Klassic Mortal Kombat and its arcade & ported sequels are back in player's hands thanks to the Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection, but one obscure version you might not remember has been freshly unearthed as part of a massive collection of retro curiosities for preservation. Take a closer look:

Decades before there were streaming media platforms and digital store fronts - Sega delivered fully playable games, demos, content, and more, all piped direct into player's homes through cable subscription as The Sega Channel!

The service launched in 1994 and was ahead of its time, providing magazine style content, in addition to modified playable versions of major Sega Genesis video game releases, direct to the 16-bit console. Because of its live nature, much of this classic content was lost to the ether, but the Video Game History Foundation and their collaborators have gathered 100 Sega Channel ROMS for preservation, including Mortal Kombat and Mortal Kombat 3.

Far from just your standard Sega Genesis games, these unique versions feature interesting compromises made to accommodate the limited technology of the time. As pictured below, you can see that this included reduced character rosters, as in "Mortal Kombat 3, Part B", with games scaled down and divided into two halves.

Curious gamers and Kombat diehards can find MK amongst 142 Sega Channel ROMs preserved at Gaming Alexandria. Will you be revisiting this curious piece of MK history? Share your thoughts about Sega's cutting edge history in the comments below and dig deeper into retro in the 2D Kombat Klassics category!