For many, the release of Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection was the chance for older fans who grew up with the Mortal Kombat franchise to play these classic games on new hardware without needing illegal emulators or digging up dead consoles to run the Mortal Kombat Arcade Collection. Since it was handled by Digital Eclipse, the team behind the excellent Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Cowabunga Collection, we expected this collection to receive the same level of care and admiration as their previous work. Then the game launched.
As pointed out in our review, Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection isn’t perfect. Some games are missing, online play wasn’t available for all Arcade titles at launch, and minor bugs were quickly called out by the community. Since launch, Digital Eclipse has spent a lot of time fixing as many issues as possible, but then the vocal idiots on social media began complaining about things that couldn’t be fixed, and of course, YouTubers followed suit, calling the game dated and claiming it needed to be changed to appeal to modern players: Aka make things easier because learning to be good at a game is cringe now.
Personally, I hate doing articles like this because I’m getting older, and the phrase “back in my day” was something I thought only my parents and grandparents used. But because I deal with a lot of younger gamers on places like Discord, I’m starting to hear what they say, and it sounds more like whining about how everything needs to be easier and include modern features like online modes, battle royales, and cash shops. Speaking honestly, I’m done handling these generations with fluffy gloves so I don’t hurt their feelings (or companies for that matter. How are you doing, 2K Games?) So I’m diving into the complaints I’ve heard online and telling these whining, complaining, entitled babies what’s what.
Wah! Mortal Kombat is too hard! Make it easier!
The main complaint from younger players is that Mortal Kombat (pick any of them) is too hard.
Back in the 90s, when these games were in arcades instead of on consoles, games were designed to make a profit. This usually meant high difficulty settings or coding that allowed the CPU to “cheat” to force players to spend more money. Street Fighter 2 was notorious for this, so of course, Mortal Kombat followed suit.
Mortal Kombat cheating came through input reading and input lag. Input reading let the CPU detect your joystick and button inputs before displaying animation on screen. That sweep you threw that the CPU magically jumped over? It saw it coming and altered its inputs to counter it. That split-second block on Scorpion’s spear? Same thing. Input lag is simply the time between your physical input and the CPU processing it. This is normal for all games. In fighting games, it can be tiny or noticeable. Most players won’t pick up on it (unless you’re an input-reading basement dweller like Nigel Woodall on X), or they adjust to it naturally.
And that leads to the problem. Most modern gamers have never had to adjust to input lag or input reading. They grew up with games that avoid these issues entirely or automatically lower the difficulty so players can advance. Modern games don’t need to make a profit per play, so these mechanics aren’t used anymore. When modern players encounter them, their reaction isn’t “how do I overcome this challenge,” it’s “this game is cheating and needs to be fixed.” Challenge is a big no-no these days unless “Dark Souls” is in the title.
Back in the arcade days, we spent money learning the game, studying patterns, finding exploits, and getting good. We adjusted to the game. Modern players expect the game to adjust to them. That’s not how it works. If you want to play and finish these games, you have to learn your character, read opponents, and adapt. Otherwise, don’t play.
Update: Digital Eclipse caved and added difficulty settings to every version of every Mortal Kombat game, including arcade versions. So instead of accepting a challenge and building character, this generation of whining babies won and got easy modes so they can pretend they’re good at a 30-year-old series.
Wah! 30-Year-Old Game Doesn’t Run Perfectly on Modern Hardware!
Tell me you don’t understand how emulation works without telling me you don’t understand how emulation works… or the difference between emulating on PC versus emulating on console. Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection uses emulation to bring all these games to life on modern consoles, and people don’t seem to understand that emulation isn’t a perfect system, and that it is different based on what platform the emulation is being created for.
PC emulation has been around for a long time, going back to the 1990s, where you could download the ROM of Mortal Kombat on SNES and run it on zSNES, or many other consoles as they got more powerful. Now, what an emulator does is create a digital version of the physical hardware and pushes for it all to work correctly, reading the ROM data and tricking it into thinking it’s running on the original hardware. Since PC is the easier platform to code emulators on, the ones you can find for PC are doing a very good job of recreating the consoles and hardware in a digital state. HOWEVER! It’s never been perfect.
Back in the early days of emulation, there was a power scaling problem. Some older consoles would end up with emulators that would run faster as PC hardware evolved, since the increased CPU and GPU output was more than what the ROM was coded to handle. Other times, the coding for the ROM was so complex, or the hardware was so specialised, that something would not run correctly, showing graphical and gameplay issues that never existed in the first place.
