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The Mortal Kombat series retains its share of secrets and the ability to amaze, over three decades after its original launch in gaming halls. A new collection spanning the franchise's earliest days, which includes a quartet of arcade releases, various home ports, and derivative games, is more than only a accurately simulated series of classics and not-so-classics — it's also a comprehensive historical account about the development of the renowned brand.

As a dedicated Mortal Kombat fan who has carefully followed its development and progression, there was plenty new for me to discover and admire about the series.

What Makes the Legacy Collection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like previous classic compilations from the creators at Digital Eclipse, part documentary, part playable archive. The anthology contains emulated versions of the original arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, including television and mobile versions of certain releases. The anthology additionally contains the franchise's attempts at spin-off titles, like combat-focused releases Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — among the series' least successful installments.

The Legacy Kollection consequently doesn't represent a “best of” collection, but an exploration into Mortal Kombat's early days, when developer Midway and brand founders the visionary developers were discovering methods to create a combat title, digitized from footage of actual people, on the fly. Observing the archival material — that features archival footage, contemporary discussions, and reproductions of classic advertisements, illustrated stories, and including internal communications — it's incredible to witness how Mortal Kombat went from simple starts to a international craze. It's genuinely amazing to observe several young game developers, working with minimal planning or oversight, channel their pop-culture interests into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Historical Section

The historical documentation of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection documents the ascent of the combat franchise and the developers' professional journeys at the currently closed Midway. It further illustrates how the very same individuals contended with how to consistently surpass their achievements, experiencing considerable pressure to repeat their success. It represents an intriguing historical record composed of video recordings and analog photographs and pencil sketches, which demonstrate the hands-on approach of the franchise's production method and how oral tradition helped disseminate its secrets and hidden aspects of Mortal Kombat in its peak period in gaming halls. Delivered in easily digestible portions, it's an eminently watchable collection of mini-documentaries that includes titles, illustrated stories, cinematic adaptations and even the comical physical events. The compilation also contains some unused moves and game character images among its archived development assets.

Interactive Gaming

Interspersed along the five-part documentary's timeline are prompts to play the games themselves. During specific moments, viewers can hop into a combat game session or a home system version to revisit its gameplay and artistic style, recreated with impressive accuracy on contemporary systems.

I spent the bulk of my time engaging with the vintage coin-op games, particularly Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Many of the games here stand the test of time, especially in one-on-one local play. Yet competing with the computer-controlled adversaries in these titles is a demonstration of how basic and unfair the programming was in early Mortal Kombat games. AI-managed characters blatantly cheat to win or are alternatively incredibly stupid. If you don't have another person to compete with — internet multiplayer exists in most titles in the collection, but too light on features — you'll miss the full enjoyment.

Display Features

The twenty-three accessible Mortal Kombat titles in the anthology, a blend of gaming hall, television, and mobile releases, are precisely simulated, though I have noticed a few small quirks — mostly input lag and the occasional bug, especially with Mortal Kombat 4. Although the titles are primarily displayed authentically, developer Digital Eclipse has incorporated various clever quality-of-life features and display customization choices. For instance, users can elect to show each character's special moves during gameplay and opt to have infinite time to complete lethal techniques. Additionally available are settings for accessing hidden fighters, without having to perform complicated methods to access them.

Artistically, the releases can be experienced with numerous graphical effects and display options. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection provides highly authentic effects that reproduce the CRT monitors of gaming halls or domestic TVs, or the limited color monitor of a Game Boy. A particularly nice touch is the choice to enable gaming hall-style borders framing the gameplay, with the MK game of your choice accurately and softly reflecting against the faux black plastic borders. It's very artistically charming.

Bonus Elements

The collection includes numerous nice touches beyond the documentary and emulated arcade classics, containing a soundtrack mode that lets you revisit the music from multiple combat titles without the din of two kombatants viciously slaughtering each other. Also present are character profiles that contain backgrounds and multiple story elements shown through arcade games' attract mode screens and conclusions.

Lost Media Recovery

Among the most significant features for hardcore Mortal Kombat fans is the chance to experience a segment of previously unavailable content 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 early attempt by Midway at one-on-one internet-based play in coin-op establishments. This network version of the game is almost exactly the same to UMK3, but provided the ability to compete against internet adversaries and contained several small error corrections and adjustments. Yet this online edition never gained traction, in part