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Mortal Kombat continues to hold many hidden mysteries and the power to astonish, well past its 30th anniversary after its initial debut in arcades. The recent anthology including the brand's formative years, featuring four original arcade titles, various home ports, and derivative games, is more than just a well-emulated set of legendary games and not-so-classics — it additionally serves as a comprehensive historical account about the creation of the renowned brand.

Even as a lifelong devotee of the franchise who has paid close attention its development and progression, there was numerous fresh aspects for me to discover and admire about the series.

What Defines the Legacy Collection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection comparable to previous classic compilations from the creators at Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, portion interactive museum. This compilation features 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 some of those games. The collection even includes the franchise's attempts at spinoffs, like action-oriented titles Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — among the series' most criticized releases.

The Legacy Kollection is therefore not a highlight reel anthology, but an examination of Mortal Kombat's early days, when developer Midway and series co-creators the visionary developers were determining how to make a fighting game, digitized from footage of actual people, as they went along. Observing the archival material — that features archival footage, contemporary discussions, and scans of old flyers, graphic novels, and including internal communications — it's incredible to witness how the franchise evolved from simple starts to a worldwide phenomenon. It's frankly astounding to observe several early video game creators, operating with virtually no plan or supervision, 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 its creators' careers at the currently closed Midway. It subsequently demonstrates how those same creators addressed how to routinely one-up themselves, encountering significant demand to replicate their achievements. It serves as a compelling period piece made from video recordings and traditional photos and manual drawings, which reveal the self-made character of the series' creation process and how word of mouth helped spread its rumors and secrets of MK in its peak period in gaming halls. Presented in manageable segments, it's thoroughly enjoyable collection of mini-documentaries that includes titles, illustrated stories, cinematic adaptations and even the comical physical events. The collection additionally features some never-implemented techniques and game character images among its cutting-room-floor content.

Playable Component

Placed within the five-segment historical film's chronology are prompts to play the games themselves. At certain intervals, users can directly access a game of Mortal Kombat or a console adaptation to rediscover its combat system and artistic style, simulated with remarkable precision on modern hardware.

I dedicated most of my time experiencing the original arcade titles, specifically Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Several releases here hold up, notably with local multiplayer matches. Yet competing with the artificial intelligence fighters in these releases is a reminder of how crude and unfair the coding existed in the series' initial installments. CPU-controlled opponents blatantly cheat to win or are conversely remarkably unintelligent. Without having someone to play against — internet multiplayer exists in numerous anthology releases, but too light on features — you'll miss the full enjoyment.

Technical Presentation

The two dozen available combat games in the compilation, a combination of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are accurately emulated, though I've observed a couple minor issues — primarily delayed responses and the occasional bug, especially with Mortal Kombat 4. Although the titles are largely presented as-is, developer Digital Eclipse has included some smart user experience improvements and display customization choices. For instance, users can elect to reveal combatant-unique actions on-screen and opt to have endless periods to perform a Fatality. Additionally available are settings for accessing hidden fighters, eliminating the need to execute obscure techniques to obtain them.

Graphically, the titles can be experienced with numerous graphical effects and display options. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection offers very realistic effects that reproduce the cathode-ray tube displays of gaming halls or domestic TVs, or the limited color monitor of a portable gaming device. A particularly nice touch is the choice to enable gaming hall-style borders framing the gameplay, with your selected Mortal Kombat title precisely and gently mirroring against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's very artistically charming.

Additional Features

The collection includes numerous nice touches beyond the documentary and emulated arcade classics, featuring an audio component that enables players to reexperience the tunes of various Mortal Kombat games excluding the sounds of two kombatants viciously slaughtering each other. Additionally included are combatant descriptions that feature histories and the various bits of lore displayed via the demo sequences of coin-op titles and final sequences.

Lost Media Recovery

One of the biggest highlights for committed franchise followers is the chance to experience a example of historically missing material in the format of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This specific release, a slightly updated version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an pioneering effort from the developer at head-to-head network battles in coin-op establishments. This network version of the game is practically indistinguishable to UMK3, but included the option to challenge online opponents and contained several small bug fixes and balance. However, this network version didn't find widespread adoption, in part