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This iconic fighting game continues to hold its share of secrets and the ability to amaze, over three decades after its original launch in arcades. A new collection spanning the brand's formative years, featuring four arcade games, various home ports, and spinoffs, transcends simply a faithfully reproduced series of classics along with lesser-known entries — it functions as a rich documentary about the making of the renowned brand.

Even as a lifelong Mortal Kombat fan who has carefully followed its development and progression, there was plenty new for me to understand and value about the series.

What Makes the Historical Compilation

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection similar to previous classic compilations from the creators at Digital Eclipse, part historical documentation, part playable archive. This compilation features simulated releases of the pioneering arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, along with home system and portable adaptations of some of those games. The collection even includes the franchise's attempts at spin-off titles, like action games 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 exploration into the franchise's initial era, when the development team Midway and brand founders the visionary developers were discovering methods to make a fighting game, digitized from footage of live performers, as they went along. Observing the archival material — containing historical videos, recent conversations, and scans of old flyers, illustrated stories, and including internal communications — it's incredible to witness how the franchise evolved from modest origins to a international craze. It's genuinely amazing to see a group of pioneering developers, developing without clear direction or supervision, direct their entertainment passions into establishing an enduring gaming brand.

Historical Section

The documentary portion of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection documents the ascent of the combat franchise and the founders' vocational paths at the now-defunct Midway. It further illustrates how the very same individuals addressed how to consistently surpass their achievements, encountering significant stress to duplicate their triumphs. It's a fascinating time capsule composed of analog films and analog photographs and pencil sketches, which demonstrate the hands-on approach of the franchise's production method and how personal recommendations helped circulate its mysteries and secrets of MK in its golden era in coin-op establishments. Told in bite-sized chunks, it's an eminently watchable series of documentary shorts that covers video games, graphic novels, movies and even the comical physical events. It also includes some unused moves and game character images among its archived development assets.

Interactive Gaming

Interspersed along the five-part documentary's timeline are opportunities to engage with the actual titles. At various points, viewers can hop into a combat game session or a home system version to reexperience its mechanics and graphics, emulated nearly perfectly on current technology.

I dedicated most of my time experiencing the original arcade titles, especially Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Numerous titles here stand the test of time, especially in one-on-one local play. But playing against the computer-controlled adversaries in these titles is a reminder of how crude and unbalanced the development approached in the series' initial installments. CPU-controlled opponents obviously use unfair advantages or are otherwise dumb as rocks. Lacking someone to play against — online play is available in most titles in the collection, but too light on features — the experience will be incomplete.

Visual Options

The 23 playable Mortal Kombat games in the anthology, a combination of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are precisely simulated, though I have noticed a handful slight anomalies — primarily delayed responses and intermittent errors, especially with Mortal Kombat 4. Even though the releases are primarily displayed authentically, the creators has incorporated various clever user experience improvements and graphical adjustment settings. For example, players have the option to reveal combatant-unique actions during gameplay and opt to have unlimited duration to execute finishing moves. Additionally available are settings for unlocking secret characters, eliminating the need to execute complicated methods to unlock them.

Visually, the games can be played with a variety of graphical effects and display options. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection offers very realistic effects that reproduce the cathode-ray tube displays of gaming halls or household displays, or the monochrome green display of a portable gaming device. A particularly nice touch is the setting to activate coin-op-inspired frames surrounding the screen, with the specific combat game you're playing accurately and softly reflecting against the simulated dark plastic edges. It's remarkably visually appealing.

Bonus Elements

Players will discover multiple nice touches beyond the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, containing a soundtrack mode that lets you revisit the tunes of various fighting releases absent the noise of fighters brutally eliminating opponents. Also present are combatant descriptions that include bios and multiple story elements displayed via the demo sequences of coin-op titles and final sequences.

Archival Discovery

Among the most significant features for dedicated series enthusiasts is the opportunity to play a example of historically missing material in the guise of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This specific release, a slightly updated version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an initial venture by the company at direct online competitive gaming in arcades. This network version of the game is practically indistinguishable to UMK3, but included the option to compete against internet adversaries and included some minor bug fixes and balance. Yet this online edition didn't find widespread adoption, in part