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This iconic fighting game still possesses its share of secrets and the power to astonish, over three decades after its first appearance in gaming halls. The recent anthology covering the franchise's earliest days, which includes four original arcade titles, multiple console adaptations, and spinoffs, goes beyond simply a faithfully reproduced collection of iconic titles and not-so-classics — it functions as a comprehensive historical account about the creation of the iconic franchise.

As a dedicated enthusiast of the series who has paid close attention its development and progression, there was numerous fresh aspects for me to understand and value about the series.

What Constitutes the Legacy Kollection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like other vintage game anthologies from the creators at Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, 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, along with home system and portable adaptations of some of those games. The collection even includes the series' ventures at spinoffs, 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 greatest hits compilation, but a study of Mortal Kombat's early days, when developer Midway and brand founders Ed Boon and John Tobias were determining how to develop a battle series, produced using film material of actual people, as they went along. Viewing the historical footage — containing vintage recordings, recent conversations, and reproductions of classic advertisements, illustrated stories, and even company memos — it's remarkable to see how Mortal Kombat went from humble beginnings to a global sensation. It's frankly astounding to watch a handful of young game developers, working with minimal planning or oversight, channel their pop-culture interests into establishing an enduring gaming brand.

Historical Section

The historical documentation of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection documents the ascent of Mortal Kombat and the founders' vocational paths at the no-longer-operating Midway. It further illustrates how these identical developers reckoned with how to regularly outdo their previous work, encountering significant demand to replicate their achievements. It's a fascinating time capsule constructed using VHS tapes and film-based pictures and hand-drawn illustrations, which demonstrate the hands-on approach of the series' creation process and how personal recommendations helped spread its rumors and secrets of MK in its golden era in coin-op establishments. Told in bite-sized chunks, it's thoroughly enjoyable set of brief historical films that spans games, comics, films and even the silly live-action tour. The collection additionally features some unused moves and game character images among its cutting-room-floor content.

Interactive Gaming

Interspersed along the quintet of documentary episodes' progression are prompts to play the original releases. During specific moments, users can directly access a Mortal Kombat title or a home system version to rediscover its combat system and artistic style, emulated nearly perfectly on contemporary systems.

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 hold up, notably with one-on-one local play. Yet competing with the computer-controlled adversaries in these titles is a reminder of how crude and unfair the coding existed in the series' initial installments. AI-managed characters obviously use unfair advantages or are alternatively incredibly stupid. Without having someone to play against — network gaming is included in numerous anthology releases, but rather basic in functionality — the experience will be incomplete.

Visual Options

The 23 playable Mortal Kombat games in the compilation, a blend of arcade, console, and handheld games, are accurately emulated, though I detected a couple minor issues — mainly control latency and intermittent errors, notably within Mortal Kombat 4. Although the titles are largely presented as-is, the development team has incorporated various clever quality-of-life features and display customization choices. For example, players have the option to reveal combatant-unique actions during gameplay and choose to enable endless periods to perform a Fatality. There are also options for unlocking secret characters, without having to perform complicated methods to unlock them.

Artistically, the releases can be enjoyed with multiple graphical effects and display options. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection offers very realistic options that simulate the traditional television screens of coin-op establishments or domestic TVs, or the monochrome green display of a Game Boy. An especially welcome feature is the option to have gaming hall-style borders 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.

Extra Content

There are plenty of appreciated elements beyond the educational material and simulated classic games, featuring an audio component that lets you revisit the tunes of various combat titles excluding the sounds of combatants violently defeating 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.

Historical Preservation

A particularly notable inclusion for committed franchise followers is the chance to experience a segment of previously unavailable content in the form of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This specific release, a moderately improved edition of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an initial venture by the company at head-to-head network battles in coin-op establishments. The Wavenet Edition of the game is almost exactly the same to UMK3, but provided the ability to compete against internet adversaries and contained several small glitch repairs and refinements. Yet this online edition failed to achieve popularity, in part