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This iconic fighting game continues to hold its share of secrets and the capacity to surprise, well past its 30th anniversary after its original launch in coin-op establishments. A new collection spanning the brand's formative years, comprising four arcade games, various home ports, and related titles, goes beyond just a well-emulated series of classics along with lesser-known entries — it's also a comprehensive historical account about the creation of the iconic franchise.

Even as a lifelong enthusiast of the series who has closely monitored its development and progression, there was plenty new for me to learn and appreciate about the series.

What Makes the Legacy Kollection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like previous classic compilations from the creators at Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, section playable historical record. The collection includes emulated versions of the first arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, along with home system and portable adaptations of some of those games. The anthology additionally contains the franchise's attempts at spinoffs, like action-oriented titles Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — among the series' worst entries.

The Legacy Kollection is therefore not a “best of” collection, but a study of Mortal Kombat's early days, when the creators at Midway and brand founders the visionary developers were determining how to develop a battle series, created from video recordings of real actors, through experimentation. Observing the archival material — containing historical videos, contemporary discussions, and scans of old flyers, comics, and even company memos — it's incredible to witness how Mortal Kombat went from simple starts to a worldwide phenomenon. It's truly remarkable to see a group of young game developers, developing without clear direction or supervision, channel their pop-culture interests into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Educational Component

The historical documentation of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection traces the growth of Mortal Kombat and the developers' professional journeys at the currently closed Midway. It then goes on to show how those same creators contended with how to routinely one-up themselves, experiencing considerable demand to replicate their achievements. It's a fascinating time capsule constructed using video recordings and film-based pictures and pencil sketches, which reveal the self-made character of the series' creation process and how personal recommendations helped disseminate its secrets and undisclosed elements of the series 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 including the humorous real-world tour. The collection additionally features some never-implemented techniques and character sprites among its archived development assets.

Interactive Experience

Interspersed along the five-part documentary's timeline are invitations to experience the games themselves. During specific moments, audience members can jump into a combat game session or a console adaptation to reexperience its mechanics and graphics, emulated nearly perfectly on current technology.

I allocated the majority of my time engaging with the vintage coin-op games, specifically Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Many of the games here stand the test of time, particularly during local multiplayer matches. But playing against the artificial intelligence fighters in these releases is a reminder of how crude and unbalanced the coding existed in the series' initial installments. Computer-directed fighters blatantly cheat to win or are alternatively incredibly stupid. Lacking another person to compete with — internet multiplayer exists in numerous anthology releases, but somewhat limited in options — you'll be missing out.

Technical Presentation

The 23 playable Mortal Kombat games in the collection, a combination of arcade, console, and handheld games, are accurately emulated, though I've observed a couple minor issues — primarily delayed responses and intermittent errors, especially with Mortal Kombat 4. Although the titles are largely presented as-is, the creators has added several intelligent quality-of-life features and graphical adjustment settings. As an illustration, users can elect to display fighter-specific techniques on the display and choose to enable endless periods to perform a Fatality. There are also options for revealing concealed combatants, removing the requirement to complete complicated methods to obtain them.

Artistically, the releases can be enjoyed with multiple visual enhancements and presentation styles. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection includes remarkably accurate effects that reproduce the cathode-ray tube displays of gaming halls or domestic TVs, or the monochrome green display of a Game Boy. A notably appreciated element is the choice to enable arcade-like bezels encircling the display, with the specific combat game you're playing accurately and softly reflecting against the simulated dark plastic edges. It's remarkably visually appealing.

Extra Content

The collection includes numerous appreciated elements beyond the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, including a music player that allows users to rediscover the soundtracks of different fighting releases excluding the sounds of combatants violently defeating each other. There are also combatant descriptions that feature histories and numerous narrative components presented by the demo sequences of coin-op titles and conclusions.

Historical Preservation

Among the most significant features for dedicated series enthusiasts is the ability to access a piece of "lost media" in the form of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This version of the game, a somewhat revised iteration of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an initial venture by the company at head-to-head network battles in arcades. The Wavenet Edition of the game is virtually identical to UMK3, but provided the ability to compete against internet adversaries and featured various slight glitch repairs and refinements. However, this network version failed to achieve popularity, in part