Dan Forden

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Daniel Warren Forden (born September 28, 1963 in Chicago, Illinois) is an American sound programmer, music composer, and the lead on several high-profile arcade and pinball games. The most notable he has worked on is the Mortal Kombat fighting game series.

Forden is well known for an easter egg that first appeared in Mortal Kombat II, where Forden's head would appear after a chain of combos in the bottom-right corner of the screen and shout "Toasty!" when an uppercut was performed. In Mortal Kombat 3, freezing an opponent in "danger mode" with Sub-Zero would make him appear and shout "Frosty!".

This easter egg is tributed in the dance simulator StepMania: whenever a player gets 250 consecutive Perfects or better (Excellents or better in the 4.0 CVS version), a "toasty" appears. The PopCap game Peggle also features a tribute, as does the Aerosmith-themed rail shooter Revolution X, where singer Steven Tyler shouts "Toasty!" in reaction to explosions.

Forden's musical style, particularly for the Mortal Kombat series, is often a mixture of synthetic and organic sounds. A typical composition usually incorporates ethnic drumming with synthetic basses, synthetic leads and/or pads, and sometimes exotic isntruments. His rhythms are usually very driving and his melodies can become quite complex.

Several songs that he composed for the Mortal Kombat 3 soundtrack were used in the precursor to South Park, Jesus vs. Santa.

Contents

[edit] Discography

[edit] Forden's Works

[edit] Pinball

[edit] Williams

[edit] Midway (Bally)

[edit] Stern

[edit] Video games

[edit] Midway

[edit] Williams

  • High Impact Football

[edit] Trivia

  • He is credited in the Mortal Kombat series as Dan "Toasty" Forden.
  • In the Graveyard stage of Mortal Kombat 3, a headstone has 'Forden' written on it.

[edit] External links