After 28 years as a legend among Mortal Kombat fans, "the holy grail of MK lost media" has been preserved and made playable for Legacy Kollection

(Image credit: NetherRealm Studios)

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is leaving no stone unturned in its quest to catalog the series' arcade roots, and developer Digital Eclipse has just revealed that this even includes the WaveNet version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. This legendary arcade revision has effectively been lost since its debut in 1997, but it will be playable in the upcoming collection.

The WaveNet of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 was an online-enabled arcade machine that got a location test around 1996 or 1997, as NetherRealm's lead QA analyst Stephanie Brownback explains on Bluesky. "The idea was using T1 lines you could play in your local arcade and connect against another player in a different location or city," she explains. "An amazing, forward thinking concept in 97."

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WaveNet UMK3 wasn't just an online version of the game, however. It was a full revision, featuring balance changes, additional Easter eggs, and most notably, a fully playable Noob Saibot, marking the only time the character was ever actually playable in the arcade. Unfortunately, this version was never widely distributed outside of its initial location tests, and the arcade board was never preserved – not even by pirates.

But finally, 28 years later, a working WaveNet cabinet was found, and "Digital Eclipse has been able to hack together making it playable outside the network." The inclusion of this version was announced in a new trailer for Legacy Kollection, which also revealed the inclusion of Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Special Forces, two games that are themselves legendary for all the wrong reasons.

WaveNet UMK3 is effectively "the holy grail of MK lost media," Brownback says. "A monumental achievement for MK history. I am beyond excited!"

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Dustin Bailey joined the GamesRadar team as a Staff Writer in May 2022, and is currently based in Missouri. He's been covering games (with occasional dalliances in the worlds of anime and pro wrestling) since 2015, first as a freelancer, then as a news writer at PCGamesN for nearly five years. His love for games was sparked somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic, and these days you can usually find him splitting his entertainment time between retro gaming, the latest big action-adventure title, or a long haul in American Truck Simulator.

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