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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] His character was then killed off in Mortal Kombat 3, only to come back in Mortal Kombat Trilogy, where he was portrayed by new actors; John Turk taking over his ninja roles, while Chris Alexander took over his Cage role.

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 1992 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.

[edit] External links

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

[edit] References