Mortal Kombat is pretty much the perfect title for what the fighting game would end up being over 30 years ago, but there were other names the developers once had in mind.
Series Co-creator Ed Boon just shared one of the early working project titles for the original MK, but since it’s April Fool’s Day, he promises it’s not a joke.
“Wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t believe me today. But this was one of the names we were considering before settling on Mortal Kombat,” wrote Boon on Twitter using our boy BossLogic’s fan-made Kumite poster as a proposed Blood Sport series.
Kumite is a pretty common name we’ve seen used by fighting game tournaments over the years, but for those who don’t know what it actually is, Kumite refers to free-form martial arts fighting and/or one of the three main sections of karate.
Wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t believe me today. But this was one of the names we were considering before settling on MORTAL KOMBAT.
image by @BossLogic pic.twitter.com/L3NoUfgek4— Ed Boon (@noobde) April 1, 2023
It seems like Boon is telling the truth here considering he told Game Informer back in 2016 that Kumite was high on their list of potential titles as well as other cheesy martial arts names like Dragon Attack, Death Blow and Final Fist.
Through a bunch of more brainstorming from the team, however, the developers came to the term Combat before adding a K in there to make it stand out as something unique.
Now over 3 decades later, the series is one of the most iconic in all of video games, and we should see the 12th mainline Mortal Kombat announced sometime this year, perhaps even this month.