Wah! Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection isn’t What I Expected! I Want a Refund!
My god, the backlash to some versions of the Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection has been so insane that you could be forgiven for thinking that everyone who played the game was named Karen and they wanted the manager of Digital Eclipse’s head on a platter. The backlash of the launch of Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection was so crazy that PlayStation allowed, and advertised, that they would allow refunds for the game, no matter how long you’ve played it or whatever, and people took it up in droves.
The last time I saw a refund backlash this bad was when Cyberpunk 2077 shit the bed so badly. However, those who stuck around and allowed Digital Eclipse to put out a few patches that fixed a lot of the flaws in the launch version found that the game could be saved… That’s if you aren’t a jackass on YouTube who does nothing but complain about the game no matter what (I’m calling you out, Dynasty & TrueUnderDawgGaming, you two click farming, never happy jackasses).
But in defense of those who got the PlayStation version, which Digital Eclipse has admitted has been the worst one to get updates out for, that version of the Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection has been absolute dogshit. That is because it takes more time and money to submit an update to PlayStation than it does any other version of the game. So, in a way, you are justified in wanting a refund for your copy of the game and do what you should have done in the first place and GET THE PC VERSION!!
When it comes to the backlash and people instantly demanding refunds when a launch doesn’t go the way that they expect it to, with their entitled and over-hyped expectations, it reminds me that people have become so stupid that they have forgotten that we live in a world where updates are a thing. I know people aren’t always happy with having to wait for a few updates before getting the stable game they were promised, but that’s the side-effect of the way games are produced these days. So, maybe instead of complaining and demanding refunds after playing Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection for 30 seconds, how about waiting a month before buying the game, and then you’ll get something closer to your expectations… Or maybe, I don’t know, LOWER YOUR FUCKING ENTITLED EXPECTATIONS!!
Wah! Where’s the Online Mode!? You Promised!
This might be one of the only valid complaints about the Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection that I might agree with. When the Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection was announced, the advertising clearly stated that online mode was going to be available, and when the game launched, it wasn’t there… Except for Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3: Wavenet Edition.
Of course, this caused people to freak out, screaming from behind the safety of their keyboards (because let’s face it, none of these people would say shit if they were face-to-face with anyone from Digital Eclipse) that they were “robbed” of the online mode they were promised… Except, their version of the online mode promise was things like lobbies, ranked online mode, and the usual sweaty, hardcore, epeen things that give these people an overinflated sense of self-satisfaction that they are “good at owning the casuals,” when most of these same people are the ones complaining that they can’t finish Mortal Kombat Arcade version on default difficulty.
The online mode that we got with the Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection at launch was a random one-on-one experience, which, as anyone who walked into an arcade in the 1990s would remember, is how this shit would work. Back in the day, you didn’t choose who you played against in these games. What you got was someone putting a quarter (or, in Australia’s case, a $1 coin) on the cabinet and then waiting their turn. Digital Eclipse replicated this with the online mode that they put into the game, but as always, the modern gamer doesn’t want a nostalgic replica of what things were back in the day; instead, they want a completely online experience that can be gatekept, used by YouTubers and Twitch streamers, and locked down to their friends. Fuck, if you want to play with your friends, do it the old-fashioned way and have people over to your house and play together in the same room!
The internet has created a culture where people are too used to doing things THEIR WAY and anything else is “wrong”. God forbid that any of these basement dwellers get off their asses, take a shower, and go interact with other humans in the world.
Wah! Fightcade Does Online! It’s Easy!
When it comes to the fact that the Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection is basically a bunch of emulators running ROMs, much like all other emulation in the history of emulation, there are going to be comparisons between different emulators. The main thing is that people are comparing the Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection to the Fightcade emulator, mostly because it runs some of the same ROMs with online lobbies and ranked online modes included, which are not found in the Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection.
Yes, this is an extension of the “we want ranked/private lobbies” wah that’s already happened. People who have come from using Fightcade are complaining about the lack of these things in the Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection. Well, listen up, junior, Fightcade isn’t the be-all and end-all of the fighting game emulation scene. Yes, it is an accomplishment to add online connections to games that were never designed to do so, but when you actually play the emulator, you still have to deal with things like input lag, the connection you have to other players, and other technical issues. However, people coming from this to the Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection will tell you that Fightcade always does it better.
The Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection, on the other hand, uses specific emulators that are designed to handle one set of ROMs only, and most of those are bare-bones versions that just run the code and that’s it. Digital Eclipse is updating these emulators to add servers for people to play on, instead of doing direct connection, plus they are implementing rollback netcode as the system that runs the connection, which isn’t as easy as people think it is.
