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Mortal Kombat retains its share of secrets and the power to astonish, more than 30 years after its original launch in arcades. This latest compilation spanning the series' initial period, featuring four original arcade titles, multiple console adaptations, and derivative games, is more than only a accurately simulated series of classics along with lesser-known entries — it additionally serves as a rich documentary about the creation of the iconic franchise.

As a dedicated enthusiast of the series who has closely monitored its origins and transformation, there was numerous fresh aspects for me to understand and value about the series.

What Constitutes the Historical Compilation

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like other vintage game anthologies from the creators at Digital Eclipse, part documentary, part playable archive. The collection includes digitally recreated editions of the first arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, including television and mobile versions of certain releases. This compilation also features the brand's experiments at derivative games, like action-oriented titles Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — some of the brand's worst entries.

The Legacy Kollection consequently doesn't represent a greatest hits compilation, but a study of Mortal Kombat's early days, when the development team Midway and series co-creators the creative duo behind the series were determining how to create a combat title, produced using film material of live performers, as they went along. Observing the archival material — that features historical videos, new interviews, and reproductions of classic advertisements, graphic novels, and including internal communications — it's remarkable to see how Mortal Kombat went from modest origins to a worldwide phenomenon. It's truly remarkable to watch a handful of pioneering developers, developing without clear direction or supervision, focus their cultural enthusiasms into creating a legendary video game series.

Historical Section

The historical documentation of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection charts the rise of the combat franchise 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, encountering significant stress to duplicate their triumphs. It's a fascinating time capsule constructed using video recordings and film-based pictures and hand-drawn illustrations, which showcase the DIY nature of the series' creation process and how word of mouth helped spread its rumors and undisclosed elements of the series in its peak period in gaming halls. Told in bite-sized chunks, it's highly engaging series of documentary shorts that includes titles, illustrated stories, cinematic adaptations and including the humorous real-world tour. It also includes some never-implemented techniques and game character images among its cutting-room-floor content.

Interactive Experience

Interspersed along the five-part documentary's timeline are opportunities to engage with the actual titles. At certain intervals, viewers can hop into a game of Mortal Kombat or a console adaptation to reexperience its mechanics and visual presentation, emulated nearly perfectly on modern hardware.

I allocated the majority of my time playing the arcade classics, specifically Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Many of the games here remain enjoyable, notably with local multiplayer matches. Yet competing with the computer-controlled adversaries in these titles is a testament to how primitive and unbalanced the programming was in the series' initial installments. Computer-directed fighters clearly employ dishonest tactics or are otherwise dumb as rocks. Without having someone to play against — internet multiplayer exists in the majority of included games, but too light on features — you'll be missing out.

Display Features

The two dozen available combat games in the collection, a mix of arcade, console, and handheld games, are precisely simulated, though I have noticed a couple minor issues — mainly control latency and intermittent errors, notably within Mortal Kombat 4. And while the games are largely presented as-is, developer Digital Eclipse has incorporated various clever quality-of-life features and display customization choices. For example, users can elect to show each character's special moves during gameplay and choose to enable endless periods to perform a Fatality. Additionally available are settings for revealing concealed combatants, eliminating the need to execute complicated methods to access them.

Graphically, the titles can be enjoyed with multiple visual enhancements and presentation styles. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection provides highly authentic effects that reproduce the traditional television screens of gaming halls or home televisions, or the limited color monitor of a portable gaming device. An especially welcome feature is the option to have arcade-like bezels encircling the display, with the specific combat game you're playing accurately and softly reflecting against the faux black plastic borders. It's quite aesthetically pleasing.

Bonus Elements

There are plenty of welcome features besides the documentary and emulated arcade classics, including a music player that enables players to reexperience the music from multiple fighting releases without the din of fighters brutally eliminating opponents. There are also combatant descriptions that feature histories and multiple story elements shown through the idle displays of gaming hall releases and endings.

Historical Preservation

One of the biggest highlights for dedicated series enthusiasts is the chance to experience a segment of previously unavailable content in the format of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This specific release, a moderately improved edition 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 battle network competitors and included some minor bug fixes and balance. Yet this online edition never gained traction, in part