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This iconic fighting game still possesses its share of secrets and the power to astonish, over three decades after its original launch in gaming halls. A new collection covering the brand's formative years, which includes four original arcade titles, various home ports, and related titles, transcends just a well-emulated collection of iconic titles and not-so-classics — it's also a rich documentary about the making of the renowned brand.

Being a long-time enthusiast of the series who has closely monitored its origins and transformation, there was plenty new for me to discover and admire about the series.

What Constitutes the Legacy Collection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like previous classic compilations from the creators at Digital Eclipse, part historical documentation, portion interactive museum. This compilation features emulated versions of the pioneering arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, including television and mobile versions of certain releases. This compilation also features the brand's experiments at derivative games, like action games Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — some of the brand's least successful installments.

The Legacy Kollection thus isn't a “best of” collection, but a study of Mortal Kombat's early days, when the creators at Midway and series co-creators the visionary developers were figuring out how to develop a battle series, digitized from footage of real actors, on the fly. Viewing the historical footage — that features historical videos, new interviews, and digital copies of vintage posters, graphic novels, and even interoffice faxes — it's incredible to witness how the series transformed from simple starts to a global sensation. It's genuinely amazing to watch a handful of young game developers, developing without clear direction or guidance, channel their pop-culture interests into establishing an enduring gaming brand.

Documentary Portion

The educational segment of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection traces the growth of the combat franchise and the developers' professional journeys at the currently closed Midway. It subsequently demonstrates how these identical developers reckoned with how to regularly outdo their previous work, facing no small amount of pressure to repeat their success. It's a fascinating time capsule made from analog films and analog photographs and pencil sketches, which showcase the DIY nature of Mortal Kombat's development and how personal recommendations helped circulate its mysteries and secrets of MK in its arcade heyday. Delivered in easily digestible portions, it's highly engaging collection of mini-documentaries that spans games, comics, films and even the comical physical events. The collection additionally features some never-implemented techniques and game character images among its previously unreleased material.

Playable Component

Distributed throughout the five-part documentary's timeline are invitations to experience the actual titles. During specific moments, users can directly access a Mortal Kombat title or a home system version to revisit its gameplay and graphics, emulated nearly perfectly on current technology.

I spent the bulk of my time experiencing the original arcade titles, especially Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Several releases here hold up, notably with one-on-one local play. Yet competing with the artificial intelligence fighters in these releases is a demonstration of how basic and unbalanced the development approached in the series' initial installments. CPU-controlled opponents obviously use unfair advantages or are otherwise dumb as rocks. If you don't have someone to play against — network gaming is included in numerous anthology releases, but too light on features — the experience will be incomplete.

Visual Options

The twenty-three accessible Mortal Kombat titles in the compilation, a blend of arcade, console, and handheld games, are precisely simulated, though I detected a handful slight anomalies — primarily delayed responses and sporadic glitches, notably within Mortal Kombat 4. Even though the releases are largely presented as-is, developer Digital Eclipse has incorporated various clever convenience enhancements and display customization choices. As an illustration, players have the option to show each character's special moves on the display and select to activate endless periods to complete lethal techniques. There are also options for accessing hidden fighters, without having to perform complicated methods to access them.

Visually, the games can be played with a variety of graphical effects and display options. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection offers very realistic filters that mimic the CRT monitors of gaming halls or household displays, or the greenscale screen of a Nintendo handheld. A particularly nice touch is the option to have gaming hall-style borders encircling the display, with the MK game of your choice faithfully and subtly duplicating against the faux black plastic borders. It's remarkably visually appealing.

Bonus Elements

Players will discover multiple appreciated elements beyond the documentary and emulated arcade classics, featuring an audio component that enables players to reexperience the music from multiple fighting releases excluding the sounds of combatants violently defeating each other. Additionally included are fighter biographies that contain backgrounds and numerous narrative components presented by arcade games' attract mode screens and endings.

Historical Preservation

A particularly notable inclusion for dedicated series enthusiasts is the opportunity to play a piece of "lost media" in the format of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This version of the game, a slightly updated version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an initial venture by the company at one-on-one internet-based play 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 included some minor error corrections and adjustments. But the Wavenet update never gained traction, in part