Coding is a hard thing to do, with one wrong line ruining weeks of work, and when you have to do this over PC, Xbox, PlayStation, and Switch, it’s a lot to get working when you take into account that all these systems use different connection types and protocols when you go online. It’s a lot to do and get working right. So, instead of complaining, let Digital Eclipse take the time to build things correctly so that it’s working right sooner rather than never.
I Want This Version of Mortal Kombat! Why Isn’t It Here!?
This one is nothing more than people who do not understand how these things work. If you want the long explanation of how companies handle retro game remasters/collections and the hell that they have to go through, click this video, and you’ll hear all about it.
But going back to the Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection and the amount of missing ports that people are complaining about. When it came to the listing for the collection, people were quick to point out that the following were missing:
- Mortal Kombat 1: Amiga, Master System, MS-DOS, Sega CD, Mobile Phone
- Mortal Kombat 2: Amiga, MS-DOS, Master System, PlayStation, Sega Saturn
- Mortal Kombat 3: PlayStation, MS-DOS, Game Gear, Master System
- Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3: Genesis, Sega Saturn, Mobile Phone, Nintendo DS
- Mortal Kombat 4: Nintendo 64, Windows, PlayStation, Game Boy Color, Dreamcast
- Mortal Kombat Trilogy: Nintendo 64, MS-DOS, Windows, Sega Saturn, Game.com
- Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero: Nintendo 64
The reality of the situation is that, unlike CAPCOM or Konami, Warner Bros Games (the owner of the Mortal Kombat licensing rights) was very selective as to which versions of the games were allowed to be included in this collection, plus there were technical issues with others. Games like Mortal Kombat 1 through 3 on the Master System are absolute dogshit, and they are the same as the Game Gear versions, so doubling up would have no point other than a border swap. Mortal Kombat 4 on Gameboy (which was developed by Digital Eclipse) would be another one of those games that was so trash that it’s better to leave it off than to include it.
Licensing issues for some games contributed heavily to why they are not being included. I’m not sure the exact reasons why, but that’s a big problem with porting things into a collection like this. The other part is technical limitations. Remember, Digital Eclipse doesn’t just use emulators that are available on the internet that fans have created; they make their own custom emulators that are designed to run specifically on the consoles that the collection is released on, and as anyone who has worked on an emulator would know, none of these run perfectly on all devices 100% of the time. This is why the biggest (and most justified) exclusion from the Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection, Mortal Kombat Gold, is not in the collection.
First of all, Digital Eclipse has stated that their focus for the Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection was the first 4 games in the series, most of which were released during the 4th (Super Nintendo, SEGA Genesis, Game Gear, and Gameboy) and 5th Generation of consoles (PlayStation, Nintendo 64, GameBoy Color, and SEGA Saturn), which are some of the “easier to emulate” consoles, with exception of the Nintendo 64 and SEGA Saturn. Unfortunately, Mortal Kombat Gold is a part of the 7th Generation of consoles, so that’s the reason why that version didn’t get added.
The problem here, and why ports of Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero, Mortal Kombat Trilogy, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 are missing, is because of the consoles they are on being very hard to emulate on modern consoles. The SEGA Saturn and Nintendo 64 have been two of the biggest pains in the ass to create functioning and stable emulators for, even in the PC space. Nintendo 64 emulation is getting closer to perfection on PC, but when you take it to consoles, there is a lot of issues and instability with making Nintendo 64 games work graphically with modern console hardware, so that’s why those ports are missing. When it comes to the SEGA Saturn, even PC emulators are still struggling with compatibility issues, so adding these versions to consoles would create a ton of new problems not worth the effort.
At the end of it all, while I’m all for preservation, there are some games that might be left to be forgotten in the void. Would we really need to play the Nintendo DS or Mobile Phone version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3? And if you really need to play the absolute trash fire that is Mortal Kombat 4 on Game Boy, there are enough emulators out there that’ll let you do that. I think having the “best of the best” from the Mortal Kombat 1 through 4 era is good enough.
Wah! Maximilion Dood said it’s Bad, so it’s bad!
If there is one huge problem with gaming today, it’s that people put too much faith in YouTubers or Twitch streamers who are considered the “authority” on a particular game or genre of game. When it comes to fighting games, people seem to think that Maximilion Dood is the authority on the subject, mostly due to him getting his big break by going through games like Street Fighter at the behest of CAPCOM, breaking them down, and doing “official guides” for the games. From there, he would play games with his friends and gain popularity from that. Somehow, it equates to him being the go-to guy when it comes to whether a fighting game is good or not.
