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The Mortal Kombat series retains many hidden mysteries and the ability to amaze, more than 30 years after its first appearance in coin-op establishments. This latest compilation including the brand's formative years, featuring a quartet of arcade releases, several home system versions, and spinoffs, is more than only a accurately simulated series of classics and not-so-classics — it additionally serves as a detailed chronicle about the creation of the legendary series.

Even as a lifelong devotee of the franchise who has carefully followed its development and progression, there was much to discover for me to understand and value about the series.

What Makes the Legacy Kollection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like other vintage game anthologies from the development team Digital Eclipse, part historical documentation, section playable historical record. The collection includes digitally recreated editions of the original arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, including television and mobile versions of several of these titles. This compilation also features the series' ventures at derivative games, like combat-focused releases Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — some of the brand's least successful installments.

The Legacy Kollection consequently doesn't represent a “best of” collection, but an exploration into the franchise's initial era, when the development team Midway and series co-creators the visionary developers were figuring out how to develop a battle series, produced using film material of actual people, as they went along. Viewing the historical footage — which includes historical videos, recent conversations, and digital copies of vintage posters, comics, and including internal communications — it's remarkable to see how the series transformed from humble beginnings to a international craze. It's frankly astounding to observe several early video game creators, developing without clear direction or guidance, channel their pop-culture interests 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 no-longer-operating Midway. It then goes on to show how these identical developers contended with how to regularly outdo their previous work, experiencing considerable pressure to repeat their triumphs. It's a fascinating time capsule made from video recordings and film-based pictures and pencil sketches, which demonstrate the hands-on approach of Mortal Kombat's development and how oral tradition helped circulate its mysteries and secrets of MK in its golden era in coin-op establishments. Delivered in easily digestible portions, 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 unused moves and character sprites among its archived development assets.

Interactive Experience

Distributed throughout the quintet of documentary episodes' progression are prompts to play the original releases. During specific moments, users can directly access a Mortal Kombat title or one of its home console ports to rediscover its combat system and artistic style, recreated with impressive accuracy on current technology.

I spent the bulk of my time engaging with the vintage coin-op games, specifically Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Several releases here stand the test of time, particularly during local multiplayer matches. But playing against the computer-controlled adversaries in these titles is a testament to how primitive and unjust the coding existed in the series' initial installments. AI-managed characters 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 numerous anthology releases, but too light on features — the experience will be incomplete.

Display Features

The two dozen available combat games in the anthology, a blend of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are precisely simulated, though I've observed a handful slight anomalies — primarily delayed responses and sporadic glitches, especially with Mortal Kombat 4. And while the games are largely presented as-is, developer Digital Eclipse has included some smart user experience improvements and graphical adjustment settings. As an illustration, players have the option to show each character's special moves on the display and select to activate infinite time to perform a Fatality. Also included are choices for accessing hidden fighters, eliminating the need to execute some esoteric trick to unlock them.

Visually, the games can be played with a variety of visual enhancements and presentation styles. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection includes remarkably accurate options that simulate the traditional television screens of arcades or household displays, or the monochrome green display of a portable gaming device. A notably appreciated element is the option to have arcade-like bezels framing the gameplay, with the specific combat game you're playing faithfully and subtly duplicating against the faux black plastic borders. It's quite aesthetically pleasing.

Bonus Elements

The collection includes numerous nice touches beyond the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, including a music player that lets you revisit the tunes of various fighting releases without the din of combatants violently defeating each other. There are also fighter biographies that feature histories and numerous narrative components displayed via the demo sequences of coin-op titles and conclusions.

Lost Media Recovery

One of the biggest highlights for committed franchise followers is the ability to access a segment of previously unavailable content in the guise of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This version of the game, a slightly updated version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an pioneering effort from the developer at direct online competitive gaming in arcades. The online-enabled release of the game is virtually identical to UMK3, but provided the ability to challenge online opponents and contained several small error corrections and adjustments. Yet this online edition failed to achieve popularity, in part