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Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection (Hands-On Preview) - Gamescom 2025

by Willem Hilhorst - August 25, 2025, 9:00 am EDT
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Komplete Karnage Kollected

The gold standard for presenting and preserving games for years has been Digital Eclipse. Last year’s Tetris Forever was one of my favorite games of the year. Not just because it was Tetris, but because of the care and attention that the team put into presenting the story in a cohorent and informative manner. Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection is a bit of a different beast comparatively. When speaking with the folks from Digital Eclipse they emphasized that for this particular collection, they knew that it wouldn’t necessarily be the treasure trove of historical documents and interviews, but that the games would do the talking.

So let’s begin with that because Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection has a pretty clear focus. This collection is centered on Mortal Kombat’s arcade history. Mortal Kombat 1, 2 and 3 are all here in the many forms they were released on ranging from the arcade version, the Super Nintendo, the Mega Drive, the Game Boy, Game Gear, 32x and PlayStation versions (that last one specifically as Mortal Kombat Trilogy). Mortal Kombat 4 (arcade), Mortal Kombat Advance, Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance and Mortal Kombat: Tournament edition (all Game Boy Advance), as well as the much maligned beat em ups Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces for PlayStation are here. I was in particular surprised to see a special version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 for WaveNet Arcades, which was a version that enabled online play between arcade cabinets, but wasn’t widely available and includes Noob Saibot as a playable fighter.

Going beyond the sheer amount of games available, there’s a lot of quality of life features that I in particular found incredibly useful. Because to be honest I am very bad at fighting games and the original Mortal Kombat games in particular have never been that accessible to new players. Having the option to enable a training mode in the games sounds obvious, but it helps so much with learning the mechanics, moves and characters. There’s also the option to toggle visible movelists for every character to be visible while playing, making it much easier to remember special moves. Those who’ve struggled to learn the fatalities can finally check the positions and move combinations. Some smaller things, like being able to toggle specific unlocks like Reptile and the transformations for Shang Tsung in Mortal Kombat Trilogy can be triggered easily now, because of the removal of the original loading times. I also really need to mention the incredible CRT-filters and bezels that the team added into the game. For the PlayStation titles there’s this gorgeous outer glow on the bezel of a classic CRT television. It just goes to show that extra little bit of effort that sets Digital Eclipse apart from other re-releases.

But for me the star of the show was always going to be the supplemental materials. There’ll be over three hours of interviews in the final release, including chats with Ed Boon, John Tobias and others on the original development team. I was particularly excited to see the original references for the Goro model and the original film footage of the actors that performed the fighters in the original game. Of course there are the flyers, arcade marquees, manuals and high resolution scans of images and other materials that have made Digital Eclipse’s collections the equivalent of a high-end digital coffee table book.

Even if you aren’t familiar with the history of Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is shaping to be a great introduction to show people what made the series so iconic and influential for its time and beyond. For those longing to replay the Mortal Kombat classics, you can rip your friends' hearts out without worry. As for me, I can’t wait to dig into the full history of these games thanks to historical archives that Digital Eclipse is laying out here. But perhaps what the Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection will show us is that the studio isn’t just raising the bar for others, but for themselves as well.

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Genre Fighting
Developer Digital Eclipse
Players1 - 2
OnlineYes

Worldwide Releases

na: Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection
Release Q4 2025
PublisherAtari
RatingMature
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