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The Mortal Kombat series continues to hold many hidden mysteries and the ability to amaze, over three decades after its original launch in coin-op establishments. This latest compilation spanning the franchise's earliest days, which includes four arcade games, various home ports, and related titles, transcends only a accurately simulated collection of iconic titles along with lesser-known entries — it additionally serves as a comprehensive historical account about the making of the legendary series.

Being a long-time Mortal Kombat fan who has closely monitored its creation and evolution, there was plenty new for me to discover and admire about the series.

What Makes the Historical Compilation

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like other vintage game anthologies from the development team Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, part playable archive. The anthology contains emulated versions of the original arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, along with home system and portable adaptations of several of these titles. 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 — among the series' least successful installments.

The Legacy Kollection is therefore not a greatest hits compilation, but an exploration into Mortal Kombat's early days, when the development team Midway and franchise originators Ed Boon and John Tobias were figuring out how to develop a battle series, produced using film material of live performers, on the fly. Viewing the historical footage — which includes archival footage, contemporary discussions, and digital copies of vintage posters, graphic novels, and including internal communications — it's astonishing to observe how the series transformed from simple starts to a international craze. It's genuinely amazing to see a group of early video game creators, working with minimal planning or guidance, channel their pop-culture interests into creating a legendary video game series.

Educational Component

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 then goes on to show how these identical developers reckoned with how to regularly outdo their previous work, encountering significant pressure to repeat their success. It serves as a compelling period piece composed of video recordings and analog photographs and hand-drawn illustrations, which demonstrate the hands-on approach of Mortal Kombat's development and how oral tradition helped disseminate its secrets and undisclosed elements of the series in its golden era in coin-op establishments. Presented in manageable segments, it's highly engaging collection of mini-documentaries that spans games, comics, films and even the comical physical events. It also includes some unreleased actions and character sprites among its archived development assets.

Interactive Experience

Distributed throughout the quintet of documentary episodes' progression are prompts to play the games themselves. During specific moments, viewers can hop into a combat game session or one of its home console ports to rediscover its combat system and graphics, emulated nearly perfectly on contemporary systems.

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 remain enjoyable, notably with one-on-one local play. However, facing the computer-controlled adversaries in these titles is a testament to how primitive and unbalanced the coding existed in the series' initial installments. Computer-directed fighters clearly employ dishonest tactics or are otherwise dumb as rocks. Without having another person to compete with — online play is available in most titles in the collection, but too light on features — you'll miss the full enjoyment.

Display Features

The 23 playable Mortal Kombat games in the compilation, a blend of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are accurately emulated, though I detected a handful slight anomalies — mostly input lag and intermittent errors, notably within Mortal Kombat 4. Although the titles are largely presented as-is, the development team has incorporated various clever convenience enhancements and display customization choices. For instance, users can elect to reveal combatant-unique actions on the display and select to activate unlimited duration to perform a Fatality. There are also options for revealing concealed combatants, without having to perform complicated methods to obtain them.

Graphically, the titles can be played with a variety of graphical effects and display options. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection offers very realistic options that simulate the CRT monitors of arcades or household displays, or the monochrome green display of a portable gaming device. A particularly nice touch is the setting to activate coin-op-inspired frames framing the gameplay, with the MK game of your choice accurately and softly reflecting against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's very artistically charming.

Additional Features

The collection includes numerous appreciated elements beyond the documentary and emulated arcade classics, including a music player that allows users to rediscover the music from multiple fighting releases excluding the sounds of combatants violently defeating each other. Additionally included are fighter biographies that include bios and the various bits of lore displayed via the demo sequences of coin-op titles and endings.

Historical Preservation

Among the most significant features for committed franchise followers is the chance to experience a example of historically missing material in the guise of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This particular edition, a somewhat revised iteration of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an initial venture by the company at head-to-head network battles in coin-op establishments. The online-enabled release of the game is almost exactly the same to UMK3, but included the option to compete against internet adversaries and included some minor error corrections and adjustments. However, this network version never gained traction, in part