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Mortal Kombat continues to hold its share of secrets and the capacity to surprise, well past its 30th anniversary after its first appearance in coin-op establishments. This latest compilation including the franchise's earliest days, comprising four original arcade titles, various home ports, and spinoffs, is more than just a well-emulated collection of iconic titles and not-so-classics — it additionally serves as a rich documentary about the creation of the legendary series.

Being a long-time enthusiast of the series who has carefully followed its development and progression, there was numerous fresh aspects for me to understand and value about the series.

What Makes the Legacy Collection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like other vintage game anthologies from the development team Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, portion interactive museum. The anthology contains simulated releases of the first arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, plus console and handheld ports of some of those games. The collection even includes the franchise's attempts at derivative games, like action games Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — some of the brand's worst entries.

The Legacy Kollection is therefore not a greatest hits compilation, but an exploration into the franchise's initial era, when the development team Midway and brand founders the creative duo behind the series were discovering methods to make a fighting game, produced using film material of actual people, on the fly. Viewing the historical footage — containing historical videos, recent conversations, and reproductions of classic advertisements, graphic novels, and even company memos — it's incredible to witness how the series transformed from modest origins to a international craze. It's truly remarkable to watch a handful of early video game creators, working with minimal planning or supervision, channel their pop-culture interests into establishing an enduring gaming brand.

Historical Section

The historical documentation of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection traces the growth of the fighting series and its creators' careers at the currently closed Midway. It further illustrates how those same creators contended with how to consistently surpass their achievements, encountering significant demand to replicate their triumphs. It serves as a compelling period piece made from VHS tapes and traditional photos and manual drawings, which demonstrate the hands-on approach of the franchise's production method and how personal recommendations helped disseminate its secrets and secrets of MK in its peak period in gaming halls. Delivered in easily digestible portions, it's highly engaging collection of mini-documentaries that covers video games, graphic novels, movies and even the comical physical events. The compilation also contains some never-implemented techniques and game character images among its cutting-room-floor content.

Interactive Gaming

Distributed throughout the quintet of documentary episodes' progression are prompts to play the actual titles. During specific moments, users can directly access a Mortal Kombat title or one of its home console ports to revisit its gameplay and artistic style, emulated nearly perfectly on contemporary systems.

I dedicated most of my time engaging with the vintage coin-op games, particularly Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Numerous titles here hold up, especially in one-on-one local play. But playing against the artificial intelligence fighters in these releases is a testament to how primitive and unbalanced the coding existed in the series' initial installments. Computer-directed fighters clearly employ dishonest tactics or are alternatively incredibly stupid. Without having another person to compete with — online play is available in numerous anthology releases, but too light on features — you'll miss the full enjoyment.

Display Features

The 23 playable Mortal Kombat games in the collection, a mix of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are precisely simulated, though I've observed a couple minor issues — mainly control latency and sporadic glitches, especially with Mortal Kombat 4. Although the titles are mostly shown in their original form, the development team has added several intelligent user experience improvements and graphical adjustment settings. As an illustration, players have the option to show each character's special moves on-screen and choose to enable infinite time to execute finishing moves. Also included are choices for revealing concealed combatants, without having to perform complicated methods to access them.

Visually, the games can be enjoyed with multiple graphical effects and display options. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection offers very realistic effects that reproduce the cathode-ray tube displays of coin-op establishments or domestic TVs, or the monochrome green display of a portable gaming device. An especially welcome feature is the setting to activate gaming hall-style borders encircling the display, with the MK game of your choice faithfully and subtly duplicating against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's quite aesthetically pleasing.

Extra Content

There are plenty of nice touches beyond the documentary and emulated arcade classics, containing a soundtrack mode that lets you revisit the soundtracks of different Mortal Kombat games absent the noise of combatants violently defeating each other. Additionally included are fighter biographies that include bios and the various bits of lore shown through the demo sequences of coin-op titles and final sequences.

Archival Discovery

A particularly notable inclusion for hardcore Mortal Kombat fans is the chance to experience a example of historically missing material in the format of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This particular edition, a moderately improved edition of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an early attempt by Midway at one-on-one internet-based play in gaming halls. The Wavenet Edition of the game is virtually identical to UMK3, but included the option to battle network competitors and featured various slight bug fixes and balance. Yet this online edition never gained traction, in part