Mortal Kombat
Image: Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment

Mortal Kombat might have evolved as a series since its inception in the early '90s, but one thing has remained constant – that amazing dragon logo.

Co-creator John Tobias has been speaking about how he came up with the iconic image on his Twitter account (thanks, IGN), and it's a fascinating thread that's well worth a read.

The thread was inspired by the discovery of the drawing that was digitised by John Vogel – another Mortal Kombat artist – and featured in the game itself.

Tobias explains:

The inspiration to use a dragon as the fictional tournament’s symbol came from “Dragon Attack,” which was in contention as our game’s title before [Ed Boon] and I changed it to “Mortal Kombat.”

The name “Dragon Attack” came from [Ed Boon]'s love for the band Queen and their song of the same title. I used the colours described in the lyrics of that song on our eventual coin-op cabinet design.

The inspiration for the dragon icon’s design started when John Vogel saw a golden dragon statue on the desk of Midway’s general manager, Ken Fedesna.

John borrowed it to digitize for use in our game’s backgrounds. I saw the dragon statue and thought of using an Asian-inspired dragon design as part of our coin-op cabinet’s side panel art.

Interestingly, Tobias explains that we very nearly didn't have this famous logo at all:

Side Note: I almost tossed the dragon icon sketch aside when I was at home working on it at my drafting table and my sister mistook the dragon for a seahorse.

If you'd like to read more about Mortal Kombat, be sure to check out our feature on the home conversions of the game.

[source twitter.com, via ign.com]