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The Mortal Kombat series retains its share of secrets and the ability to amaze, well past its 30th anniversary after its first appearance in gaming halls. This latest compilation including the brand's formative years, featuring four original arcade titles, various home ports, and spinoffs, goes beyond only a accurately simulated collection of iconic titles and not-so-classics — it functions as a detailed chronicle about the development of the iconic franchise.

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

What Constitutes the Legacy Collection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like other vintage game anthologies from the creators at Digital Eclipse, part documentary, part playable archive. The collection includes digitally recreated editions of the pioneering arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, including television and mobile versions of several of these titles. The collection even includes the series' ventures at derivative games, like combat-focused releases Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — some of the brand's most criticized releases.

The Legacy Kollection thus isn't a “best of” collection, but an exploration into the franchise's initial era, when the creators at Midway and series co-creators the creative duo behind the series were figuring out how to make a fighting game, produced using film material of actual people, as they went along. Observing the archival material — that features historical videos, contemporary discussions, and scans of old flyers, graphic novels, and including internal communications — it's remarkable to see how the series transformed from modest origins to a worldwide phenomenon. It's frankly astounding to see a group of young game developers, developing without clear direction or oversight, direct their entertainment passions into creating a legendary video game series.

Documentary Portion

The documentary portion of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection traces the growth of Mortal Kombat and its creators' careers at the currently closed Midway. It further illustrates how the very same individuals addressed how to routinely one-up themselves, encountering significant stress to duplicate their triumphs. It represents an intriguing historical record composed of video recordings and traditional photos and pencil sketches, which reveal the self-made character of the franchise's production method and how personal recommendations helped spread its rumors and secrets of MK in its arcade heyday. Presented in manageable segments, it's highly engaging series of documentary shorts that covers video games, graphic novels, movies and including the humorous real-world tour. The compilation also contains some never-implemented techniques and game character images among its archived development assets.

Interactive Experience

Placed within the five-part documentary's timeline are prompts to play the games themselves. At various points, viewers can hop into a Mortal Kombat title or a console adaptation to rediscover its combat system and artistic style, emulated nearly perfectly on contemporary systems.

I allocated the majority of my time experiencing the original arcade titles, specifically Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Several releases here stand the test of time, especially in direct competitive sessions. However, facing the computer-controlled adversaries in these titles is a demonstration of how basic and unjust the development approached in the franchise's pioneering releases. CPU-controlled opponents clearly employ dishonest tactics or are otherwise dumb as rocks. If you don't have a human opponent — online play is available in numerous anthology releases, but somewhat limited in options — you'll miss the full enjoyment.

Display Features

The twenty-three accessible Mortal Kombat titles in the anthology, a combination of arcade, console, and handheld games, are faithfully recreated, though I've observed a few small quirks — mostly input lag and the occasional bug, especially with Mortal Kombat 4. Although the titles are primarily displayed authentically, the creators has incorporated various clever convenience enhancements and graphical adjustment settings. For example, users can elect to reveal combatant-unique actions on the display and select to activate endless periods to execute finishing moves. There are also options for revealing concealed combatants, removing the requirement to complete complicated methods to obtain them.

Graphically, the titles can be played with a variety of filters and visual treatments. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection provides highly authentic options that simulate the cathode-ray tube displays of gaming halls or home televisions, or the greenscale screen of a portable gaming device. A notably appreciated element is the choice to enable gaming hall-style borders encircling the display, with the specific combat game you're playing precisely and gently mirroring against the simulated dark plastic edges. It's remarkably visually appealing.

Bonus Elements

Players will discover multiple welcome features besides the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, containing a soundtrack mode that enables players to reexperience the soundtracks of different combat titles excluding the sounds of two kombatants viciously slaughtering each other. There are also fighter biographies that feature histories and numerous narrative components shown through arcade games' attract mode screens and conclusions.

Lost Media Recovery

One of the biggest highlights for hardcore Mortal Kombat fans is the opportunity to play a segment of previously unavailable content in the guise of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This specific release, a moderately improved edition of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an early attempt by Midway at direct online competitive gaming in coin-op establishments. The online-enabled release of the game is almost exactly the same to UMK3, but featured the capability to challenge online opponents and included some minor glitch repairs and refinements. But the Wavenet update didn't find widespread adoption, in part