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Mortal Kombat retains numerous undisclosed elements and the ability to amaze, over three decades after its original launch in gaming halls. This latest compilation covering the brand's formative years, featuring a quartet of arcade releases, various home ports, and derivative games, goes beyond just a well-emulated series of classics including less celebrated releases — it's also a rich documentary about the development of the legendary series.

Being a long-time enthusiast of the series who has paid close attention its origins and transformation, there was much to discover for me to discover and admire about the series.

What Constitutes the Legacy Kollection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection comparable to other vintage game anthologies from developer Digital Eclipse, part documentary, section playable historical record. The anthology contains simulated releases of the first arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, plus console and handheld ports of several of these titles. The collection even includes the series' ventures at spinoffs, like action-oriented titles Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — among the series' most criticized releases.

The Legacy Kollection thus isn't a greatest hits compilation, but a study of the series' formative period, when the development team Midway and series co-creators Ed Boon and John Tobias were discovering methods to create a combat title, digitized from footage of actual people, on the fly. Watching the documentary — that features archival footage, recent conversations, and reproductions of classic advertisements, graphic novels, and including internal communications — it's incredible to witness how Mortal Kombat went from humble beginnings to a worldwide phenomenon. It's frankly astounding to watch a handful of early video game creators, working with minimal planning or supervision, direct their entertainment passions into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Educational Component

The educational segment of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection charts the rise of the fighting series and the founders' vocational paths at the now-defunct Midway. It subsequently demonstrates how the very same individuals addressed how to regularly outdo their previous work, encountering significant demand to replicate their achievements. It represents an intriguing historical record constructed using video recordings and film-based pictures and pencil sketches, which showcase the DIY nature of Mortal Kombat's development and how word of mouth helped circulate its mysteries and undisclosed elements of the series in its peak period in gaming halls. Told in bite-sized chunks, it's highly engaging set of brief historical films that covers video games, graphic novels, movies and even the comical physical events. The collection additionally features some never-implemented techniques and digital fighter representations among its archived development assets.

Playable Component

Placed within the five-segment historical film's chronology are invitations to experience the original releases. At certain intervals, audience members can jump into a game of Mortal Kombat or one of its home console ports to rediscover its combat system and artistic style, recreated with impressive accuracy on contemporary systems.

I dedicated most of my time engaging with the vintage coin-op games, particularly Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Numerous titles here remain enjoyable, especially in one-on-one local play. But playing against the computer-controlled adversaries in these titles is a demonstration of how basic and unjust the development approached in the series' initial installments. AI-managed characters blatantly cheat to win or are otherwise dumb as rocks. Without having a human opponent — online play is available in most titles in the collection, but somewhat limited in options — you'll be missing out.

Visual Options

The twenty-three accessible Mortal Kombat titles in the anthology, a blend of arcade, console, and handheld games, are precisely simulated, though I've observed a few small quirks — mostly input lag and the occasional bug, notably within Mortal Kombat 4. And while the games are mostly shown in their original form, developer Digital Eclipse has added several intelligent quality-of-life features and display customization choices. For example, players have the option to show each character's special moves during gameplay and select to activate endless periods to perform a Fatality. There are also options for revealing concealed combatants, without having to perform complicated methods to unlock them.

Artistically, the releases can be played with a variety of visual enhancements and presentation styles. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection provides highly authentic filters that mimic the CRT monitors of arcades 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 faux black plastic borders. It's remarkably visually appealing.

Extra Content

Players will discover multiple nice touches beyond the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, containing a soundtrack mode that allows users to rediscover the tunes of various Mortal Kombat games excluding the sounds of two kombatants viciously slaughtering each other. Additionally included are character profiles that contain backgrounds and the various bits of lore presented by arcade games' attract mode screens and conclusions.

Historical Preservation

A particularly notable inclusion for dedicated series enthusiasts is the chance to experience a example of historically missing material in the form of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This specific release, a moderately improved edition of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an early attempt by Midway at one-on-one internet-based play in coin-op establishments. This network version of the game is virtually identical to UMK3, but included the option to battle network competitors and contained several small error corrections and adjustments. Yet this online edition never gained traction, in part