One of the biggest problems with fighting games is saving. It doesn’t matter how good the game is, how influential it is, whether it’s a beloved classic, or a flash of bread, or something in between. It’s difficult to play old fighting games on modern hardware. If you want to play Tekken earlier than 7, you need to have an older console connected. Soulcalibur? Hopefully there will be a Switch 2 and/or a delisted re-release or physical disk. Best version of Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike? I’m still trapped on my Xbox 360 and PS3. And that goes many times. Some people do better than others (Capcom, SNK, ARC systems work), but the reality is that many of the best and most important fighting games of the past year are lost to old hardware or, at worst, essentially unplayable, trapped in bad ports that are deeply flawed and flawed at best. And that’s the best case scenario. Did you burn out, or burn out? You probably can’t play them legally. Terrace Kashi fans masters, rest in peace.
That’s where Digital Ecris is stepping into the legacy collection of deadly combat. If Digital Eclipse seems like a good studio for this type of thing, it’s probably because there’s a lot of history that made Tetris forever, and among many others, including Atari 50: Anniversary Collection, and my favorite teenage mutant Ninja Turtles: Kawabunga Collection. They know what they’re doing here. The only question is to execute.
Of course, the most important thing is the game itself. All the classics are here: Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat II, Mortal Kombat 3, Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, Mortal Kombat 4. But it’s not just arcade games. The console and handheld versions are also available here. If you like the sweaty SNES release of the original Mortal Kombat, it’s for you. If you’re more interested in Gory Genesis games, then it’s here too. I, I am an arcade purist, but it’s nice that here there are options for those who want to see different versions of each.
However, we are not limited to the Klassic version that everyone has played. There are some strange things here too. That means it includes the Game Boy Advance version of Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance, as well as the 32x version of Mortal Kombat II and the Game Boy and Game Gear versions of the original Mortal Kombat. I didn’t know them either I made it The Game Boy version of the original Mortal Kombat, but can be found here if necessary.
Additionally, all games in Legacy Kollection support online multiplayer using rollback netcode powered by GGPO, one of the best rollback solutions in the business. This release is the first time most games in this collection have been played online. This means a lot of additional work in digital Eclipse (not adding online play to fighting games is a famously difficult task), but if they can get it right, it would be a huge achievement.
However, this package doesn’t just mean online play. Digital Eclipse allows you to unlock all your secrets with the touch of a button. That means characters, game settings, hidden developer menus, and the entire Enchilada. If you want to do something like successfully unlocking a reptile (seriously, look into that process with the original MK and remember how wild some of the MK’s arcade secrets were), you can do that. But if you don’t want to waste it, all the secrets are at your fingertips.
But what I’m most looking forward to is the trends in digital Eclipse archive work. This will appear in the Legacy Collection. That means interviews with Ed Boone, John Tobias, Dan Foden, John Vogel, and more, but there are also archives, like footage of actors scanned in the game, comic books from the prequel to Mortar Combat, and footage of actors written and portrayed by Tobias himself. Throws in a series timeline that traces the history of each character and stories in different realms of MK. The Legacy Collection seems to have everything Old Head MK fans (and young guns who want to learn the history of the series) want. And as someone who grew up in the arcade with those games, I’m happy they’re available to everyone. See you online at UMK3.
