've noticed about Arcade1Up since its inception is that the team has their collective finger on the pulse of what fans want. We get bigger releasees such as Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter II, and NBA Jam, and then there are the relatively more obscure releases such as Root Beer Tapper. What goes into licensing to decide what brands to pursue, finding the license holders, and convincing them to collaborate?
Rosenberg: From the very beginning, from our roots to now, where we've experienced a bit of growth, it has always been about the fans and the end-user experience. Every single person in our company top to bottom scrolls our Facebook group every single day [to find out what games people want]. I have it open on another tab right now. All of our most innovative improvements have come from a fan suggesting it. For instance, we didn't have light-up marquees initially. Not that we didn't know they existed, but it wasn't our immediate consideration as a priority until a fan suggested it. It's the same for franchises and what games to license.
What's interesting regarding Mortal Kombat is that the franchise exists in this library of other Midway games. They were the top video game makers in America for a long time. So what we really do is, every product we make starts with the games list [for each cabinet]. Each list is a mixture of value and fandom, and you try to get an even Venn Diagram of people. Most people don't want just one game. We have learned that people want a significant amount of games, but they also want authenticity. Mortal Kombat has a very specific layout, that five-button X shape. We're not here to interrupt that because what we do on our platform is we try to find games that work with each control scheme.
I think a great example really to bring this all home is our Midway Legacy Edition. That is our standard Mortal Kombat product, and what we've done with that for MK's 30th anniversary is we've taken the original Mortal Kombat, and said, "Let's start from a place of authenticity. Let's go into our garage and make the most authentic Mortal Kombat cabinet possible." Once you have that foundation, you can start listening to the fans and adding as much value in bells and whistles as possible. You don't want to break that authenticity by adding too much, and WB has been very helpful with us in reaching that middle ground.
Craddock: I'm glad you mentioned choosing supplementary games, because I've wondered how Arcade1Up makes that decision, as well as which game's artwork to feature on the cabinet.
Rosenberg: Sometimes there are overall strategies. I think an example of this is we our original Mortal Kombat cabinet featured Mortal Kombat II as our first marquee title, as we call them. We never release cabinets that have just one digital title on them; there's always a value add mixture. We started with Mortal Kombat II as our marquee title because we knew it was an iconic game in the franchise. We started this up in 2019 with our Mortal Kombat program. Now, when we're so close to the 30th anniversary, we decided to go as big as we can for the fans.
Another big effort at Arcade1Up has been to bring retro games back without gatekeeping those retro games. What I mean by that is we make a great effort to bring in fans who would not be in the arcade audience and build a community around these titles. I would say a lot of the picking of the artwork and each cabinet's flagship title is by asking, how do we bring the best to the core audience? And how do we bring new people into that core audience? That's why you get a mishmash of games on our cabinets.
“There's never been a single game, no matter how small, that we haven't all sat around the table and said, ‘How can we get this produced?’”
The updated Midway Legacy Edition [Midway Legacy Arcade Machine Mortal Kombat 30th Anniversary Edition] features our largest games list to date, 14 games. But maybe you are intimidated by Mortal Kombat, both in its use of violence and its incredible fandom that has a long history with these games. You may not know where to start, but you'd be very interested to know that we have a cool mixture of titles. Sometimes you don't know where to start with those games, but maybe Bubbles or Klax would be more your speed. So you keep the marquee title as what's most popular and what the fans have requested, but you try to genre skew, so to speak, as much as possible. It's definitely a lesson in experimentation.
Craddock: Another update to the Midway Legacy cabinet for this year's 30th anniversary is that it's larger in some ways, correct?
Rosenberg: As it stands right now, the new Midway Legacy will not be an XL cabinet, like our Shaq-sized NBA Jam or our Golden Tee. But we will be incorporating Wi-Fi and online for the first time. But your question also lets us speak to how important it is for us to take criticism well and iterate on our designs. Our original units, including our Mortal Kombat, all came in a design we called the shark fin. Everything from that point became, how do we make machines that are closer to the original cabinets without making them too expensive for the average consumer? Because the original cabinets were much larger than the standard Arcade1Up cabs. That is a goal of ours, and has been a goal since we started: Can we give people a full-size arcade unit?
