Mortal Kombat: Legacy Collection Review
Blog Andrew Joseph 31 Oct , 2025 0
Even 33 years after its launch, the Mortal Kombat series still shocks and impresses with its excessive violence and gore. This is especially true with the latest game collection and documentary released by developer Digital Eclipse, which not only brings the earliest Mortal Kombat games back for a new round, but also provides a deeper look into their history and what went into bringing this brutal fighting series to life. While the collection falls a little short of a properly executed Lethal due to a few unfortunate omissions and the game's uneven balance and polish, it still provides a comprehensive and engaging enough look into the genre's most notorious series to make for a killer package.
Legacy Kollection focuses primarily on the history behind the games that defined the first 10 years of Mortal Kombat, with a real tilt toward the impactful hits. It begins with the first Mortal Kombat arcade game in 1992, through the series' first steps into 3D via handheld ports of Mortal Kombat 4 and Mortal Kombat Deadly Alliance, and tells the larger story of how Mortal Kombat co-creators Ed Boon and John Tobias continued to shake up the genre.
Included in the Legacy Kollection are the original Mortal Kombat trilogy and its ports, MK4, Myth, and Spec Ops spin-offs, as well as various handheld versions of other MK games. From the start you're free to jump into any game in the series essentially as it was at launch, complete with memorable quirks, secrets, and bugs. Unfortunately, this also includes the enemy AI from some versions of the original trilogy, which were notorious for reading player input and fighting back.
It's shocking to see how brutal and sometimes unfair the CPU opponents can be. The arcade ladders of MK2 and MK3 and their variants, even at the lowest settings, can be unforgiving – although it's at least a good way to get a feel for the challenges faced by players in the '90s. However, the series does strive to balance these hurdles by adding a few firsts to the classics, such as a fleshed-out training mode with tweaking options, difficulty settings for most games in the main menu, a death training mode to help time those pesky terminators, and online play in arcade and even Sega Genesis and SNES versions (although I wasn't able to test server stability in this review, and I'll update it after release if this becomes an issue).
One of the more useful features included in Legacy Kollection is the rewind option, which allows you to roll back 30 seconds of gameplay in each game. This rewind is a super useful option for counteracting the often ridiculous difficulty, but it's also nice to try and perfect your run while trying out specific secrets in arcade mode. One strange thing I noticed, however, is that retreating during combat often buffs the enemy's AI, already to their advantage. In some cases, every time I tried to go backwards for a few seconds, I was stuck in a literal attack death loop, and the AI would counter my regression with brutal throws or special moves.
To be clear, these are not complete remakes. While the series brings a healthy dose of new features, the classic game remains essentially the same, just given quality-of-life updates and visual tweaks to fit modern platforms. You can even add some neat visual filters and borders to simulate an old-school arcade or home experience, or just strip it down to the essential parts. This collection provides a sturdy, well-made container for these classic pieces, and I appreciate that it even allows most of them to look sharp in my modern displays.
Legacy Kollection doesn't just focus on major arcade games, but classic arcade games as well. It also includes many ports that were released after them, which is why so many people played them in the 90s. The inclusion of supplemental ports for the Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo, and Game Boy was a great decision, as they help showcase the popularity of Mortal Kombat and how much work went into each version. I was too young to go to the arcade on my own, so I ended up developing a stronger attachment to the Sega Genesis ports of the original MK games. While it's not quite up to the standards of the arcade version, the port still hits the spot when it comes to showcasing classic MK combat and spectacle. I can't help but feel nostalgic when I hear the Sega Genesis' raucous rendition of the Deadpool theme.
That said, some parts of the pack do feel more like curiosities, showing off how early Mortal Kombat might have run on more modest hardware. For example, playing the Game Boy and Game Gear versions of Mortal Kombat 1 can be an eyesore. The handheld-sized experience is scaled up to fit the larger screen, and the gameplay is so slow and unresponsive that it feels disorienting. I would have preferred the option of shrinking the screen to a more visually appealing range, but that's not available in this series. Nonetheless, I'm glad to have them for posterity as they are an important part of MK's history.
I particularly enjoyed playing the PS1 version of the Mortal Kombat Trilogy in a new way, which was essentially a Super Smash Bros. for the MK series, with a huge roster. Legacy Kollection has also improved it, drastically improving loading times, making it probably the best version of MK Trilogy yet. This is a wonderful addition to the entire series.
One of the most anticipated additions to the series was the legendary WaveNet version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, an updated version of the arcade game that rebalanced combat, featured Noob Saibot and Human Smoke as unlockable characters, and also provided the then-rare opportunity to battle other arcade players online. It's a huge reveal and makes the series feel more well-rounded, as it allows long-time fans to play a “lost” version of UMK3, and it works incredibly well.
Unfortunately, the game that feels the roughest is Mortal Kombat 4, which is fitting considering it was the series' first foray into 3D combat in an arcade. The version included in the package is the finalized arcade version, which suffers from some strange visual and gameplay bugs. Some of Legacy Kollection's new additions also seem to amplify its quirks, such as stage geometry popping out of view or blocking action, or characters getting stuck out of bounds in training mode. As such, it feels a bit disappointing considering this is the only modern way to play MK4.
Interestingly, Legacy Kollection includes playable versions of earlier spin-offs of the series, including Mortal Kombat: Myths – Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Spec Ops, which have never been seen since their original release. Myth and Spec Ops is not a fighting game, but instead attempts to inject excessive violence and spectacle into the action phases. Unfortunately, these two derivatives haven't gotten better over time, even with some minor improvements in controls. They're easily the weakest games in the series, both frustrating and unintentionally hilarious to sit through. But the addition of these games was still very welcome, as they were, at the time, an ambitious swing at the series trying something different. To its credit, this collection takes these flops and gives them equal attention to the hits. It also highlights that they are a stepping stone to more comprehensive spin-offs in the future.
We get to see the series grow in documentary mode, and this is where The Legacy Collection really shines as a wonderful celebration. Much like Digital Eclipse's work on Karate Cards and Tetris Forever, Documentary Mode is presented in the form of an explorable timeline that shows facts about the series, interviews, development archive footage, deleted characters and special moves, and even classic commercials and arcade commercials for each key game.
Documentary Mode is a wonderful history lesson about not just the series, but the development of video games and the transformation of pop culture in the 1990s. Featuring new interviews with key creatives from Williams Entertainment, Midway and Netherrealm Studios, the documentary details the developers' roots in pinball and how Mortal Kombat became a lightning rod for media opposition to violence in the '90s. My favorite detail was seeing how Mortal Kombat became a pop culture hit, and how the developers felt about fans who thought Mortal Kombat 3's run button changed the meta too much. This is a fantastic behind-the-scenes look.
All in all, Legacy Kollection has some really great content and extras, but I can't help but feel a little disappointed with some of the game's omissions that could have helped polish it out even more. Along with the absence of the N64 version of Mortal Kombat Trilogy (which featured a fun and experimental 3v3 mode), Mortal Kombat 4 Gold and the console version of MK: Deadly Alliance are not included, which is an odd choice indeed as they were a more confident step into 3D for the series. The lack of these games also causes the documentary mode to skim certain details in the timeline. While I recognize that the core focus is on staple games from the first 10 years of the series, and that other external or technical issues may have prevented those games from being included, it's still a bit disappointing to see the package run out of steam towards the end, even if the Game Boy port was impressive.