The Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection has finally arrived on the Xbox360 in all of its former glory. As soon as I played these games a instant wave of nostalgia washed over me as I fondly remembered spending way too many quarters on these games growing up in my local arcades. Once these games made it to home consoles I remember my friends and I staying up till all hours of the night trying to hit fatalities and figuring out how to beat Shao Kahn. The difficulty was pretty punishing back then and it hasn’t changed in almost twenty years.
The Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection features arcade perfect ports of Mortal Kombat 1, Mortal Kombat 2 and UltimateMortal Kombat 3. All of the characters you remember from those games are back as well as all of the different codes. As I was preparing to fight I received a tip that I could unlock some characters by entering different “kodes” right before a fight. I remember trying to look up these codes back in the day which was substantially harder to do as there was no Google and the internet itself was not widely available. Playing these games also shows how far that the gaming industry has come over the past two years. That becomes immediately apparent if you play a couple of rounds of the original Mortal Kombat and then fire up the 2011 version of Mortal Kombat and play a few rounds of that. The option to turn off the blood and fatalities is there but I can’t see anyone doing that unless you have your parents looking over your shoulder.
All of the controls and all of the fatalities remain intact and I was happy that I was immediately able to slide right into Smoke’s combo in Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 as if I never stopped playing the game. As I continued to play I started to remember more which culminated in me successfully being able to rip out Sub Zero’s spine and turn Jade into a baby. These games were a tremendous amount of fun back when they were originally released and Mortal Kombat fans should have fun revisiting them with this collection. The only bad thing that I can say about this collection is that the net code is abysmal. Fighting online is incredibly laggy and almost entirely breaks the mode. I can’t really see subjecting myself to that anymore once this review is done unless Netherrealm Studios releases a patch to improve the online experience.
Overall the Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection is only ten dollars and is a great deal for that price. Even with the online problems that this game has I had a great time reacquainting myself with some familiar favorites. Going through the single player mode on all three titles brought back many great memories and being able to Google how to do a fatality was definitely a lot easier than finding out how to do something back in the day. I can definitely see myself coming back and going through the single player from time to time. These games are classics for a reason and you definitely owe it to yourself to play them if you consider yourself a Mortal Kombat fan.
Score 7/10
