Anyway, this isn't really meant to be a review of the Legacy Collection. I actually think you should still buy it even though it sucks. The sheer amount of content all in one place is awesome, and that combined with the ridiculously extensive documentary about the development of the franchise makes it worth the price of admission.
Is there input lag and other problems in the Legacy Collection? Yeah, probably, but I genuinely can't really tell as a casual player and you almost certainly won't be able to either. Though, I am playing on Xbox and apparently it's relatively fine compared to the PlayStation version. LOL. At any rate, it just feels exactly as shitty as the old Mortal Kombat games have always, always felt to me. And the A.I. is just as broken and horrible and unfair and unfun and borderline unplayable solo as ever. These games are not currently, nor ever have been, fun to play against the CPU. Period. The overwhelming difficulty is just a reality check for people with warm and fuzzy, but false, memories of these games. They've always sucked total and complete ass to play solo.
Anyway, onto the main point of this video, which is to share my thoughts about the franchise in general as someone who has been playing these games for 30 years. When you're 12-years old, Mortal Kombat is undeniably the most insanely cool thing ever. There's blood and guts and fatalities and heavy metal shit going on all over the place and the story is dark and evil and the characters are awesome and it's just mind blowing. All of that shock and awe tricks your feeble little 12-year old brain into ignoring the fact that the gameplay is stiff and shallow and boring and feels horrible to play.
It's like Lewis Black's stand up bit about candy corn. You see it on the table every year and it's like a new delicacy you've never seen before so you eat one, only to be disappointed with the sudden realization that, oh yeah, it's candy corn and it sucks. That's my experience with Mortal Kombat. With each new entry it is the coolest most amazing looking thing ever until I play it and remember I don't especially like it that much. But the years go on and I get that nostalgic feeling and want to revisit the old Mortal Kombat games and I play them and scream "son of a bitch" because they somehow play even worse than they did the last time I tried.
In the back of my mind, I think I always knew Mortal Kombat wasn't that great. It just took me like 25 more years to openly admit it. All the way back in 1994 when I first played Mortal Kombat II I couldn't shake how shallow and stiff it felt compared to Street Fighter 2 Turbo which we were also playing extensively on Super Nintendo at the time. I'm not even much of a Street Fighter 2 fan, mind you (I kinda think it's also stiff and shallow and boring ...), but it was still miles beyond what Mortal Kombat offered in terms of gameplay during this time. The Street Fighter franchise grew and evolved and got significantly better, though. Mortal Kombat never really did.
So back in those days, I only ever rented Mortal Kombat II. It's the only one I never actually owned for whatever reason. I bought Mortal Kombat 1 on SNES for super cheap after I played MK2, so imagine my surprise at how shit it was. Mortal Kombat 3 was the big one for us, though. I was ridiculously excited about it. It was bigger, better, faster, better graphics, more everything. I went insane for it. Back in those days our local rental store would order games for you and sell them at their wholesale price, so I was able to buy Mortal Kombat 3 for Super Nintendo for only $30 at launch. I don't know if they gave us a special deal or what, but it was definitely only $30. I didn't actually have enough money, don't blame me I was a kid, so my sister pitched in like $10 or something and we took it home.
I was obsessed with Mortal Kombat 3 back in those days. This was 1995 so my family didn't have a computer yet, but we had an electronic typewriter that I used to write guides with all of the special moves and cheats and stuff. I had one friend who had the holy grail - a magazine clipping with the Kool Stuff, Kooler Stuff, and Scott's Stuff cheats that really blew the doors off of the game. I have a vivid memory of standing around during P.E. class talking about Mortal Kombat 3 all period and not paying attention to what we were supposed to be doing. I can barely stand to play the game now, but back then it was truly magical.
For some reason, I never really got into Ultimate MK3 or MK Trilogy. The promise of having all of the characters in one game was definitely appealing, but it still played mostly like normal MK3 and by the time these came out I was already tired of it.
I did get excited about Mortal Kombat 4. It was 3D! I've always had a negative association with MK4, though, because the first time I played it was a pretty horrible experience. I rode my bike to town to rent a game and as I was approaching a blind alley - you know, with buildings on both sides so you couldn't see if a car was coming - a van suddenly pulled out right when I got there. It was a very slow speed thing, obviously, and I wasn't hurt at all, but when I tried to continue on my way it turned out my front wheel was bent all to shit. I had to push my bike back to the rental shop to use their phone and have my Dad come pick me up. When I finally slapped Mortal Kombat 4 into my Nintendo 64 and played it I was already in a bad mood, and playing any fighting game with the N64 controller was just asking for a bad time, so I had a pretty thoroughly miserable experience with it that stuck with me ever since.
I will say, however, that out of all of the games included in the Legacy Collection, MK4 might be the most playable and fun today in 2025. The CPU difficulty isn't totally bonkers and broken and the game plays surprisingly smoothly. I actually had an OK time with it this time around. It still sucks, but slightly less than the others.
As I've gotten older I have really, really cooled on the Mortal Kombat franchise as a whole, and that's the perspective I approached the Mortal Kombat Legacy Collection from. I expected it to be a steaming pile of dog dirt, and it's definitely a steaming pile of dog dirt. Not because it's poorly made and Digital Eclipse screwed up and is trying to ruin your childhood, but because the games always sucked.
My reaction to everyone freaking out and making their rage bait videos about the collection with their "angry youtuber face" thumbnails is just "And?" capital question mark? What did you actually expect from these games? This is what Mortal Kombat has always been. It's always played like crap. The nostalgia goggles are gone and you're seeing them for what they are.
The problem I have with Mortal Kombat as a franchise from the original games to the 3D PS2 trilogy all the way up to the modern MK 9, 10, 11, and 1, is that once you have seen the blood and guts and fatalities once or twice, absolutely all of the thrill is gone and all you're left with is stiff awkward janky gameplay that isn't all that fun. Mortal Kombat will always find an audience with edgy teenagers because of its extreme content, and that's fine, but it's also fine for grown ass adults to recognize that it's kinda crap, and always has been kinda crap, and move on instead of clinging to their increasingly murky rose tinted memories.
In the end, yeah the Mortal Kombat Legacy Collection sucks. But these games have always sucked so you should still check it out if you're interested. Maybe $50 is too much to pay for such a brutal reality check, but I think the quantity of content makes up for the quality. There are a ton of games here, and most of them are still fun to play in local multiplayer for long enough to feel like you got your money's worth, and the documentary is genuinely fantastic. To conclude, Mortal Kombat has always, always, always sucked. Get over it. Sorry, not sorry.
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