Daniel Pesina

Daniel Pesina
Born	1959 (age 51–52) Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Occupation	Martial Arts Expert Former Midway Employee Actor
Years active	1991 - present

Daniel Pesina (born 1959 in Chicago, Illinois) is a martial arts expert and a former employee of Midway. He is most recognized as the actor who played Johnny Cage and ninjas Sub-Zero, Scorpion, Reptile, Smoke, and Noob Saibot in Mortal Kombat and Mortal Kombat II.^[1]

Pesina was fired from Midway in 1994 for wearing Cage's costume in an advertisement for the Strata arcade game, BloodStorm. The ad first appeared in the debut issue of EGM2.^[2] Pesina's characters were played by different actors in subsequent installments: the Ninja roles were taken over by John Turk in Mortal Kombat 3 and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, while Johnny Cage would be played by Chris Alexander in Mortal Kombat Trilogy.

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.

External links

• Daniel Pesina at the Internet Movie Database
• Sifu Daniel
• Chicago Wushu Guan Homepage
• The Book of Swords (2003)
• Press Start - Official Site
• gotkungfu.com

References

1. ^ Mortal Kombat II, GameSpot, Retrieved, 22 Feb 2008
2. ^ "Scan of BloodStorm ad from EGM2". http://www.kidfenris.com/bloodstormpesina.jpg. 

Persondata
Name	Pesina, Daniel
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1959
Place of birth	Chicago, Illinois
Date of death
Place of death