I remember that feeling when I first launched Mortal Kombat Trilogy on my 486ce and the character select screen appeared, taking up the entire monitor. Where did all these guys come from? There were so many of them that I couldn't believe my eyes for a moment.

Midway in 1996 — the game arrived on PC a year later — created a safety net for the entire trilogy. Mortal Kombat Trilogy takes characters and stages from the first, second, and third installments and throws them all into one pot. Story-wise it revolves around Shao Kahn's invasion from the fourth, sorry, the third game — but nobody really cares much about the plot here. The point is to finally have Kitana, Reptile, Johnny Cage, and Kabal all in one place and let them dismantle each other.

It plays like MK3 with its Run button and combo system, which was cutting-edge back then and feels a bit clunky today. Keyboard controls were always a compromise — whoever had a joystick or gamepad was king of the world, the rest of us hammered the numpad and hoped for the best. Fatalities on PC were performed with the same brutality as in the arcades, except with the knowledge that you had about a fifty percent chance of pulling it off, because timing on a monitor with variable resolution was always slightly different than in the arcade hall.

What Trilogy brought mainly was volume. Nearly thirty characters in one place was quite a serving in 1996. At the same time, you could tell it was a compilation — balance wasn't really a concept, some characters were clearly stronger, and if you knew who to pick, the computer opponent wasn't much of a threat. On the other hand, local multiplayer was exactly why you'd bring a friend over and forget about lunch. That hasn't changed.

Today Trilogy has aged the way you'd expect from a PC conversion of an arcade game from the mid-nineties. The graphics are pixelated and dark, the digitized actors have that strange rubbery aesthetic that either warms your heart with nostalgia or repels you — depends on your generation. If you're looking for a balanced fighting game, you'd be better off elsewhere. If you want to experience that specific era when Mortal Kombat was synonymous with forbidden fruit and every Fatality was a social event at the monitor, you'll find exactly what you're looking for here.