Digital Eclipse has carved out a respectable niche for itself over the last decade. Beginning with theMega Man Legacy Collectionin 2015, Digital Eclipse has continued to produce some of the most complete retro collections on the market. But by far Digital Eclipse’s most impressive projects are its range of “interactive museums,” where a beloved gaming personality, franchise, or company’s early history is explored via exclusive interviews, scanned documents, text passages, and an array of ported games.Mortal Kombatis the next in line to get this treatment.
Announced during Sony’s recent State of Play,Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollectionis bringing together at least eight separateMortal Kombatentries, with more still to be announced. This extensive collection fromMortal Kombat’s earlier years includes multiple versions of the originalMortal Kombattrilogy, some Game Boy entries, and arguably the most important of the lot,Mortal Kombat 4.
Mortal Kombat 4 Is The Most Important Entry in The Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection
Mortal Kombat 4 Has Been Ported Before, But Never Accurately
First released all the way back in 1997,Mortal Kombat 4marks the franchise’s first foray into the realm of 3D. Despite the switch to 3D,Mortal Kombat 4’s fighting mechanicsremained largely the same, though a new weapon system was added that allowed players to wield swords, axes, and hammers. On the whole,Mortal Kombat 4received favorable reviews, though it was criticized for feeling a little too similar to its predecessors.
Much like its predecessors, though,Mortal Kombat 4received a bevy of ports. The PC and PlayStationMortal Kombat 4ports are widely considered to be the best, with them adding FMV cutscenes and a second set of alternate costumes for each fighter.Mortal Kombat 4’s Nintendo 64 portfared well, but it did need to reduce the game’s polygon count to work with the console’s technical restrictions. An upgraded version ofMortal Kombat 4, titledMortal Kombat Gold, released for the Sega Dreamcast in 1999, which added new characters and a new weapon selection system.
Mortal Kombat 4also had a Game Boy Color port. Interestingly, this port was developed by Digital Eclipse, though it obviously didn’t capture the 3D gameplay of its arcade counterpart.
But while theseMortal Kombat 4ports were all serviceable at worst, and additive at best, they can’t be considered truly authentic, accurate ports. All subsequent versions ofMortal Kombat 4changed or added to the original arcade experience.
How Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is Making an Authentic Port of Mortal Kombat 4
According to a recentGamesRadar interviewwith Digital Eclipse head of production Stephen Frost, the reason whyMortal Kombat 4’s arcade versionhas never been ported properly since its 1997 debut is because of the game’s leap to 3D. More specifically, it’s because the original iteration ofMK4ran on a custom piece of tech called “Zeus,” which itself was powered by a version of the 3dfx graphic card. There’s apparently little documentation available about this hardware, which makes recreating it very difficult.
But Digital Eclipse is happy to take on the challenge. In its attempt to makeMortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection’s version ofMortal Kombat 4as accurate to the original arcade release as possible, Digital Eclipse has created its own custom emulator.
