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This iconic fighting game still possesses its share of secrets and the power to astonish, well past its 30th anniversary after its first appearance in gaming halls. A new collection covering the brand's formative years, comprising four arcade games, various home ports, and derivative games, goes beyond simply a faithfully reproduced set of legendary games and not-so-classics — it's also a detailed chronicle about the creation of the legendary series.

As a dedicated Mortal Kombat fan who has closely monitored its origins and transformation, there was plenty new for me to discover and admire about the series.

What Constitutes the Legacy Kollection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection comparable to other retro collections from the development team Digital Eclipse, part historical documentation, section playable historical record. This compilation features digitally recreated editions of the pioneering arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, along with home system and portable adaptations of certain releases. The collection even includes the franchise's attempts at derivative games, like action-oriented titles Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — two of the franchise's worst entries.

The Legacy Kollection is therefore not a highlight reel anthology, but a study of the franchise's initial era, when the development team Midway and franchise originators the creative duo behind the series were discovering methods to develop a battle series, created from video recordings of real actors, as they went along. Observing the archival material — containing archival footage, new interviews, and digital copies of vintage posters, graphic novels, and including internal communications — it's incredible to witness how the series transformed from simple starts to a global sensation. It's genuinely amazing to watch a handful of early video game creators, developing without clear direction or guidance, focus their cultural enthusiasms into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Historical Section

The educational segment of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection charts the rise of Mortal Kombat and the developers' professional journeys at the currently closed Midway. It then goes on to show how these identical developers reckoned with how to consistently surpass their achievements, facing no small amount of pressure to repeat their triumphs. It serves as a compelling period piece made from video recordings and analog photographs and hand-drawn illustrations, which demonstrate the hands-on approach of Mortal Kombat's development and how oral tradition helped circulate its mysteries and hidden aspects of Mortal Kombat in its golden era in coin-op establishments. Presented in manageable segments, it's thoroughly enjoyable set of brief historical films that covers video games, graphic novels, movies and even the comical physical events. The compilation also contains some unused moves and game character images among its archived development assets.

Interactive Experience

Placed within the five-part documentary's timeline are prompts to play the actual titles. At various points, viewers can hop into a combat game session or a console adaptation to rediscover its combat system and artistic style, recreated with impressive accuracy on contemporary systems.

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 remain enjoyable, notably with direct competitive sessions. But playing against the aforementioned game's AI-controlled opponents is a demonstration of how basic and unfair the coding existed in the franchise's pioneering releases. CPU-controlled opponents clearly employ dishonest tactics or are otherwise dumb as rocks. If you don't have someone to play against — network gaming is included in most titles in the collection, but rather basic in functionality — the experience will be incomplete.

Display Features

The two dozen available combat games in the compilation, a mix of gaming hall, television, and mobile releases, are precisely simulated, though I've observed a handful slight anomalies — primarily delayed responses and intermittent errors, notably within Mortal Kombat 4. Although the titles are primarily displayed authentically, developer Digital Eclipse has incorporated various clever convenience enhancements and visual presentation options. For instance, players have the option to show each character's special moves on the display and opt to have unlimited duration to execute finishing moves. Also included are choices for accessing hidden fighters, removing the requirement to complete some esoteric trick to access them.

Visually, the games can be experienced with numerous filters and visual treatments. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection includes remarkably accurate effects that reproduce the CRT monitors of coin-op establishments or household displays, or the greenscale screen of a Game Boy. A particularly nice touch is the choice to enable coin-op-inspired frames framing the gameplay, with the MK game of your choice faithfully and subtly duplicating against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's remarkably visually appealing.

Additional Features

There are plenty of welcome features besides the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, featuring an audio component that allows users to rediscover the tunes of various combat titles without the din of combatants violently defeating each other. Also present are fighter biographies that contain backgrounds and the various bits of lore displayed via arcade games' attract mode screens and conclusions.

Lost Media Recovery

Among the most significant features for dedicated series enthusiasts is the ability to access a example of historically missing material in the format of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This version of the game, a moderately improved edition of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an early attempt by Midway at direct online competitive gaming in coin-op establishments. The online-enabled release of the game is virtually identical to UMK3, but provided the ability to compete against internet adversaries and featured various slight bug fixes and balance. Yet this online edition didn't find widespread adoption, in part