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Mortal Kombat still possesses many hidden mysteries and the ability to amaze, over three decades after its first appearance in arcades. The recent anthology including the franchise's earliest days, featuring a quartet of arcade releases, various home ports, and derivative games, transcends only a accurately simulated set of legendary games along with lesser-known entries — it functions as a detailed chronicle about the creation of the legendary series.

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

What Makes the Legacy Collection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection similar to other vintage game anthologies from the creators at Digital Eclipse, part documentary, part playable archive. This compilation features emulated versions of the pioneering arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, including television and mobile versions of some of those games. This compilation also features the franchise's attempts at spinoffs, like action-oriented titles Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — two of the franchise's most criticized releases.

The Legacy Kollection is therefore not a highlight reel anthology, but a study of Mortal Kombat's early days, when the development team Midway and brand founders the visionary developers were discovering methods to develop a battle series, produced using film material of real actors, on the fly. Watching the documentary — containing historical videos, new interviews, and reproductions of classic advertisements, comics, and even company memos — it's remarkable to see how the series transformed from humble beginnings to a international craze. It's truly remarkable to watch a handful of young game developers, developing without clear direction or guidance, channel their pop-culture interests into creating a legendary video game series.

Historical Section

The documentary portion of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection traces the growth of Mortal Kombat and the developers' professional journeys at the no-longer-operating Midway. It further illustrates how those same creators contended with how to regularly outdo their previous work, facing no small amount of pressure to repeat their success. It's a fascinating time capsule composed of analog films and film-based pictures and hand-drawn illustrations, which reveal the self-made character of the series' creation process and how personal recommendations helped circulate its mysteries and secrets of MK in its peak period in gaming halls. Told in bite-sized chunks, it's an eminently watchable collection of mini-documentaries that covers video games, graphic novels, movies and including the humorous real-world tour. It also includes some unused moves and game character images among its cutting-room-floor content.

Playable Component

Interspersed along the quintet of documentary episodes' progression are opportunities to engage with the games themselves. During specific moments, viewers can hop into a game of Mortal Kombat or a home system version to revisit its gameplay and visual presentation, emulated nearly perfectly on modern hardware.

I dedicated most of my time experiencing the original arcade titles, especially Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Several releases here hold up, notably with direct competitive sessions. But playing against the computer-controlled adversaries in these titles is a testament to how primitive and unbalanced the coding existed in the franchise's pioneering releases. AI-managed characters obviously use unfair advantages or are otherwise dumb as rocks. Lacking a human opponent — online play is available in numerous anthology releases, but too light on features — the experience will be incomplete.

Visual Options

The 23 playable Mortal Kombat games in the compilation, a mix of gaming hall, television, and mobile releases, are faithfully recreated, though I have noticed a handful slight anomalies — primarily delayed responses and the occasional bug, especially with Mortal Kombat 4. And while the games are primarily displayed authentically, the development team has included some smart user experience improvements and graphical adjustment settings. For example, you can choose to reveal combatant-unique actions on-screen and opt to have unlimited duration to complete lethal techniques. Additionally available are settings for unlocking secret characters, eliminating the need to execute complicated methods to obtain them.

Graphically, the titles can be enjoyed with multiple graphical effects and display options. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection provides highly authentic effects that reproduce the traditional television screens of gaming halls or domestic TVs, or the monochrome green display of a portable gaming device. A particularly nice touch is the choice to enable arcade-like bezels surrounding the screen, with the specific combat game you're playing accurately and softly reflecting against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's quite aesthetically pleasing.

Additional Features

The collection includes numerous appreciated elements beyond the documentary and emulated arcade classics, containing a soundtrack mode that enables players to reexperience the music from multiple combat titles without the din of fighters brutally eliminating opponents. Also present are character profiles that contain backgrounds and the various bits of lore displayed via arcade games' attract mode screens and endings.

Lost Media Recovery

Among the most significant features for dedicated series enthusiasts is the chance to experience a example of historically missing material in the guise of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This specific release, a somewhat revised iteration of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an early attempt by Midway at head-to-head network battles in gaming halls. The online-enabled release of the game is almost exactly the same to UMK3, but provided the ability to battle network competitors and contained several small glitch repairs and refinements. Yet this online edition failed to achieve popularity, in part