Ed Boon

Boon graduated from high school at Loyola Academy in Wilmette. Boon is of Hispanic descent, and his mother came from the Dominican Republic while his father is Dutch-American. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics and computer science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

After graduation, he was employed by Williams Entertainment in their pinball department, working on approximately 20 pinball games over the next two years. During this time, he was called the Mortal Master, an early indicator towards a future creation.

He is the co-creator of the Mortal Kombat fighting game series, along with John Tobias, and served as the series' lead programmer, with Tobias as the lead designer, until their partnership dissolved with Tobias' departure from Midway in 2000. Boon named series characters Sonya and Tanya after his sisters Sonia and Tania, while another character, Noob Saibot, was named after Boon and Tobias' reversed surnames. Programmer Mike Boon is Ed's younger brother and has been a part of his team since Mortal Kombat 4.

Boon continues to be directly involved with the Mortal Kombat franchise and its multimedia side projects and has also provided voice acting and motion capture work for the games, most notably providing the voice for the "Come here!" and "Get over here!" catchphrases by Scorpion in several games of the series as well as the first two feature films Mortal Kombat and Mortal Kombat Annihilation. The 2008 edition of Guinness World Records Gamer's Edition consequently awarded him a world record for the "longest-serving video game voice actor."

He was inducted into the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame in 2022.