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Mortal Kombat retains its share of secrets and the power to astonish, over three decades after its initial debut in gaming halls. A new collection spanning the franchise's earliest days, featuring four original arcade titles, various home ports, and spinoffs, is more than simply a faithfully reproduced collection of iconic titles along with lesser-known entries — it functions as a detailed chronicle about the development of the legendary series.

Being a long-time devotee of the franchise who has paid close attention its creation and evolution, there was plenty new for me to understand and value about the series.

What Constitutes the Legacy Collection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection similar to other vintage game anthologies from the creators at Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, part playable archive. The anthology contains emulated versions of the pioneering arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, plus console and handheld ports of several of these titles. The anthology additionally contains the brand's experiments at derivative games, like action-oriented titles Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — two of the franchise's worst entries.

The Legacy Kollection consequently doesn't represent a “best of” collection, but an examination of the franchise's initial era, when developer Midway and franchise originators Ed Boon and John Tobias were determining how to create a combat title, digitized from footage of real actors, as they went along. Watching the documentary — which includes historical videos, recent conversations, and scans of old flyers, illustrated stories, and even company memos — it's incredible to witness how the series transformed from modest origins to a worldwide phenomenon. It's frankly astounding to observe several early video game creators, operating with virtually no plan or supervision, channel their pop-culture interests into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Documentary Portion

The historical documentation of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection charts the rise of Mortal Kombat and the developers' professional journeys at the no-longer-operating Midway. It then goes on to show how those same creators addressed how to consistently surpass their achievements, encountering significant pressure to repeat their triumphs. It represents an intriguing historical record composed of VHS tapes and traditional photos and manual drawings, which demonstrate the hands-on approach of the series' creation process and how word of mouth helped spread its rumors and hidden aspects of Mortal Kombat in its arcade heyday. Told in bite-sized chunks, it's thoroughly enjoyable collection of mini-documentaries that spans games, comics, films and including the humorous real-world tour. The collection additionally features some never-implemented techniques and character sprites among its cutting-room-floor content.

Interactive Gaming

Placed within the five-part documentary's timeline are prompts to play the original releases. At certain intervals, audience members can jump into a game of Mortal Kombat or a home system version to rediscover its combat system and graphics, simulated with remarkable precision on contemporary systems.

I dedicated most of my time playing the arcade classics, specifically Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Several releases here remain enjoyable, particularly during one-on-one local play. Yet competing with the aforementioned game's AI-controlled opponents is a reminder of how crude and unjust the coding existed in the franchise's pioneering releases. Computer-directed fighters obviously use unfair advantages or are conversely remarkably unintelligent. If you don't have someone to play against — internet multiplayer exists in most titles in the collection, but too light on features — you'll miss the full enjoyment.

Display Features

The twenty-three accessible Mortal Kombat titles in the anthology, a blend of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are faithfully recreated, though I have noticed a handful slight anomalies — mainly control latency and the occasional bug, particularly in Mortal Kombat 4. Even though the releases are primarily displayed authentically, the development team has added several intelligent convenience enhancements and graphical adjustment settings. For example, users can elect to display fighter-specific techniques during gameplay and choose to enable infinite time to complete lethal techniques. Also included are choices for unlocking secret characters, removing the requirement to complete obscure techniques to obtain them.

Artistically, the releases can be enjoyed with multiple graphical effects and display options. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection offers very realistic effects that reproduce the cathode-ray tube displays of coin-op establishments or domestic TVs, or the greenscale screen of a Game Boy. An especially welcome feature is the setting to activate arcade-like bezels surrounding the screen, with the MK game of your choice faithfully and subtly duplicating against the simulated dark plastic edges. It's very artistically charming.

Bonus Elements

There are plenty of appreciated elements beyond the educational material and simulated classic games, containing a soundtrack mode that lets you revisit the music from multiple Mortal Kombat games without the din of two kombatants viciously slaughtering each other. There are also combatant descriptions that feature histories and numerous narrative components displayed via arcade games' attract mode screens and final sequences.

Lost Media Recovery

A particularly notable inclusion for dedicated series enthusiasts is the ability to access a segment of previously unavailable content in the format of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This specific release, a somewhat revised iteration of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an initial venture by the company at direct online competitive gaming in coin-op establishments. This network version of the game is practically indistinguishable to UMK3, but included the option to compete against internet adversaries and included some minor error corrections and adjustments. Yet this online edition never gained traction, in part