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

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection continues to leave no stone unturned while documenting the franchise’s arcade lineage, and studio Digital Eclipse has just confirmed that this even encompasses the WaveNet build of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. This fabled cabinet update has essentially vanished since its 1997 debut, yet it will resurface as a fully playable component in the forthcoming anthology.

The WaveNet incarnation of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 was an Internet-ready arcade unit tested at select sites around 1996–1997, as NetherRealm’s head QA analyst Stephanie Brownback points out on Bluesky. “The concept leveraged T1 lines so you could battle at your local arcade against an opponent in another city,” she notes. “An incredibly ambitious idea for ’97.”

WaveNet UMK3 wasn’t simply the online edition of the brawler, however. It represented a complete revision, sporting rebalanced combat, hidden surprises, and most famously, an entirely accessible Noob Saibot—making this the sole official arcade build where the ninja could be controlled. Regrettably, the board never rolled out broadly beyond those location trials, and no ROM boards were ever archived, not even by the piracy scene.

Yet, three decades on, a functioning WaveNet cabinet has surfaced, and “Digital Eclipse has managed to jury-rig a solution that lets it run without the original network.” Its unveiling arrived via a fresh trailer for Legacy Kollection, which additionally confirmed the arrival of Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Special Forces—two titles celebrated more for their infamy than quality.

Brownback deems WaveNet UMK3 effectively “the holy grail of MK lost media,” adding, “It’s a landmark moment for MK history. I can’t contain my excitement!”

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Dustin Bailey came aboard GamesRadar as a Staff Writer in May 2022 and presently hails from Missouri. He’s been reporting on games (with occasional detours into anime and pro-wrestling) since 2015—first as a freelancer, then as a news scribe at PCGamesN for nearly half a decade. His passion for interactive entertainment ignited somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic, and nowadays you’ll find him dividing play time among retro titles, blockbuster action-adventures, or long hauls in American Truck Simulator.