The problem is that Max is a terrible gamer. A lot of the time, when he is playing a game, he asks his own chat to tell him how to play the game, do combos, or even the most basic moves. Does that sound like someone who should be the authority on all fighting games? Sounds more like a pretender to the throne to me. Hell, Max isn’t really that entertaining these days, usually going on long, drawn-out, horrible diatribes about something that he really knows very little about.
This shows that people really do not think or try to experience something for themselves when it comes to gaming these days. They rely on people who really know nothing about what they are doing, but got a lucky break early in the emergence of YouTube, and became the face of the genre. People still think that Asmongold is the guy when it comes to World of Warcraft, even though the guy hasn’t touched the game in about 3 or so years. Max is another one who is considered the guy but doesn’t know what he is doing.
The point? Stop listening to these idiots and play the game for yourself, or at least wait till people who actually know what they are talking about and are willing to speak on the topic… And yes, I will include us in those you might want to ignore from time to time.
Wah! The Fighting Game Community is no Longer Supporting Mortal Kombat!
Now, if we are to listen to anyone, it would be the Fighting Game Community (or FGC as they are otherwise known). These are the people who spend hours, days, years learning all the ins and outs of every game that is involved in the community, usually for tournament purposes. These are the people who look at things like input lag, frame data, and other “under the hood” stuff in order to get the best out of their gameplay. While I’m not a fan of these insane hardcore fans, their contributions mean a lot more than someone like Maximilion Dood’s does.
That being said, when the Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection launched, people quickly started saying that the FGC had decided to stop playing Mortal Kombat games completely due to the “bad launch state” of the game. As someone who likes to use these things called sources, I jumped into many FGC discords, tournament discords, and other places to see if there was any announcement to this effect, and surprise, surprise, there is NOTHING stating anything of the sort.
The reason this rumor even began in the first place is because someone online (probably on X) said that Warner Bros was going to force tournaments to use the Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 going forward. Once again, this is completely unfounded since there is nothing official from any tournament organiser, or even Warner Bros themselves, about this. From my understanding, speaking with people who organise Mortal Kombat games at tournaments, Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 will continue to be an emulated version on PC.
Stop believing stupid rumors online without doing some research yourself. Always find two sources before reporting something as true. There are too many people online who will go out of the way to cause chaos for the sake of chaos… Stop feeding the trolls.
Wah! The Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection Menu Uses AI! AI is EVIL!!
Ok, let’s talk about the big bad AI demon.
I get it, AI isn’t a great thing. General-purpose AI programs and websites will use other people’s works to create something machine-generated, close to perfect or horrendous, and deprive artists of their rights. This type of AI is one that I do not support. However, there are some good uses for AI when used correctly. AI use for checking code: Good idea. Sometimes an AI can pick up mistakes that people would take days to find in an instant, saving time and money in production costs. Using AI to create a game from scratch is bad because it takes people’s jobs.
What the Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection does with AI is something that I would consider a good cost-saving measure. While there was a bit of an issue at the time of the Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection‘s launch with a Mortal Kombat Kollection artbook using AI to badly upscale the old assets of Mortal Kombat games, like the character portraits from Mortal Kombat 2, what the Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection does isn’t as bad as you’d think. The menus, the thing you barely pay attention to for the 20 seconds you are on the main menu, have been “claimed to be AI-generated” by “experts online” (aka X users who pulled 2D assets which were wrapped around 3D models to save time). Digital Eclipse has stated multiple times that AI was not used at any point in production, but the “online experts” keep saying otherwise.
Even if Digital Eclipse did use AI to create the menu images, they would have done so using the original NetherRealm assets that would have been given to them. There is no extra image generation, there is no stealing of others’ assets or fan creations, nothing that the most common use of AI generation does. So, should we condemn a company for using official assets in a different way, given that the outcome doesn’t look great? No. Do we think they could have taken an extra day or so to make things look better? Yes. But when you work in game development, deadlines are final and shortcuts will be used from time to time. AI is a shortcut, and we need to start seeing it as such when used in ways like this.
Wah! Add More Stuff to the Krypt!
There are a lot of things in The Krypt, the Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection‘s extras mode. For starters, you get somewhere around 3 hours of video footage featuring interviews, notes, character recordings, and documentary-style extras; not to mention, you also get to see things like advertisements, commercials, production sketches, and notes, plus many other documents involved in bringing the Mortal Kombat franchise to life. But, as usual, people are not satisfied with what is on offer, which isn’t something that I’d disagree with, given that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Cowabunga Collection had a metric ton of things to view.
