Daniel Pesina

Daniel Pesina played Johnny Cage in MK1 and MKII, and he also portrayed the ninja characters Reptile, Scorpion, and Sub-Zero in the 1st and 2nd games as well. (also including the secret ninja characters Noob Saibot and Smoke in MKII). However matters became worse for him, as he was fired from Midway in 1994. This was due to the fact that he wore a Johnny Cage costume in a Stata (game company) game advertisement, because their game was Mortal Kombat's rival. (which pretty much explains why John Turk who played the new ninjas in subsequent games, and Chris Alexander who played the new Johnny Cage in Mortal Kombat Trilogy both took over) The name of this arcade game is titled BloodStorm as can be seen in the picture below.

After his departure from Midway, further ventures into other fighting games proved unsuccessful. After the failure of BloodStorm, he and his brother Carlos (Raiden in the 2D Mortal Kombat games) assisted Data East with its digitized fighting game, Tattoo Assassins, which, despite an extensive feature in a summer '94 issue of EGM, never made it to arcades. In 1995, he and fellow MK actors Ho Sung Pak, Katalin Zamiar, and Dr. Phillip Ahn, M.D. all appeared in a fighting game produced exclusively for the Atari Jaguar titled Thea Realm Fighters, but it was never released after Atari ceased production on the failed system later that year.

Pesina appeared as one of Shredder's foot soldiers in the 1991 movie Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze. In the 2003 martial arts movie The Book of Swords, which also starred fellow MK actors Zamiar, Pak and Richard Divizio, he played a hitman whose task was to take out the movie's leading man.

Daniel and Carlos also appeared in a videogame-based comedy film entitled Press Start, which was released to DVD on September 25, 2007. Daniel's character is called Sasori, which is Japanese for Scorpion

As of 2004, Dan Pesina is a teacher at the Chicago Wushuguan School, while Carlos has been employed at Midway since 1995.

Trivia

 * Daniel Pesina (born 1959 in Chicago, Illinois)