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This iconic fighting game retains numerous undisclosed elements and the capacity to surprise, well past its 30th anniversary after its initial debut in gaming halls. This latest compilation spanning the brand's formative years, comprising four arcade games, various home ports, and derivative games, is more than simply a faithfully reproduced set of legendary games along with lesser-known entries — it additionally serves as a comprehensive historical account about the development of the renowned brand.

As a dedicated devotee of the franchise who has paid close attention its creation and evolution, there was plenty new for me to learn and appreciate about the series.

What Constitutes the Legacy Kollection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like other vintage game anthologies from developer Digital Eclipse, part historical documentation, portion interactive museum. The collection includes emulated versions 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. This compilation also features the franchise's attempts at spin-off titles, like combat-focused releases Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — among the series' least successful installments.

The Legacy Kollection is therefore not a “best of” collection, but an examination of the series' formative period, when developer Midway and series co-creators Ed Boon and John Tobias were discovering methods to make a fighting game, produced using film material of live performers, as they went along. Viewing the historical footage — which includes archival footage, recent conversations, and scans of old flyers, graphic novels, and even interoffice faxes — it's astonishing to observe how the series transformed from simple starts to a international craze. It's truly remarkable to watch a handful of early video game creators, working with minimal planning or oversight, focus their cultural enthusiasms into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Historical Section

The educational segment of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection traces the growth of the fighting series and its creators' careers at the now-defunct Midway. It then goes on to show how these identical developers addressed how to regularly outdo their previous work, facing no small amount of demand to replicate their success. It represents an intriguing historical record constructed using analog films and analog photographs and pencil sketches, which showcase the DIY nature of Mortal Kombat's development and how personal recommendations helped spread its rumors and hidden aspects of Mortal Kombat in its golden era in coin-op establishments. Presented in manageable segments, it's highly engaging series of documentary shorts that includes titles, illustrated stories, cinematic adaptations and including the humorous real-world tour. The collection additionally features some never-implemented techniques and character sprites among its previously unreleased material.

Interactive Gaming

Distributed throughout the five-part documentary's timeline are invitations to experience the actual titles. At various points, viewers can hop into a combat game session or a home system version to revisit its gameplay and graphics, simulated with remarkable precision on contemporary systems.

I spent the bulk of my time experiencing the original arcade titles, particularly Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Numerous titles here remain enjoyable, notably with local multiplayer matches. But playing against the computer-controlled adversaries in these titles is a demonstration of how basic and unfair the programming was in the series' initial installments. AI-managed characters blatantly cheat to win or are conversely remarkably unintelligent. 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 combination of gaming hall, television, and mobile releases, are faithfully recreated, though I detected a few small quirks — mostly input lag and sporadic glitches, notably within Mortal Kombat 4. Even though the releases are largely presented as-is, developer Digital Eclipse has added several intelligent user experience improvements and graphical adjustment settings. As an illustration, you can choose to display fighter-specific techniques on the display and opt to have unlimited duration to execute finishing moves. There are also options for revealing concealed combatants, without having to perform obscure techniques to obtain them.

Graphically, the titles can be played with a variety of graphical effects and display options. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection provides highly authentic options that simulate the traditional television screens of gaming halls or household displays, or the limited color monitor of a Nintendo handheld. A notably appreciated element is the choice to enable coin-op-inspired frames surrounding the screen, with the specific combat game you're playing faithfully and subtly duplicating against the simulated dark plastic edges. It's quite aesthetically pleasing.

Additional Features

There are plenty of appreciated elements beyond the documentary and emulated arcade classics, containing a soundtrack mode that allows users to rediscover the music from multiple Mortal Kombat games without the din of two kombatants viciously slaughtering each other. Also present are fighter biographies that feature histories and numerous narrative components displayed via the idle displays of gaming hall releases and endings.

Archival Discovery

Among the most significant features for committed franchise followers is the chance to experience a example of historically missing material in the form of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This specific release, a somewhat revised iteration of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an pioneering effort from the developer at one-on-one internet-based play in coin-op establishments. The Wavenet Edition of the game is virtually identical to UMK3, but included the option to compete against internet adversaries and featured various slight bug fixes and balance. However, this network version never gained traction, in part