However, we run into that damn licensing issue once again. Sure, I’d love to have the full soundtrack to the 1995 Mortal Kombat movie, but that’s a licensing issue. The Malibu comic series? Yep, licensing issue. Trading cards? Licensing issue. In an ideal world, we would have access to all these archives in the Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection, but we were limited to what Warner Bros would allow, what NetherRealm Studios has in their vaults, and what other companies would allow access to.
One Final Wah! Why Didn’t They Modernize the Games?
It’s probably one of the smallest whines that people have complained about, but there is a small segment out there that wanted Digital Eclipse to go and alter the games so they would be something akin to the “better from hacks” that are out there on the internet.
For those who don’t know about these, there are people out there who went through and altered some of the game ROMs in many ways that either added things, smoothed gameplay, or made full Arcade ports that would work on the original console hardware. Things like Mortal Kombat 2 on Genesis that work like the original Arcade version of the hardware, a SNES version of Mortal Kombat that includes blood by default, and a Mortal Kombat Trilogy that gives you every single Mortal Kombat character and their variants from the beginning. These fans who have given their years of working through code to do these things are digital wizards who do deserve some praise for what they have done, but to be included in the Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection? No.
First of all, Digital Eclipse is a preservation company when it comes to these projects, often using the official media that is given to them by the companies directly. So, this means that things like ROM hacks are unavailable to them through these legal channels… And that is the other issue. ROM hacks are technically illegal since they are using the code from a licensed copyrighted product and altering it in a way that would violate the law. So, including these in something like the Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection would be using illegal products to create profit… However, I would have loved to have seen an SNES Mortal Kombat with blood included, like it was intended.
My Only Wah! Look at What You Are Going to Cost Us!
The worst thing about this whole article is that it has highlighted how much the Mortal Kombat community has possibly sabotaged their own wishes. Many Mortal Kombat fans lamented the fact that games from the 7th Generation (PlayStation 2, Dreamcast, and Xbox) consoles were not included in the Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection, which means we missed out on games like Mortal Kombat Gold, Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance, and the best action/adventure game in the franchise, Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks.
Digital Eclipse has stated that they would love to make a second collection that brings all these games, and more, back to life with modern consoles. However, the marketing people at Warner Bros would need a financial reason to allow Digital Eclipse to make a second collection. This would be achieved by the Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection doing extremely good sales, and the negative backlash about the game being very little. But what we have at the moment is a community that has done nothing but complain and demand, or do, refunds. This does not look good to Warner Bros and will give little reason for them to approve a second collection for the franchise.
Warner Bros and other publishers do listen to all this feedback. They watch the YouTube videos saying that the game is shit and needs fixing, they see the refund numbers on Steam and PlayStation, and they read the reviews of the game on websites. All of this is used to see if the Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection was a success or not, and if I were on the marketing board at Warner Bros, I wouldn’t be looking at doing another collection at all, given how badly the Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection has been received online and by the public.
There might come a time where Digital Eclipse, or Warner Bros, or NetherRealm will come out and say publicly that there will never be a Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection 2, and when that day comes, the Mortal Kombat fanbase will have no one else but themselves to blame… Even though they won’t admit it.
Get Good or Shut the Fuck Up!
At the end of the day, yes, the launch of the Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection wasn’t all it was hyped up to be. There are flaws in the games that are still being worked out, online lobbies are still in beta testing at the time of writing, and there are more people complaining about it rather than offering feedback as to how things can be improved.
People need to remember that Mortal Kombat is a series that is not meant to be easy; it’s not going to let you win without putting everything on the line. This isn’t Street Fighter. The Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection is a reminder of a time when you had to have skill, or learn to have skill, rather than just making things easier through options menus or AI tweaks; you either got good at the game or gave up on playing it. That was the point of those days; life is not easy, and neither was this game series. Hell, even the modern games are still punishing to players who do not learn how the game’s timing works, and that’s not just online.
Complaining should not be the first thing that people do when things get too hard, but that seems to be the way that these modern generations of gamers behave. When something does not go their way, they jump online and complain until the company gives in and makes it do the things that they think they are entitled to get and do from the beginning. It’s sad that we’ve lost the dedication to learn, to adapt, to rise to the challenge. These harder games built character, taught you to pull yourself up when faced against an impossible enemy, and I’m glad that these games still exist… Even if modern gamers can’t do what we did over 30 years ago.
Toughen up, learn the game, get good, and stop being an entitled little bitch.
