Mortal Kombat 1 shares a ‘first look’ at Jean-Claude Van Damme as Johnny Cage

to update [Sat 9th Sep, 2023 02:00 BST]:

After the first teaser, NetherRealms has now released an official trailer for Jean-Claude Van Damme in Mortal Kombat 1. You can Check it out via YouTube. Jean-Claude Van Damme will be available as Johnny Cage in the premium version of the game, with pre-order now possible.

“After 30 years, the man, the legend, the legend finally arrives in Kombat. Jean-Claude Van Damme becomes Johnny Cage in #MK1.”

The original article [Fri 8th Sep, 2023 01:00 BST]:

Ahead of Mortal Kombat 1’s release later this month, series co-creator Ed Boon has been making the press rounds to promote this new entry. Surprisingly, it appeared on YouTube show “Hot Ones”Guests take on the hot sauce challenge while answering questions on a specific topic.

As part of this skin, Mortal Kombat fans were given a “first look” at Jean-Claude Van Damme’s look for Johnny Cage. Boone notes that the “absolute full circle moment” for the Mortal Kombat series is being able to have such an iconic actor and martial artist in the game:

Ed Boon: “When we made the first game, our original goal was to make Van Damme an arcade game, we actually wanted to see Van Damme, and again Bloodsport was a big game and I think it was a Universal Soldier game, so we approached his team and we were like we wanted to make a game based on Van Dam, and I don’t know if he said no or she never got around to it or something but then again, this is a couple of 20-year-olds wanting to make a game of a video game, I could see how Van Dam would say, “No, “No, we’re not going to do that”…so we tried a few times to go back and forth with him, this time we won the lottery and got him and we already have his voice and it’s going to be the Johnny Cage character…”

If you want to see the full reveal in the Hot Ones episode on YouTube, You can catch it at the 5:50 mark of the video.

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Boon’s appearance on Hot Ones comes after yesterday’s reveal of Megan Fox as Outworld vampire Nitara. You can learn more about this returning character and Megan’s involvement in Mortal Kombat 1 in our previous coverage here on Nintendo Life: