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Mortal Kombat still possesses numerous undisclosed elements and the capacity to surprise, well past its 30th anniversary after its original launch in coin-op establishments. The recent anthology spanning the brand's formative years, featuring four original arcade titles, various home ports, and related titles, transcends simply a faithfully reproduced collection of iconic titles and not-so-classics — it functions as a comprehensive historical account about the development of the legendary series.

Being a long-time devotee of the franchise who has paid close attention its origins and transformation, there was plenty new for me to understand and value about the series.

What Makes the Legacy Kollection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like other retro collections from developer Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, section playable historical record. 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. The collection even includes the series' ventures at derivative games, like combat-focused releases Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — among the series' least successful installments.

The Legacy Kollection consequently doesn't represent a highlight reel anthology, but a study of the series' formative period, when developer Midway and franchise originators Ed Boon and John Tobias were figuring out how to make a fighting game, produced using film material of real actors, as they went along. Observing the archival material — which includes vintage recordings, recent conversations, and reproductions of classic advertisements, graphic novels, and including internal communications — it's astonishing to observe how Mortal Kombat went from humble beginnings to a worldwide phenomenon. It's genuinely amazing to see a group of early video game creators, developing without clear direction or oversight, direct their entertainment passions into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Educational Component

The documentary portion of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection documents the ascent of the combat franchise and its creators' careers at the no-longer-operating Midway. It subsequently demonstrates how these identical developers addressed how to regularly outdo their previous work, encountering significant stress to duplicate their achievements. It's a fascinating time capsule made from VHS tapes and film-based pictures and pencil sketches, which demonstrate the hands-on approach of Mortal Kombat's development and how word of mouth helped circulate its mysteries and undisclosed elements of the series in its arcade heyday. Told in bite-sized chunks, it's an eminently watchable 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 archived development assets.

Interactive Experience

Placed within the five-segment historical film's chronology are opportunities to engage with the games themselves. At various points, users can directly access a Mortal Kombat title or a home system version to revisit its gameplay and artistic style, simulated with remarkable precision on modern hardware.

I dedicated most of my time engaging with the vintage coin-op games, specifically Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Numerous titles here remain enjoyable, notably with one-on-one local play. However, facing the computer-controlled adversaries in these titles is a demonstration of how basic and unbalanced the coding existed in the series' initial installments. AI-managed characters clearly employ dishonest tactics or are alternatively incredibly stupid. Lacking a human opponent — network gaming is included in most titles in the collection, but rather basic in functionality — you'll miss the full enjoyment.

Display Features

The twenty-three accessible Mortal Kombat titles in the anthology, a blend of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are precisely simulated, though I have noticed a handful slight anomalies — mainly control latency and sporadic glitches, notably within Mortal Kombat 4. And while the games are mostly shown in their original form, the development team has incorporated various clever user experience improvements and graphical adjustment settings. For example, users can elect to display fighter-specific techniques on the display and opt to have infinite time to complete lethal techniques. There are also options for unlocking secret characters, without having to perform some esoteric trick to access them.

Visually, the games can be experienced with numerous visual enhancements and presentation styles. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection provides highly authentic options that simulate the cathode-ray tube displays of gaming halls or home televisions, or the limited color monitor of a Game Boy. An especially welcome feature is the option to have coin-op-inspired frames surrounding the screen, with your selected Mortal Kombat title precisely and gently mirroring against the simulated dark plastic edges. It's remarkably visually appealing.

Additional Features

There are plenty of nice touches beyond the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, containing a soundtrack mode that lets you revisit the tunes of various fighting releases excluding the sounds of combatants violently defeating each other. Additionally included are combatant descriptions that feature histories and multiple story elements presented by the demo sequences of coin-op titles and endings.

Historical Preservation

Among the most significant features for committed franchise followers is the ability to access a example of historically missing material in the format 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 online-enabled release of the game is almost exactly the same to UMK3, but included the option to challenge online opponents and featured various slight glitch repairs and refinements. Yet this online edition never gained traction, in part