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Mortal Kombat still possesses numerous undisclosed elements and the capacity to surprise, more than 30 years after its original launch in arcades. This latest compilation including the series' initial period, which includes four arcade games, various home ports, and related titles, is more than only a accurately simulated set of legendary games including less celebrated releases — it's also a rich documentary about the development of the renowned brand.

As a dedicated devotee of the franchise who has paid close attention its development and progression, there was plenty new for me to understand and value about the series.

What Makes the Legacy Kollection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection comparable to other vintage game anthologies from the development team Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, part playable archive. The collection includes digitally recreated editions of the first arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, plus console and handheld ports of certain releases. The collection even includes the franchise's attempts at spin-off titles, like combat-focused releases Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — some of the brand's worst entries.

The Legacy Kollection is therefore not a “best of” collection, but an examination of Mortal Kombat's early days, when the development team Midway and series co-creators Ed Boon and John Tobias were discovering methods to make a fighting game, created from video recordings of actual people, through experimentation. Viewing the historical footage — that features historical videos, recent conversations, and reproductions of classic advertisements, illustrated stories, and including internal communications — it's astonishing to observe how the series transformed from simple starts to a global sensation. It's truly remarkable to watch a handful of early video game creators, developing without clear direction or guidance, channel their pop-culture interests into creating a legendary video game series.

Educational Component

The educational segment of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection documents the ascent of Mortal Kombat and its creators' careers at the now-defunct Midway. It further illustrates how these identical developers addressed how to routinely one-up themselves, encountering significant stress to duplicate their triumphs. It serves as a compelling period piece made from analog films and film-based pictures and manual drawings, which reveal the self-made character of the franchise's production method and how word of mouth helped circulate its mysteries and secrets of MK in its arcade heyday. Told in bite-sized chunks, it's an eminently watchable collection of mini-documentaries that covers video games, graphic novels, movies and even the comical physical events. The collection additionally features some unreleased actions and digital fighter representations among its cutting-room-floor content.

Interactive Gaming

Distributed throughout the five-segment historical film's chronology are prompts to play the games themselves. At various points, users can directly access a game of Mortal Kombat or a home system version to revisit its gameplay and visual presentation, recreated with impressive accuracy on contemporary systems.

I spent the bulk of my time playing the arcade classics, particularly Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Numerous titles here remain enjoyable, particularly during one-on-one local play. However, facing the aforementioned game's AI-controlled opponents is a reminder of how crude and unbalanced the programming was in the franchise's pioneering releases. CPU-controlled opponents blatantly cheat to win or are otherwise dumb as rocks. Without having someone to play against — internet multiplayer exists in most titles in the collection, but too light on features — you'll be missing out.

Technical Presentation

The two dozen available combat games in the anthology, a blend of arcade, console, and handheld games, are accurately emulated, though I've observed a handful slight anomalies — mostly input lag and the occasional bug, particularly in Mortal Kombat 4. Although the titles are mostly shown in their original form, developer Digital Eclipse has incorporated various clever quality-of-life features and display customization choices. For instance, players have the option to display fighter-specific techniques on the display and select to activate infinite time to execute finishing moves. There are also options for revealing concealed combatants, eliminating the need to execute obscure techniques to obtain them.

Graphically, the titles can be enjoyed with multiple visual enhancements and presentation styles. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection offers very realistic filters that mimic the CRT monitors of coin-op establishments or household displays, or the limited color monitor of a portable gaming device. A particularly nice touch is the choice to enable arcade-like bezels encircling the display, with the MK game of your choice accurately and softly reflecting against the faux black plastic borders. It's very artistically charming.

Additional Features

Players will discover multiple welcome features besides the educational material and simulated classic games, containing a soundtrack mode that allows users to rediscover the tunes of various fighting releases absent the noise of two kombatants viciously slaughtering each other. There are also combatant descriptions that include bios and numerous narrative components shown through the demo sequences of coin-op titles and final sequences.

Historical Preservation

A particularly notable inclusion for hardcore Mortal Kombat fans is the opportunity to play a piece of "lost media" in the guise of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This specific release, a slightly updated version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an pioneering effort from the developer at direct online competitive gaming in coin-op establishments. This network version of the game is almost exactly the same to UMK3, but featured the capability to battle network competitors and featured various slight error corrections and adjustments. But the Wavenet update failed to achieve popularity, in part