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Mortal Kombat retains numerous undisclosed elements and the ability to amaze, more than 30 years after its original launch in coin-op establishments. A new collection spanning the franchise's earliest days, which includes four arcade games, multiple console adaptations, and related titles, goes beyond simply a faithfully reproduced set of legendary games including less celebrated releases — it additionally serves as a comprehensive historical account about the creation of the legendary series.

Even as a lifelong Mortal Kombat fan who has closely monitored its origins and transformation, there was plenty new for me to understand and value about the series.

What Makes the Legacy Kollection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like other retro collections from the creators at Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, portion interactive museum. 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 some of those games. This compilation also features the brand's experiments at spin-off titles, like combat-focused releases Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — among the series' least successful installments.

The Legacy Kollection consequently doesn't represent a greatest hits compilation, but a study of the series' formative period, when the creators at Midway and series co-creators Ed Boon and John Tobias were figuring out how to develop a battle series, produced using film material of actual people, as they went along. Viewing the historical footage — containing archival footage, contemporary discussions, and scans of old flyers, illustrated stories, and even company memos — it's astonishing to observe how the series transformed from humble beginnings to a worldwide phenomenon. It's genuinely amazing to observe several early video game creators, working with minimal planning or guidance, focus their cultural enthusiasms into creating a legendary video game series.

Educational Component

The educational segment of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection documents the ascent of Mortal Kombat and its creators' careers at the now-defunct Midway. It then goes on to show how the very same individuals contended with how to consistently surpass their achievements, encountering significant stress to duplicate their success. It serves as a compelling period piece composed of analog films and analog photographs and manual drawings, which reveal the self-made character 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. Presented in manageable segments, it's highly engaging series of documentary shorts that spans games, comics, films and even the comical physical events. The compilation also contains some unused moves and digital fighter representations among its archived development assets.

Playable Component

Interspersed along the quintet of documentary episodes' progression are prompts to play the games themselves. During specific moments, users can directly access a Mortal Kombat title or a home system version to rediscover its combat system and artistic style, recreated with impressive accuracy on current technology.

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 remain enjoyable, notably with direct competitive sessions. Yet competing with the aforementioned game's AI-controlled opponents is a testament to how primitive and unbalanced the coding existed in early Mortal Kombat games. Computer-directed fighters clearly employ dishonest tactics or are otherwise dumb as rocks. If you don't have another person to compete with — network gaming is included in most titles in the collection, but rather basic in functionality — you'll miss the full enjoyment.

Visual Options

The two dozen available combat games in the collection, a blend of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are accurately emulated, though I've observed a handful slight anomalies — mainly control latency and the occasional bug, especially with Mortal Kombat 4. Although the titles are primarily displayed authentically, the creators has incorporated various clever quality-of-life features and graphical adjustment settings. As an illustration, users can elect to display fighter-specific techniques on-screen and opt to have endless periods to perform a Fatality. Additionally available are settings for revealing concealed combatants, eliminating the need to execute obscure techniques to unlock them.

Artistically, the releases can be experienced with numerous filters and visual treatments. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection includes remarkably accurate filters that mimic the cathode-ray tube displays of gaming halls or domestic TVs, or the monochrome green display of a portable gaming device. A notably appreciated element is the setting to activate coin-op-inspired frames framing the gameplay, with the MK game of your choice precisely and gently mirroring against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's remarkably visually appealing.

Additional Features

Players will discover multiple welcome features besides the documentary and emulated arcade classics, including a music player that enables players to reexperience the music from multiple fighting releases without the din of two kombatants viciously slaughtering each other. There are also fighter biographies that feature histories and the various bits of lore presented by the demo sequences of coin-op titles and final sequences.

Archival Discovery

Among the most significant features for committed franchise followers is the opportunity to play a piece of "lost media" in the form of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This version of the game, a moderately improved edition of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an pioneering effort from the developer at head-to-head network battles in gaming halls. The online-enabled release of the game is almost exactly the same to UMK3, but featured the capability to battle network competitors and contained several small bug fixes and balance. Yet this online edition never gained traction, in part