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Mortal Kombat retains numerous undisclosed elements and the capacity to surprise, more than 30 years after its initial debut in arcades. A new collection covering the brand's formative years, featuring four original arcade titles, several home system versions, and related titles, transcends only a accurately simulated collection of iconic titles along with lesser-known entries — it additionally serves as a rich documentary about the development of the iconic franchise.

As a dedicated devotee of the franchise who has carefully followed its origins and transformation, there was numerous fresh aspects for me to understand and value about the series.

What Defines the Legacy Collection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection similar to other vintage game anthologies from the development team Digital Eclipse, part historical documentation, section playable historical record. The collection includes simulated releases 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. This compilation also features the series' ventures at derivative games, like combat-focused releases Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — two of the franchise's most criticized releases.

The Legacy Kollection is therefore not a greatest hits compilation, but an examination of the franchise's initial era, when developer Midway and franchise originators the visionary developers were discovering methods to create a combat title, produced using film material of live performers, as they went along. Viewing the historical footage — that features historical videos, recent conversations, and scans of old flyers, illustrated stories, and even interoffice faxes — it's remarkable to see how Mortal Kombat went from modest origins to a international craze. It's frankly astounding to watch a handful of pioneering developers, developing without clear direction or supervision, focus their cultural enthusiasms into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Historical Section

The historical documentation of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection charts the rise of the combat franchise and its creators' careers at the no-longer-operating Midway. It subsequently demonstrates how the very same individuals contended with how to regularly outdo their previous work, facing no small amount of demand to replicate their triumphs. It represents an intriguing historical record made from analog films and traditional photos and pencil sketches, which reveal the self-made character of Mortal Kombat's development and how personal recommendations helped spread its rumors and secrets of MK in its golden era in coin-op establishments. Told in bite-sized chunks, it's highly engaging 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 game character images among its cutting-room-floor content.

Playable Component

Placed within the five-segment historical film's chronology are prompts to play the original releases. At various points, viewers can hop into a game of Mortal Kombat or one of its home console ports to reexperience its mechanics and artistic style, recreated with impressive accuracy on modern hardware.

I spent the bulk of my time playing the arcade classics, especially Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Numerous titles here hold up, notably with one-on-one local play. But playing against the artificial intelligence fighters in these releases is a testament to how primitive and unjust the coding existed in the series' initial installments. Computer-directed fighters blatantly cheat to win or are otherwise dumb as rocks. Lacking someone to play against — network gaming is included in the majority of included games, but somewhat limited in options — you'll miss the full enjoyment.

Visual Options

The 23 playable Mortal Kombat games in the anthology, a combination of arcade, console, and handheld games, are accurately emulated, though I detected a couple minor issues — mainly control latency and the occasional bug, notably within Mortal Kombat 4. Even though the releases are primarily displayed authentically, developer Digital Eclipse has included some smart convenience enhancements and display customization choices. For instance, players have the option to display fighter-specific techniques on the display and opt to have infinite time to complete lethal techniques. There are also options for accessing hidden fighters, eliminating the need to execute some esoteric trick to unlock them.

Visually, the games can be enjoyed with multiple visual enhancements and presentation styles. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection includes remarkably accurate options that simulate the traditional television screens of gaming halls or domestic TVs, or the limited color monitor of a Game Boy. A particularly nice touch is the setting to activate arcade-like bezels surrounding the screen, with the specific combat game you're playing precisely and gently mirroring against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's very artistically charming.

Bonus Elements

Players will discover multiple nice touches beyond the educational material and simulated classic games, including a music player that enables players to reexperience the music from multiple fighting releases absent the noise of two kombatants viciously slaughtering each other. Also present are combatant descriptions that feature histories and the various bits of lore shown through arcade games' attract mode screens and endings.

Lost Media Recovery

Among the most significant features for dedicated series enthusiasts is the ability to access a piece of "lost media" in the guise of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This particular edition, a moderately improved edition of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an early attempt by Midway at direct online competitive gaming in arcades. This network version of the game is practically indistinguishable to UMK3, but provided the ability to challenge online opponents and contained several small bug fixes and balance. But the Wavenet update didn't find widespread adoption, in part