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This iconic fighting game continues to hold numerous undisclosed elements and the power to astonish, over three decades after its first appearance in gaming halls. A new collection including the series' initial period, comprising a quartet of arcade releases, several home system versions, and related titles, goes beyond simply a faithfully reproduced collection of iconic titles and not-so-classics — it functions as a rich documentary about the development of the iconic franchise.

Being a long-time enthusiast of the series who has paid close attention its creation and evolution, there was numerous fresh aspects for me to learn and appreciate about the series.

What Defines the Legacy Collection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like other retro collections from the creators at Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, part playable archive. The collection includes simulated releases of the first arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, including television and mobile versions of several of these titles. The collection even includes the franchise's attempts at spin-off titles, like action-oriented titles Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — two of the franchise's least successful installments.

The Legacy Kollection consequently doesn't represent a highlight reel anthology, but a study of the series' formative period, when the creators at Midway and brand founders the visionary developers were figuring out how to develop a battle series, digitized from footage of real actors, as they went along. Observing the archival material — which includes historical videos, new interviews, and reproductions of classic advertisements, graphic novels, and including internal communications — it's astonishing to observe how the series transformed from modest origins to a worldwide phenomenon. It's truly remarkable to see a group of pioneering developers, operating with virtually no plan or oversight, channel their pop-culture interests into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Historical Section

The documentary portion of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection charts the rise of Mortal Kombat and its creators' careers at the now-defunct Midway. It then goes on to show how these identical developers reckoned with how to routinely one-up themselves, encountering significant stress to duplicate their achievements. It serves as a compelling period piece composed of video recordings and analog photographs and pencil sketches, which showcase the DIY nature of the franchise's production method and how personal recommendations helped disseminate its secrets and hidden aspects of Mortal Kombat in its golden era in coin-op establishments. Delivered in easily digestible portions, it's an eminently watchable series of documentary shorts that spans games, comics, films and even the comical physical events. The collection additionally features some never-implemented techniques and digital fighter representations among its archived development assets.

Interactive Gaming

Interspersed along the quintet of documentary episodes' progression are prompts to play the actual titles. At certain intervals, viewers can hop into a game of Mortal Kombat or one of its home console ports to rediscover its combat system and visual presentation, recreated with impressive accuracy on modern hardware.

I dedicated most of my time experiencing the original arcade titles, specifically Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Many of the games here hold up, notably with direct competitive sessions. Yet competing with the computer-controlled adversaries in these titles is a testament to how primitive and unfair the coding existed in early Mortal Kombat games. AI-managed characters obviously use unfair advantages or are conversely remarkably unintelligent. Lacking a human opponent — internet multiplayer exists in most titles in the collection, but too light on features — the experience will be incomplete.

Visual Options

The twenty-three accessible Mortal Kombat titles in the compilation, a blend of arcade, console, and handheld games, are precisely simulated, though I detected a handful slight anomalies — mainly control latency and sporadic glitches, notably within Mortal Kombat 4. Although the titles are primarily displayed authentically, the development team has added several intelligent convenience enhancements and visual presentation options. As an illustration, users can elect to show each character's special moves on-screen and select to activate infinite time to perform a Fatality. There are also options for revealing concealed combatants, removing the requirement to complete obscure techniques to access them.

Artistically, the releases can be enjoyed with multiple filters and visual treatments. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection offers very realistic filters that mimic the traditional television screens of coin-op establishments or home televisions, or the limited color monitor of a portable gaming device. A particularly nice touch is the choice to enable gaming hall-style borders 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.

Extra Content

The collection includes numerous welcome features besides the documentary and emulated arcade classics, including a music player that lets you revisit the music from multiple Mortal Kombat games excluding the sounds of combatants violently defeating each other. There are also combatant descriptions that contain backgrounds and the various bits of lore displayed via the idle displays of gaming hall releases and endings.

Archival Discovery

One of the biggest highlights for hardcore Mortal Kombat fans is the ability to access a segment of previously unavailable content in the form of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This specific release, a slightly updated version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an pioneering effort from the developer at direct online competitive gaming in gaming halls. The online-enabled release of the game is almost exactly the same to UMK3, but provided the ability to battle network competitors and contained several small bug fixes and balance. Yet this online edition didn't find widespread adoption, in part