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...I found this interesting - hopefully some of you people will, too...
- Phil


"Playing a Kombat character is fun and games"

By Kevin Johnson
USA TODAY
(September 20, 1993)

     CHICAGO - Dan Pesina was watching kids play the arcade video game,
Mortal Kombat, when one turned around.

     "He looked at me, looked back at the game, and said, 'Hey, you're
in the game,'" Pesina, 34, says.

     Indeed he is.  As the model for martial artists Johnny Cage,
Scorpion and Sub-Zero in the game, he's recognized by fans who have
pumped hundreds of quarters into Mortal Kombat.  That recognition likely
will increase now that home versions of the game have been released.

     A few weeks ago, a dozen kids followed Dan's brother, Carlos
Pesina, 25, around a health club after they learned that he was Rayden,
a Mortal Kombat character who shoots lightening bolts from his hands.

     A restaurant waiter insisted on giving bond broker Liz Malecki, 34
- who plays the only female fighter in Mortal Kombat - a free pizza. 
And Richard Divizio, 25, who plays Kano, a character with a Phantom of
the Opera-style half mask, got a call from a fan in California who had
managed to learn his name.

     None of the Chicago residents mind the attention.  "We're having
fun," Divizio says.  "Kids will ask how I got in the game.  Then they
ask how they can be in a video game."

     The answer: A little bit of luck and practice, practice, practice.

     Pesina has studied martial arts for 14 years.

     Hosung Pak - who plays Liu Kang, the fastest character, and Shang
Tsung, the old master - has won more than three dozen national and
international martial arts titles.  He played Raphael in the first
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sequel, and will be seen next year fighting
martial arts legend Jackie Chan in the sequel to Drunken Master.

     Only Malecki, who is trained in dance, had no experience.  Chosen
because she resembled the strong, sexy Sonya Blade, she learned moves by
mimicking the others.

     How do you get picked to be a video game character?

     Actually, this group got its start 20 years ago.  Game co-designer
John Tobias grew up with them in a tough Chigago neighborhood.

     "I knew they had been doing martial arts," he says.  Tobias and
co-designer Ed Boon, 29, wanted to use live people as models for the
fighting characters to make the game more realistic.  Game maker Midway
manufacturing Co. had begun talking with actor/martial artist
Jean-Claude Van Damme's agent, but "when I saw my old friends, we said,
'Hell, we don't need him,'" Tobias recalls.  "They were incredible."

     Tobias and Boon, 29, spend six hours a day for two weeks, filming
Dan Pesina from different angles doing kicks and punches, deciding which
moves to use for the game.

     Then Malecki, Divizio, Pak and Carlos Pesina were filmed.  The film
was digitized - broken into tiny electronic pieces - for storage in the
game's 12 megabytes of image memory.

     Ironically, considering their martial arts titles, the Pesinas, Pak
and Divizio say they'd rather practice than get in a real fight. 
(Malecki would like to "go strolling though" a rough area just to see if
the moves work).

     "It would be a waste of time to have to fight somebody on the
street," Dan Pesina says.  "In a fight, you only really use about six
different moves."

     Pesina also declines challenges from Kombat players, as he did when
invited to play recently by someone who recognized him.

     But not because it was a waste of time.  He's afraid he'll get
beaten.  "Those kids are really good."

-- end