Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection Review

When I started Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection, the sound of that iconic gong hit, and for a moment, it felt like 1992 again. The logo, the yell, the blood-red title screen all looked and sounded exactly as they did in the arcade, only this time I was holding a controller instead of a handful of quarters. Digital Eclipse has built something that feels less like a remake and more like a living archive, a way to play through the series’ entire early history, beginning with the original Mortal Kombat arcade release and ending with Mortal Kombat 4, the moment the franchise made its first uneasy leap into 3D.

The scope of the collection is massive. It includes Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat II, Mortal Kombat 3, Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, Mortal Kombat 4, and the PlayStation version of Mortal Kombat Trilogy, which merges the rosters of the first three games into one. It also adds Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Special Forces, two of the most infamous spin-offs in the franchise, alongside the handheld and console ports for Genesis, SNES, Game Boy, Game Gear, and the Game Boy Advance versions of Deadly Alliance and Tournament Edition. Altogether, there are twenty-three versions, and every one of them is unlocked from the beginning, so you can jump into any title you want without needing to complete challenges or progress through the collection first.

Playing them again reminded me how harsh these games really were. The original Mortal Kombat still punishes every mistake, but Mortal Kombat II is where things start to feel personal. The CPU reacts to your every move instantly, blocking projectiles before you finish the animation and countering attacks with precision that feels almost unfair. Mortal Kombat 3 is equally relentless. Even on the lowest setting, the AI fights like it is reading your mind, and the frustration that defined the arcade experience is still intact. Digital Eclipse left all of it untouched, which means every unfair hit and impossible combo is still waiting to test your patience.

There are, however, a few helpful features that make these games more accessible without changing their core design. Each title now includes a training mode that allows you to practice combos and special moves freely, along with a dedicated Fatality training mode that displays the exact inputs and lets you try them repeatedly until you get the timing right. It is a small thing that completely changes how you approach these older games because it finally gives you the space to learn without punishment. There is also a global difficulty option available from the main menu, and for anyone who wants to compete, online play works for both arcade and console versions, including the Genesis and SNES releases.

The rewind feature is the most practical of all the updates, letting you roll back up to thirty seconds of gameplay whenever you need to recover from a bad fight or missed input. It is seamless and quick, which makes it surprisingly natural to use. During Mortal Kombat II’s upper-tier fights, when the CPU’s precision becomes unbearable, being able to rewind and rethink a move helps make those moments less infuriating. Yet sometimes, rewinding seems to confuse the AI, causing it to come back faster and hit harder as if it knows what you are trying to do. It happened enough times that I started to notice a pattern, and it made the fights feel unpredictable in a way that somehow fits Mortal Kombat’s chaotic energy.

Digital Eclipse didn’t rebuild or modernize the visuals, but the presentation options they added show care for how these games are remembered. You can choose CRT filters that replicate the old glow and scan lines of arcade monitors, use handheld filters for the portable versions, or enable bezels that mimic the edges of an arcade cabinet. I kept the CRT filter on for most of my playthrough because it added the exact texture I remember from the arcades, the faint blur that softens the harsh outlines of the digitized characters. The emulation is clean, stable, and consistent across the board, and all the games run smoothly.

The real centerpiece of Legacy Kollection is the interactive documentary. It is built as a detailed timeline full of video interviews, concept art, scanned design documents, and old behind-the-scenes footage that traces the series from its earliest days at Williams Entertainment through the rise of Midway and into the modern NetherRealm era. You can listen to commentary from Ed Boon and John Tobias, watch raw VHS clips of actors performing moves in front of green screens, and browse through unused move lists and promotional materials. The collection goes into depth about how Mortal Kombat began as an experiment from a pinball development team, how its violence led to political backlash in the 1990s, and how features like the run button in Mortal Kombat 3 split the fan base. The format resembles Digital Eclipse’s earlier projects, The Making of Karateka and Tetris Forever, but this timeline is much richer and can be explored interactively. You can pause it at any point and launch the game being discussed.

Certain versions stand out as the highlights of the package. The PlayStation edition of Mortal Kombat Trilogy benefits the most from the modern hardware. The original version was infamous for long load times, but here those delays are practically gone, making it feel far smoother and more responsive. With its more than thirty playable characters drawn from the first three games, it feels like a celebration of the series’ peak years. The inclusion of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 WaveNet Edition is equally impressive. This rare arcade version introduced online play back in the mid-1990s, added unlockable fighters like Noob Saibot and Human Smoke, and made several balance changes. It has been preserved perfectly here and runs without issue. Seeing this once-lost build included and fully playable is an achievement in itself.

The weaker entries remain weak. Mortal Kombat 4 has not aged well, and it still shows every flaw of the series’s first attempt at 3D fighting. The arcade version included here is the final build, yet it still contains bugs such as missing textures, disappearing geometry, and awkward camera movement during throws. I even managed to knock a character completely out of bounds during training mode. These problems are authentic to the original release, which makes the game interesting to revisit but not enjoyable to play.

The handheld ports suffer the most. The Game Boy and Game Gear versions of Mortal Kombat 1 are slow, blurry, and stretched, making them difficult to look at and even harder to control. There is no option to adjust the screen size, so you are stuck with the oversized visuals. The Genesis and SNES ports hold up better, particularly the SNES ones, which sound cleaner and look sharper. The Genesis versions are rougher but carry that nostalgic charm. Hearing the gritty 16-bit version of The Dead Pool theme from Mortal Kombat II instantly took me back to being a kid sitting cross-legged on the floor, trying to remember every Fatality command from a printed move list.

Then there are the spin-offs. Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Special Forces are still as clunky and awkward as ever. Even with slight control improvements, the movement still feels stiff, and the level design is somewhat flat. They remain fascinating failures, showing how the developers tried to stretch the franchise into something beyond fighting mechanics. Including them here was the right decision because they complete the picture of how the series evolved, even when it stumbled.

Some omissions are hard to ignore. The Nintendo 64 version of Mortal Kombat Trilogy, which had a three-on-three mode, is not here. Neither is Mortal Kombat 4 Gold nor the console versions of Deadly Alliance. Their absence creates gaps in the historical record that you can feel when the documentary timeline skips over those years.

Technical issues have been another point of criticism. On Steam, the collection holds a “Mixed” rating with 408 reviews, roughly 48 percent of them negative. Many players mention input delay that makes precise combos difficult, as well as audio bugs and small visual inconsistencies, such as Sub-Zero’s Mortal Kombat II ending appearing in a noticeably lower resolution. I noticed the delay myself during Mortal Kombat 3, especially when trying to chain together faster moves. Even with these problems, Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is still an impressive preservation effort. The games remain difficult, unbalanced, and sometimes broken, but they still carry the energy that made Mortal Kombat a phenomenon. The documentary ties it all together with context and personality, giving new weight to those familiar characters and sounds.