The first three MK games saw dozens of ports over the years and not all were very good. The latest port of the three is all packed into one tight collection, and they are perfect arcade ports. I won’t go into each game in detail, but its great to see the progression over the three, and they all have their strengths and weaknesses. People who are used to the new fighters with tons of combos won’t like the first two as much because combos weren’t implemented until MK3. The first two is just spamming special moves and getting someone stuck in a high punch spam. The good old sweep and uppercut move works, and the feeling of nostalgia came back.


While each game has great “-alities” and characters, each game suffers from some visual quality because these are arcade ports. You can turn on various filters, but overall don’t expect the games to look amazing. MK1, for example, is very pixelated, but what can you expect? Each game has online play and that is what will keep you coming back. The CPU is cheap when fighting solo and I always hated MK‘s AI system with MK2 being the worst. I also loved how all the “-alities” and special moves are on the pause screen which prevents from having to have a FAQ near you.


Arcade Kollection could have used more features such as being able to play Test-Your-Might mini-games separately from MK1, throwing in the great Puzzle Kombat, maybe even adding some more online modes. Including Mortal Kombat Trilogy would have been nice despite it never being in arcades. I’m also not sure why MK4 wasn’t included because it was the last arcade MK game. What is here is excellent, but only hardcore MK fans will really appreciate this collection.