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Mortal Kombat retains numerous undisclosed elements and the power to astonish, more than 30 years after its initial debut in gaming halls. The recent anthology spanning the brand's formative years, featuring four arcade games, several home system versions, and derivative games, is more than simply a faithfully reproduced series of classics including less celebrated releases — it additionally serves as a detailed chronicle about the development of the renowned brand.

Being a long-time Mortal Kombat fan who has closely monitored its creation and evolution, there was much to discover for me to understand and value about the series.

What Makes the Legacy Collection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection similar to other vintage game anthologies from the creators at Digital Eclipse, part historical documentation, part playable archive. The anthology contains simulated releases of the pioneering arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, plus console and handheld ports of some of those games. This compilation also features the brand's experiments at spin-off titles, like combat-focused releases Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — two of the franchise's least successful installments.

The Legacy Kollection consequently doesn't represent a highlight reel anthology, but an exploration into the series' formative period, when developer Midway and brand founders the creative duo behind the series were determining how to make a fighting game, produced using film material of actual people, on the fly. Watching the documentary — containing historical videos, new interviews, and reproductions of classic advertisements, comics, and including internal communications — it's remarkable to see how Mortal Kombat went from modest origins to a global sensation. It's truly remarkable to watch a handful of young game developers, developing without clear direction or supervision, focus their cultural enthusiasms into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Documentary Portion

The educational segment of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection documents the ascent of Mortal Kombat and the founders' vocational paths at the now-defunct Midway. It subsequently demonstrates how those same creators reckoned with how to consistently surpass their achievements, encountering significant stress to duplicate their triumphs. It's a fascinating time capsule composed of VHS tapes and traditional photos and hand-drawn illustrations, which reveal the self-made character of the series' creation process and how personal recommendations helped circulate its mysteries and secrets of MK in its peak period in gaming halls. Delivered in easily digestible portions, it's thoroughly enjoyable set of brief historical films that includes titles, illustrated stories, cinematic adaptations and even the comical physical events. The collection additionally features some unused moves and digital fighter representations among its archived development assets.

Interactive Gaming

Interspersed along the five-part documentary's timeline are prompts to play the original releases. At certain intervals, users can directly access a combat game session or a home system version to revisit its gameplay and artistic style, recreated with impressive accuracy 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 remain enjoyable, especially in local multiplayer matches. But playing against the artificial intelligence fighters in these releases is a demonstration of how basic and unfair the coding existed in early Mortal Kombat games. AI-managed characters obviously use unfair advantages or are alternatively incredibly stupid. Lacking another person to compete with — internet multiplayer exists in the majority of included games, but rather basic in functionality — the experience will be incomplete.

Visual Options

The two dozen available combat games in the collection, a blend of arcade, console, and handheld games, are accurately emulated, though I detected a handful slight anomalies — primarily delayed responses and the occasional bug, particularly in Mortal Kombat 4. Even though the releases are primarily displayed authentically, the development team has incorporated various clever user experience improvements and display customization choices. For instance, users can elect to show each character's special moves on-screen and select to activate unlimited duration to execute finishing moves. Additionally available are settings for accessing hidden fighters, removing the requirement to complete some esoteric trick to access them.

Visually, the games can be played with a variety of filters and visual treatments. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection includes remarkably accurate options that simulate the cathode-ray tube displays of arcades or domestic TVs, or the limited color monitor of a Nintendo handheld. A notably appreciated element is the setting to activate gaming hall-style borders framing the gameplay, with your selected Mortal Kombat title faithfully and subtly duplicating against the faux black plastic borders. It's remarkably visually appealing.

Bonus Elements

There are plenty of welcome features besides the documentary and emulated arcade classics, containing a soundtrack mode that lets you revisit the soundtracks of different Mortal Kombat games without the din of fighters brutally eliminating opponents. Also present are character profiles that include bios and numerous narrative components shown through arcade games' attract mode screens and final sequences.

Historical Preservation

Among the most significant features for committed franchise followers is the opportunity to play a segment of previously unavailable content in the format of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This particular edition, a slightly updated version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an pioneering effort from the developer at one-on-one internet-based play in arcades. The Wavenet Edition of the game is almost exactly the same to UMK3, but featured the capability to compete against internet adversaries and included some minor bug fixes and balance. However, this network version never gained traction, in part