Dan Forden

History

Daniel Warner Forden was born on September 28, 1963. He studied at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, enrolling in the TIMARA program — Technology in Music and Related Arts — and graduated in 1985. The program trained students to work with synthesizers, computers, and experimental sound equipment at a time when the intersection of technology and music was still being defined. Forden was learning how to build sound from code and circuits while most people still listened to music on cassette tapes.

In October 1988, he was hired by Williams Electronics, a company known for pinball machines and arcade games. Forden's first game credit came in 1989 on Arch Rivals, a basketball arcade game. He composed music and programmed sounds for Williams pinball machines and arcade games through the late 1980s and early 1990s. The work was technical, precise, and often invisible — most players would never know his name. He was part of a small team writing sound code and layering effects, trying to make each hit, bounce, and bell ring feel right.

In 1991, a small team at Midway — four people in total — began work on a one-on-one fighting game. The team was Ed Boon, John Tobias, John Vogel, and Dan Forden. They were building Mortal Kombat, and Forden was responsible for every sound in the game. He recorded voice lines, layered punch effects, synthesized music, and mixed it all into a palette of over-the-top violence rendered in digitized actors and exaggerated audio. The game launched in arcades in 1992. It became one of the most successful fighting games of the decade.

During development of Mortal Kombat II, Ed Boon suggested adding an inside joke. Forden and Boon had been working on a Midway football game called Super High Impact, and Forden used to taunt Boon by saying 'I predict toast' — as in, you're toast. Somehow that phrase evolved into 'I predict toasty.' Boon suggested they record Forden saying 'Toasty!' in a falsetto and hide it in the game as an Easter egg. Whenever a player landed a particularly brutal uppercut, Forden's face would appear in the bottom-right corner of the screen, shouting the word. It became one of the most recognized sound bites in gaming. Forden was credited in the series as Dan 'Toasty' Forden from that point forward.

Forden's musical style for Mortal Kombat drew from King Crimson and progressive rock — synthetic textures layered with organic percussion, dissonant chords, and a sense of unease. The sound of Mortal Kombat was not clean or polished. It was loud, strange, and aggressive, and that roughness was part of what made it memorable. Outside of games, Forden played bass guitar in the progressive rock band Cheer-Accident from 1992 to 1993, contributing to their experimental sound during that period.

Forden remained with Midway through its transition into NetherRealm Studios, continuing to work on the Mortal Kombat series and other Midway arcade titles like NBA Jam. He contributed to every major Mortal Kombat release for more than three decades, shaping the audio identity of a franchise that became a cultural touchstone. On October 1, 2025, Forden retired from the games industry. He announced his departure from NetherRealm Studios the following day. He had worked in game audio for thirty-seven years.

Most people who played Mortal Kombat never saw Forden's name in the credits. But they heard his work in every punch, every scream, and every 'Toasty!' What Forden understood — what his entire career demonstrated — was that sound does not need to be realistic to feel real. It needs to be distinctive. The rough edges, the exaggerated impacts, the falsetto shout from the corner of the screen — those were the things players carried with them long after the game ended. Forden built a world you could hear, and in doing so, he built something people would never forget.