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The Mortal Kombat series continues to hold numerous undisclosed elements and the ability to amaze, over three decades after its original launch in coin-op establishments. A new collection covering the series' initial period, comprising four arcade games, several home system versions, and spinoffs, is more than only a accurately simulated set of legendary games and not-so-classics — it functions as a detailed chronicle about the making of the renowned brand.

As a dedicated Mortal Kombat fan who has carefully followed its origins and transformation, there was plenty new for me to understand and value about the series.

What Constitutes the Legacy Collection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like previous classic compilations from developer Digital Eclipse, part documentary, portion interactive museum. This compilation features simulated releases 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 spin-off titles, like action games Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — two of the franchise's least successful installments.

The Legacy Kollection thus isn't a “best of” collection, but a study of the franchise's initial era, when the creators at Midway and brand founders the visionary developers were discovering methods to create a combat title, digitized from footage of actual people, on the fly. Viewing the historical footage — which includes historical videos, contemporary discussions, and reproductions of classic advertisements, illustrated stories, and even company memos — it's incredible to witness how the franchise evolved from simple starts to a international craze. It's truly remarkable to see a group of young game developers, working with minimal planning or supervision, channel their pop-culture interests into establishing an enduring gaming brand.

Historical Section

The documentary portion of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection charts the rise of the fighting series and the developers' professional journeys at the currently closed Midway. It subsequently demonstrates how the very same individuals addressed how to regularly outdo their previous work, facing no small amount of pressure to repeat their success. It represents an intriguing historical record composed of video recordings and film-based pictures and manual drawings, which showcase the DIY nature of the franchise's production method and how word of mouth helped circulate its mysteries and hidden aspects of Mortal Kombat in its golden era in coin-op establishments. Delivered in easily digestible portions, it's highly engaging series of documentary shorts that covers video games, graphic novels, movies and even the silly live-action tour. It also includes some unused moves and digital fighter representations among its archived development assets.

Interactive Gaming

Distributed throughout the five-part documentary's timeline are prompts to play the original releases. During specific moments, audience members can jump into a Mortal Kombat title or a console adaptation to rediscover its combat system and graphics, simulated with remarkable precision on current technology.

I spent the bulk of my time engaging with the vintage coin-op games, especially Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Numerous titles here remain enjoyable, notably with direct competitive sessions. However, facing the computer-controlled adversaries in these titles is a demonstration of how basic and unfair the coding existed in the series' initial installments. Computer-directed fighters blatantly cheat to win or are conversely remarkably unintelligent. Lacking another person to compete with — online play is available in most titles in the collection, but too light on features — the experience will be incomplete.

Display Features

The twenty-three accessible Mortal Kombat titles in the collection, a blend of arcade, console, and handheld games, are faithfully recreated, though I detected a handful slight anomalies — mostly input lag and intermittent errors, particularly in Mortal Kombat 4. Although the titles are primarily displayed authentically, the creators has included some smart quality-of-life features and visual presentation options. As an illustration, users can elect to display fighter-specific techniques during gameplay and select to activate unlimited duration to perform a Fatality. There are also options for revealing concealed combatants, removing the requirement to complete obscure techniques to access them.

Graphically, the titles can be experienced with numerous visual enhancements and presentation styles. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection provides highly authentic filters that mimic the cathode-ray tube displays of coin-op establishments or domestic TVs, or the limited color monitor of a Game Boy. A particularly nice touch is the option to have arcade-like bezels encircling the display, 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 nice touches beyond the educational material and simulated classic games, containing a soundtrack mode that lets you revisit the music from multiple fighting releases without the din of combatants violently defeating each other. Also present are fighter biographies that feature histories and multiple story elements shown through arcade games' attract mode screens and final sequences.

Archival Discovery

One of the biggest highlights for dedicated series enthusiasts is the chance to experience a piece of "lost media" in the format of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This particular edition, a moderately improved edition of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an pioneering effort from the developer at head-to-head network battles in coin-op establishments. The Wavenet Edition of the game is practically indistinguishable to UMK3, but featured the capability to compete against internet adversaries and contained several small bug fixes and balance. But the Wavenet update failed to achieve popularity, in part