For this updated cabinet, we knew what titles to start with, the three Mortal Kombat games. The first Legacy Edition had 12 titles, and now we're moving it up to 14, and adding Wi-Fi, and adding a light-up marquee. As titles gain popularity, and as people respond to them both positively and with criticism, we can build out better items for the community. Funnily enough, we have our Facebook group, but then there is also a Mortal Kombat specific Facebook group, and they've begged us for years for Wi-Fi. We wanted to do something really special for the 30th anniversary, and we were planning Wi-Fi, but until we could announce, it was very awkward because we had to say, "We hear you. Just hold on."
Craddock: One criticism that's come up recently is that Arcade1Up's units are getting more expensive. That's understandable to a degree: If you're buying one of the XLs, you should expect to pay a little more. But since we're talking about value, one of the biggest values Arcade1Up has offered is keeping machines a fraction of the price of full-sized cabinets. Is there a line in the sand you make sure not to cross in terms of pricing?
Rosenberg: Affordability is our number one concern. The past couple of years have been our most difficult in that we always envision this product as the most affordable way to play the best arcade games, and yet concerns such as chipset, screen cost—these are all things we are thinking about daily. So, we have not set a specific number [to avoid crossing], but we will always be the most affordable while being the most authentic. Our cabinets are licensed, and we give players the best gameplay experiences [in terms of controls]. We will always be the most affordable almost in a price match kind of a style; we will never do anything for the sake of profit. It [affordability] will always be a necessary feature.
Craddock: I'd like to talk about the Mortal Kombat "program" you mentioned. Could you go into more detail about what a cabinet's program entails? We've talked about things like games lists and marquee art, for example, but what are some facets that most consumers might not know about?
Rosenberg: We have a motto around the office, and it's "floor to ceiling." We really believe that while we make a very premium product, and I truly believe that it's well worth the price of entry, we want everybody to experience games at every price point. So we have items like the Partycade, the Countercade, and head-to-head machines. Those are at radically different price points all the way up to our most expensive unit, which of course is the standard stand-up machine. When you really see a franchise building legs, you want to give it to every consumer at every price point. That's when we design programs. With our current Wi-Fi features, we want players to play together. It's very important to us to not sell you a party Cade and you feel like you got shortchanged compared to the premium users buying stand-up machines.
“We did our 100 percent absolute best to preserve authenticity every step of the way. There is no stone we left unturned.”
So when I say "build out a program," Mortal Kombat represents what we call a legacy franchise. That includes games from companies like Midway, Bandai Namco, Capcom, these triple-A arcade developers, and we like to give everybody access to all games as much as possible and allow the units to interact. So our Mortal Kombat program, for instance, comprises many formats in every price point that we could do.
Craddock: That presents a perfect opportunity to segue into a related subject. One of the more eccentric formats in the Mortal Kombat program, as you call it, is the Supreme MKII-style cabinet. The cabinet has a great look, with reds substituted for most of the blues such as in Raiden's outfit. Where did the partnership between Arcade1Up and Supreme, this American lifestyle brand, come from? It seems out of left field, though not in a bad way.
Rosenberg: Absolutely. It came naturally, actually. Supreme had reached out to both WB and us, and they wanted to make a Mortal Kombat full-size cabinet. And we are the really only arcade manufacture equipped to do that in the United States, so we made aware of this need to fill. We were big fans of Supreme, and again, we always want to make efforts to do justice to our core audience. Mortal Kombat is an enduring and great franchise, and there are many people in that streetwear audience who would love to play Mortal Kombat.
I think a big part of Arcade1Up is meeting you where you are. If you aren't a fan yet, why not? Let's really figure that out together. The Supreme audience, the outreach that was possible for us, and the new fans of Mortal Kombat, we could recruit into both our ecosystem and the overall franchise ecosystem. The Supreme cabinet project was exciting, and ultimately, it became one of Supreme's fastest-selling items because you have that brand recognition and value. So while we will always be catering and we will always be listening for opportunities to see a franchise go somewhere it can flourish.
Craddock: Getting back to the 30th anniversary this year, we've talked about things like the light-up marquee and key artwork. What else went into re-designing the Midway Legacy cabinet?
