MKIII_Demo.webm
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[Hide] (901.6KB, 500x380, 01:40) >>1004
>I'm honestly not familiar with the Dan Forden soundtracks at all.
That's quickly fixed if you allow me, it's a short one, will also explain in haste for those who might not know and repost some MKI themes:
Daniel Warner Forden is a shitcago bass player graduated in Technology in Music & Related Arts at Oberlin around 1985, seems to have found a job at Williams Electronics at least since early-1989, under seemingly famed pinball designer Steve Ritchie, and worked on sound effects and music in their pinball machine division which was the main gig along with gambling machines.
Because Williams bought Midway around the same years to acquire their arcade and pinball divisions he was attached to them often to beef their production up, he seems to have ended up in a small team of 4 with John Tobias, Ed Boon and John Vogel, tasked to make a fighting game from scratch and release it within a year.
The result was Mortal Kombat which had the gimmick of photo-framed characters and lots of gore; Vogel and Tobias were in charge of the graphical and conceptual design, Boon in programming and Forden in everything sound design. Made in 10 months and released around 1992, the game was a massive hit and soon a sequel came around in 1993, which was a bigger hit, then to try and up the game to compete with newcomers like Tekken and Virtua Fighter they fleshed the original recipe all they could with more combos, sounds and characters which ended up with Mortal Kombat 3 around 1995 with a decent commercial success, apart from the comics, the movie and even a children's saturday morning cartoon (wat).
Because 3D newcomers like Virtua Fighter, Tekken, Fighting Vipers, among others, were starting to get really popular the fellas decided to use the new ZEUS 3D engine and make 4 also polygonal, some production issues happened, the game got rushed and remade to fit into the 1997 timeline (with a Playstation exclusive and the second movie) and then released incomplete on arcades (with the infamous "software updates"). It was a sham and the N64 port was popular but not that much to justify all the expenses made.
The series became somewhat dormant and got a "new" timeline continuation in 2002 with Deadly Alliance, then in 2004 Deception was released and finally the compilation-esque Armageddon around 2006. They were warmly received and i can say the effort to make the new 3D actually work, along with the obscure but interesting AND real fighting styles attached to every character was refreshing, tons of extra content but somehow they didn't sell that well.
In 2008 Midway wanted money and made a quick cash-in, they made a cheap crossover with DC Universe characters and somehow it sold more than all those games mentioned before, who knows what the hell happened but Warner decided to buy the franchise and inject money into it, giving it a new lifeline which made the guys release 3 more, one as recently as one year ago. From the old team Boon and Forden remain, Vogel i think still is near them but as a creative consultant while the original, actual creator John Tobias parted ways after the crisis of 4/Mythologies, made another studio and created Tao Feng for Xbox, a very interesting and conceptually sound game but that had shitty programming behind and was pushed around in the media by the muslims, soccer moms and the chinese because of several factors; poor dude didn't have a chance and folded a couple of years later although sometimes he appears and gets a small gigs in the recent games using his comic drawing prowess, who knows what's he doing apart from those sporadic appearances but for being the main creator one would think they would bring him in again but Warner is known for being ultra jews in production anyways.
Forden in most main releases has been the audio director, he composed the tracks from 1 to Deception, in Armageddon he relied on a team of collaborators and later on composed for the Injustice games, but after 2004 he has only composed one or two new tracks for the series, being more of a sound designer and voice technician. His other work includes commentary planning in some sports games and miscellaneous attributions in grunting, screaming and murmuring on violent stuff.
If there's a trademark i could note in his music is the knack for rich percussion work, odd/unorthodox synth leads and moderate amounts of chinese string plucking. In terms of sound design he seems to be fond of dense and often quirky atmospheres, probably because of his pinball days, also notoriously flings the shit as he self-inserts at times in the middle of gameplay kinda like his associate, good old Vince Pontarelli.