Review – Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection for Nintendo Switch 2

Atari and Digital Eclipse’s Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection is a klassic kompilation that documents the gratuitously violent fighting franchise’s meteoric rise to blockbuster status from Midway to NetherRealm Studios. If you’re here for the entertaining scrappy story about four young Chicago upstarts creating one of video gaming’s most recognizable marquee titles, you’re in for a good five hours of documentary footage, unused content and uncovered artwork. If you’re coming to this Kollection for the games, you get a faithfully flawed emulation of the first four arcade Mortal Kombats, most of the console and handheld ports of the main trilogy, the 32X port of MK2, the Wavenet version of UMK3, the PlayStation version of Mortal Kombat Trilogy, two experimental spinoffs in Mythologies: Sub Zero and Special Forces, the Game Boy Advance port of UMK3, and two GBA ports of Mortal Kombat Deadly Alliance. Just be sure to bring some friends as the computers are merciless in every game. Good thing all you have to do is pay at the door because you’d surely run out of tokens. 

Perhaps the most endearing quality of the Mortal Kombat franchise is its arcade roots. Mortal Kombat, and by extension just about any of its many arcade cabinet fighting peers, was never an easy game whether it was 1, 2, 3, Ultimate 3 or 4. It would sap your chunk of change as if it were a life force. Sweep kicks and uppercuts were your saving graces while special moves and the occasional fatality were your rewards for being quick on the draw against the aggressive computer opponents and looming timer. And still, people flocked to it and its four button danger gleefully with all four arcade releases spanning from 1992 to 1997. The Midway team of the 1990s had this relationship with a growing, ravenous audience down to a science and Legacy Kollection lets you in on some of their secrets to this. It all feels pretty indie, pretty “garage band” as you’ll hear artist John Vogel say a few times in the included documentary footage. With Ed Boon’s programming, John Tobias’ aspirations to make a comic book-like universe of Star Wars proportions, John Vogel’s gritty, fantastical environments and Dan Forden’s progressive rock-inspired soundscapes, Mortal Kombat and its ’90s bloodbath konsumed the kompetition.

 

 

Mortal Kombat is worth celebrating so this Kollection is extremely welcome. While Digital Eclipse did give us the Midway Arcade Treasures trilogy in the mid 2000s featuring the first two MK games, this is the first time a Kollection has focused on the MK franchise exclusively. Legacy Kollection is also the first time DE is emulating a 3D Mortal Kombat game with Mortal Kombat 4’s Zeus engine that was revolutionary in 1997. And, surprisingly, they nail arcade Mortal Kombat 4’s gameplay, timing, look and feel better than just about any of the other games included here. DE even went so far as to include a 4X upscaling option that makes the 3D visuals pop better than ever. That’s not to say that any of the other games play poorly (unless we’re for some reason counting the handheld titles). On the contrary — the arcade Mortal Kombat trilogy is as visceral as ever. But be prepared to be bent over the merciless knee of their less precise inputs and aggressive computer difficulty. By the time we get to Mortal Kombat 3 and its Ultimate upgrade, the gameplay feels honed-in and fluid. Such is the nature of documenting the journey from primitive beginnings to higher-tech improvements. Mortal Kombat 1 and 2 were never the best-feeling games and, as such, their difficult controls and sluggish speeds feel faithful. 

Dare I say it, I understand why the first two games specifically are so beloved. They’re visceral. Their sound effects are punchy, their loud sonic experience overwhelms the senses, and the simplicity of having no run button means your attacks have to count. The limited toolkit makes for a more rewarding back-and-forth experience in a way, one that differentiates itself from the creative freedom that the faster style of comboing in Mortal Kombat 3 introduced. It’s appreciated that all four arcade iterations have optional controller rumble, really lending to their power trip. This was sorely missed when moving on to the larger roster and deeper fighting of Mortal Kombat Trilogy. The quieter audio and lack of impact felt in the controller soured the experience with it a bit. 

 

 

The Legacy Kollection goes to great lengths to preserve and honor the thrill of the arcade experience, yet its inclusions of the hugely popular Genesis and SNES ports is still a nice tip of the hat to any ’90s kid who remembers a fateful Mortal Monday or Mortal Friday. While the console port selection could have been deeper (No PlayStation MK3 or N64 MK Gold?), the sentiment of documenting MK’s frenzied legacy is felt all the same. The biggest hits of the franchise’s early days are all here, making this a nostalgic, bloody trip down memory lane. It’s when the Legacy Kollection attempts being modern that it begins to show some cracks in the dragon medallion. Online play with Rollback netcode is included for all of the arcade and console ports with none of the handheld ports getting this luxury, understandably so. If you’re playing on Switch 1, keep in mind you won’t be able to go online with Mortal Kombat 4 either. However, each game is queued up for separately and such hyper-specific matchmaking means the dream of playing Genesis’ Mortal Kombat online may not be achieved, at least not just yet. Digital Eclipse have an update for a private lobbies system coming that integrates a shared arcade space for up to 16 people to queue up for any of the games they wish with a ‘Got next’ feature implemented. The lack of a Rematch feature stings most though and will hopefully arrive via a patch. As of the time of this review, existing audio and visual glitches have been patched up and a free update with a comprehensive lore timeline has been announced, so it is reasonable to expect that more improvements are forthcoming. 

Even with a few glaring issues, Legacy Kollection is still the best and most accessible way to experience the Mortal Kombat arcade games to-date. The new Fatality Trainer and Training modes for every game in the collection are such friendly additions. But Atari and Digital Eclipse didn’t stop there. With the ability to display special move and fatality inputs onscreen, rewind gameplay, toggle a frankly fantastic CRT filter and arcade/TV border display, remap all buttons at any time for any of the games and access debug menus and secret characters with the flick of a virtual switch, this is an embarrassment of riches for huge fans of the storied franchise.  

 

 

The thing about Mortal Kombat that resonates with its most fervent players isn’t the controversy, but the stories. ERMAC wasn’t a real character until players kept trying to unlock him after seeing the Error Macros counter in MK. Kombat Kodes were distributed via an ambitious multi-media campaign that required fans to be engaged with all channels of what being a Mortal Kombat fan meant when MK3 released in the run-up to the movie release. For those who grew up worshipping at Midway’s altars obsessed with each subsequent MK release, these might be triggering but funny conversation starters. For the new blood that has come since the reboot of the franchise in the 2010s, these facts are mythical and the stuff of legend. Legacy Kollection respects both perspectives, offering a peek behind the curtain of a magical time in arcade gaming engagement and even grants its players the same deck of cards that comprised its numerous tricks. 

 

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