Rosenberg: We wanted to do a major call back to Mortal Kombat 1, the game that started it all, and we've been waiting on that red dragon [on the side] for so long. We've wanted to do it for a while, but it was held off. There are things about the cabinet that really came up as kind of the ultimate fan experience, and almost everything I'm about to list, I can't take much credit for, because it came from fans who played our previous units loved them, but who wanted us to do even more.
We have a near replica of the original cabinet shape. What you'll notice is we have an expanded control deck that's closer to the original machine. In our Mortal Kombat 2021 unit, the marquee was recessed back a little to accommodate more viewing angles, and honestly, we thought that was a fantastic idea because it would give you more viewing angle on the screen. Our fans did not like that, so we found a new viewing angle and have been able to push the marquee forward. And then I think the most important feature that I couldn't be more excited about is you're getting the living room experience. Globally, you will be able to play Wi-Fi with all other units of Mortal Kombat for the first time. And while there have been examples of Mortal Kombat using Wi-Fi [such as emulation], this is the first time anyone has offered an authentic arcade experience with modern enhancements like online play. I've tested it obviously in the office, and I love it. I am a Scorpion and Raiden main, and this game really comes to life in a whole new way when you add the Wi-Fi features.
Craddock: I'd like to address the elephant in the room. One of the most iconic pieces of artwork in MK history is Johnny Cage, played at the time by Dan Pesina, on the side of MK1's cabinet, along with the Chinese dragon. Pesina is not displayed on the side of your updated Legacy cab. Now, Arcade1Up has a reputation for getting artwork right. Not just choosing the right marquee titles, but in recreating them accuracy. I've done enough interviews for Long Live Mortal Kombat to have a strong suspicion why Pesina may have been omitted, but I wanted to give Arcade1Up a chance to speak to their fans on that issue.
Rosenberg: There are things I cannot discuss about that on the record. However, I will say that we did our 100 percent absolute best to preserve authenticity every step of the way. There is no stone we left unturned. I think all parties involved [WB, NetherRealm, Arcade1Up, and Dan Pesina] really tried their best to maintain the authenticity of the original cabinet. Many things can happen in 30 years, and you just try to preserve authenticity as much as possible. But there will always be revisions over time, and I don't think there's a single cabinet that we haven't had to revise in some capacity. If you kept 100 percent authenticity, these newer cabinets wouldn't have things like Wi-Fi. So, we really do our best in that regard.
Craddock: That makes sense. I appreciate you speaking to it as much as you could. I have another question you may not be able to answer on the record, but it's more in our respective wheelhouses. I'm one of a vocal minority of fans who love Mortal Kombat 4. It was the first 3D entry in the main series, and it's still one of my favorite arcade games. It's natural we're still seeing love for the first three MK titles, especially MK1 on its 30th anniversary year, but is it possible we could see an MK4 cabinet from Arcade1Up?
Rosenberg: Theoretically, anything is possible. I can tell you there's never been a single game, no matter how small, that we haven't all sat around the table and said, "How can we get this produced?" Mortal Kombat 4 has always been a consideration for us, but it's a more complicated game chipset-wise. Affordability will always be our first priority, so we would never produce Mortal Kombat 4 cabinets at the expense of people who would want to enjoy it. But technology evolves, so it's absolutely on our radar. No question.
Craddock: If you feel comfortable speaking for Arcade1Up as a whole, what does Mortal Kombat's 30th anniversary mean to you as fans of this series?
Rosenberg: In a word, it means everything. Everybody at Arcade1Up is a fan, and the gamer debates around the office go for hours. For us, to be a part of this franchise, let alone such an iconic moment, the 30th anniversary of Mortal Kombat, it's magical. When you see the response from fans, good or bad, and you're engaged with fans and something that they hold so dear, Mortal Kombat has been as defining for us as it has been for all of you. There's truly nothing like it like, which is why getting a good response to this program, not just from a corporate review perspective, but from the individual, means everything.
If we deliver the experience as it was 30 years later, if we're able to achieve something even close to that, that makes our entire day. It's just a really great experience to be a part of it.
This post is part of Kool Stuff, a companion book to Long Live Mortal Kombat: Round 1 that contains interviews I was unable to do before hitting Long Live MK’s deadline. Subscribe to Episodic Content to keep up with news on Long Live MK’s Kickstarter (set for March 29) and to follow along with Kool Stuff as new chapters are published.