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The Mortal Kombat series retains numerous undisclosed elements and the ability to amaze, over three decades after its initial debut in arcades. A new collection including the brand's formative years, featuring four original arcade titles, various home ports, and derivative games, is more than only a accurately simulated set of legendary games including less celebrated releases — it additionally serves as a detailed chronicle about the development of the renowned brand.

Even as a lifelong devotee of the franchise who has paid close attention its development and progression, there was much to discover for me to learn and appreciate about the series.

What Makes the Legacy Kollection

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 digitally recreated editions of the first arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, including television and mobile versions of several of these titles. The anthology additionally contains the series' ventures at derivative games, like combat-focused releases Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — among the series' most criticized releases.

The Legacy Kollection consequently doesn't represent a “best of” collection, but an exploration into the franchise's initial era, when the creators at Midway and franchise originators Ed Boon and John Tobias were determining how to make a fighting game, created from video recordings of live performers, on the fly. Viewing the historical footage — containing archival footage, contemporary discussions, and digital copies of vintage posters, illustrated stories, and even company memos — it's astonishing to observe how the franchise evolved from simple starts to a international craze. It's truly remarkable to observe several early video game creators, operating with virtually no plan or guidance, direct their entertainment passions into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Historical Section

The documentary portion of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection documents the ascent of the fighting series and its creators' careers at the no-longer-operating Midway. It subsequently demonstrates how these identical developers contended with how to routinely one-up themselves, encountering significant stress to duplicate their achievements. It serves as a compelling period piece made from VHS tapes and traditional photos and pencil sketches, which demonstrate the hands-on approach of the series' creation process and how word of mouth helped disseminate its secrets and secrets of MK in its peak period in gaming halls. Presented in manageable segments, 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 unreleased actions and character sprites among its archived development assets.

Playable Component

Placed within the five-part documentary's timeline are opportunities to engage with the original releases. At various points, users can directly access a Mortal Kombat title or one of its home console ports to revisit its gameplay and graphics, emulated nearly perfectly on contemporary systems.

I spent the bulk of my time engaging with the vintage coin-op games, particularly Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Numerous titles here stand the test of time, particularly during direct competitive sessions. But playing against the artificial intelligence fighters in these releases is a reminder of how crude and unjust the development approached in the franchise's pioneering releases. CPU-controlled opponents clearly employ dishonest tactics or are otherwise dumb as rocks. Without having someone to play against — network gaming is included in the majority of included games, but too light on features — you'll be missing out.

Display Features

The 23 playable Mortal Kombat games in the collection, a combination of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are accurately emulated, though I've observed a handful slight anomalies — mainly control latency and intermittent errors, notably within Mortal Kombat 4. Although the titles are primarily displayed authentically, the creators has added several intelligent convenience enhancements and visual presentation options. For instance, you can choose to show each character's special moves during gameplay and opt to have infinite time to complete lethal techniques. Also included are choices for revealing concealed combatants, removing the requirement to complete complicated methods to unlock them.

Visually, the games can be experienced with numerous visual enhancements and presentation styles. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection provides highly authentic effects that reproduce the CRT monitors of coin-op establishments or home televisions, or the greenscale screen of a Game Boy. An especially welcome feature is the setting to activate coin-op-inspired frames framing the gameplay, with the MK game of your choice accurately and softly reflecting against the faux black plastic borders. It's quite aesthetically pleasing.

Bonus Elements

There are plenty of welcome features besides the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, featuring an audio component that lets you revisit the soundtracks of different Mortal Kombat games without the din of two kombatants viciously slaughtering each other. Additionally included are combatant descriptions that include bios and multiple story elements displayed via the idle displays of gaming hall releases and conclusions.

Historical Preservation

One of the biggest highlights for dedicated series enthusiasts is the opportunity to play a segment of previously unavailable content in the form 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 almost exactly the same to UMK3, but provided the ability to compete against internet adversaries and included some minor error corrections and adjustments. However, this network version never gained traction, in part