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The Mortal Kombat series continues to hold its share of secrets and the power to astonish, over three decades after its initial debut in arcades. The recent anthology spanning the series' initial period, comprising a quartet of arcade releases, multiple console adaptations, and spinoffs, is more than simply a faithfully reproduced series of classics including less celebrated releases — it's also a detailed chronicle about the making of the iconic franchise.

Even as a lifelong devotee of the franchise who has carefully followed its creation and evolution, there was numerous fresh aspects for me to discover and admire about the series.

What Constitutes the Legacy Collection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection comparable to other vintage game anthologies from the development team Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, section playable historical record. The anthology contains 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 anthology additionally contains the brand's experiments at spin-off titles, like action-oriented titles Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — among the series' most criticized releases.

The Legacy Kollection consequently doesn't represent a “best of” collection, but an exploration into the series' formative period, when developer Midway and brand founders Ed Boon and John Tobias were discovering methods to make a fighting game, created from video recordings of actual people, on the fly. Viewing the historical footage — which includes archival footage, recent conversations, and digital copies of vintage posters, comics, and even interoffice faxes — it's remarkable to see how the series transformed from humble beginnings to a international craze. It's frankly astounding to watch a handful of young game developers, operating with virtually no plan or guidance, channel their pop-culture interests into establishing an enduring gaming brand.

Historical Section

The educational segment of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection documents the ascent of the fighting series and the founders' vocational paths at the no-longer-operating Midway. It then goes on to show how the very same individuals addressed how to routinely one-up themselves, facing no small amount of stress to duplicate their triumphs. It represents an intriguing historical record constructed using analog films and traditional photos and hand-drawn illustrations, which demonstrate the hands-on approach of the franchise's production method and how personal recommendations helped circulate its mysteries and hidden aspects of Mortal Kombat in its arcade heyday. Delivered in easily digestible portions, it's thoroughly enjoyable series of documentary shorts that covers video games, graphic novels, movies and even the comical physical events. The collection additionally features some unused moves and character sprites among its cutting-room-floor content.

Interactive Gaming

Interspersed along the five-segment historical film's chronology are opportunities to engage with the games themselves. At various points, viewers can hop into a game of Mortal Kombat or one of its home console ports to rediscover its combat system and artistic style, emulated nearly perfectly on modern hardware.

I spent the bulk of my time engaging with the vintage coin-op games, particularly Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Several releases here remain enjoyable, particularly during one-on-one local play. But playing against the aforementioned game's AI-controlled opponents is a reminder of how crude and unbalanced the development approached in the franchise's pioneering releases. CPU-controlled opponents obviously use unfair advantages or are alternatively incredibly stupid. Lacking another person to compete with — internet multiplayer exists in the majority of included games, but too light on features — the experience will be incomplete.

Display Features

The twenty-three accessible Mortal Kombat titles in the compilation, a combination of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are faithfully recreated, though I have noticed a handful slight anomalies — mainly control latency and intermittent errors, notably within Mortal Kombat 4. And while the games are primarily displayed authentically, developer Digital Eclipse has added several intelligent quality-of-life features and graphical adjustment settings. For instance, users can elect to show each character's special moves on-screen and select to activate endless periods to complete lethal techniques. Also included are choices for unlocking secret characters, removing the requirement to complete some esoteric trick to unlock them.

Visually, the games can be enjoyed with multiple visual enhancements and presentation styles. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection offers very realistic effects that reproduce the cathode-ray tube displays of gaming halls or domestic TVs, or the greenscale screen of a portable gaming device. An especially welcome feature is the choice to enable arcade-like bezels encircling the display, with the specific combat game you're playing accurately and softly reflecting against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's very artistically charming.

Bonus Elements

The collection includes numerous nice touches beyond the documentary and emulated arcade classics, containing a soundtrack mode that lets you revisit the tunes of various combat titles without the din of two kombatants viciously slaughtering each other. Also present are character profiles that contain backgrounds and multiple story elements presented by the demo sequences of coin-op titles and endings.

Historical Preservation

A particularly notable inclusion 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 particular edition, a somewhat revised iteration of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an early attempt by Midway at head-to-head network battles 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 bug fixes and balance. Yet this online edition failed to achieve popularity, in part