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The Mortal Kombat series retains many hidden mysteries and the ability to amaze, more than 30 years after its first appearance in arcades. A new collection spanning the brand's formative years, featuring four original arcade titles, various home ports, and spinoffs, is more than simply a faithfully reproduced series of classics along with lesser-known entries — it's also a rich documentary about the development of the renowned brand.

Even as a lifelong devotee of the franchise who has carefully followed its creation and evolution, there was much to discover for me to understand and value about the series.

What Defines the Legacy Kollection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection similar to other vintage game anthologies from the creators at Digital Eclipse, part historical documentation, section playable historical record. This compilation features emulated versions of the original arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, including television and mobile versions of some of those games. The anthology additionally contains the franchise's attempts at derivative games, like action games Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — some of the brand's most criticized releases.

The Legacy Kollection consequently doesn't represent a highlight reel anthology, but a study of Mortal Kombat's early days, when the creators at Midway and franchise originators the creative duo behind the series were figuring out how to create a combat title, digitized from footage of actual people, on the fly. Viewing the historical footage — which includes archival footage, recent conversations, and digital copies of vintage posters, comics, and even interoffice faxes — it's astonishing to observe how the series transformed from simple starts to a worldwide phenomenon. It's truly remarkable to watch a handful of early video game creators, developing without clear direction or supervision, direct their entertainment passions into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Educational Component

The historical documentation of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection documents the ascent of the combat franchise and its creators' careers at the currently closed Midway. It then goes on to show how these identical developers addressed how to consistently surpass their achievements, experiencing considerable stress to duplicate their achievements. It represents an intriguing historical record composed of analog films and analog photographs and manual drawings, which demonstrate the hands-on approach of Mortal Kombat's development and how oral tradition helped circulate its mysteries and hidden aspects of Mortal Kombat in its golden era in coin-op establishments. Told in bite-sized chunks, it's an eminently watchable collection of mini-documentaries that covers video games, graphic novels, movies and even the silly live-action tour. The compilation also contains some never-implemented techniques and character sprites among its previously unreleased material.

Interactive Gaming

Distributed throughout the quintet of documentary episodes' progression are invitations to experience the original releases. At certain intervals, users can directly access a Mortal Kombat title or a home system version to rediscover its combat system and graphics, emulated nearly perfectly on contemporary systems.

I allocated the majority of my time playing the arcade classics, especially Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Many of the games here hold up, especially in local multiplayer matches. Yet competing with the aforementioned game's AI-controlled opponents is a demonstration of how basic and unjust the coding existed in the franchise's pioneering releases. CPU-controlled opponents blatantly cheat to win or are alternatively incredibly stupid. Lacking another person to compete with — online play is available in most titles in the collection, but rather basic in functionality — you'll be missing out.

Display Features

The 23 playable Mortal Kombat games in the anthology, a combination of arcade, console, and handheld games, are precisely simulated, though I've observed a handful slight anomalies — primarily delayed responses and intermittent errors, particularly in Mortal Kombat 4. Although the titles are mostly shown in their original form, the development team has incorporated various clever quality-of-life features and display customization choices. For instance, you can choose to show each character's special moves on the display and select to activate infinite time to execute finishing moves. Also included are choices for unlocking secret characters, eliminating the need to execute some esoteric trick to access them.

Graphically, the titles can be enjoyed with multiple filters and visual treatments. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection offers very realistic effects that reproduce the CRT monitors of gaming halls or domestic TVs, or the limited color monitor of a Game Boy. A particularly nice touch is the choice to enable gaming hall-style borders surrounding the screen, with the specific combat game you're playing precisely and gently mirroring against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's remarkably visually appealing.

Additional Features

There are plenty of appreciated elements beyond the documentary and emulated arcade classics, including a music player that allows users to rediscover the tunes of various Mortal Kombat games without the din of fighters brutally eliminating opponents. Also present are fighter biographies that include bios and multiple story elements displayed via arcade games' attract mode screens and endings.

Archival Discovery

Among the most significant features for committed franchise followers is the ability to access a example of historically missing material in the form of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This specific release, a somewhat revised iteration of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an early attempt by Midway at head-to-head network battles in gaming halls. The Wavenet Edition of the game is virtually identical to UMK3, but included the option to battle network competitors and contained several small glitch repairs and refinements. However, this network version never gained traction, in part