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The Mortal Kombat series continues to hold its share of secrets and the power to astonish, over three decades after its first appearance in coin-op establishments. The recent anthology including the brand's formative years, featuring four arcade games, several home system versions, and spinoffs, is more than simply a faithfully reproduced set of legendary games along with lesser-known entries — it functions as a comprehensive historical account about the creation of the legendary series.

Being a long-time enthusiast of the series who has paid close attention its creation and evolution, there was plenty new for me to understand and value about the series.

What Makes the Legacy Collection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection comparable to other vintage game anthologies from the creators at Digital Eclipse, part documentary, portion interactive museum. This compilation features digitally recreated editions of the pioneering arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, including television and mobile versions of several of these titles. The anthology additionally contains the franchise's attempts at spin-off titles, like action-oriented titles Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — among the series' worst entries.

The Legacy Kollection thus isn't a greatest hits compilation, but a study of the series' formative period, when the creators at Midway and series co-creators the visionary developers were figuring out how to make a fighting game, produced using film material of actual people, through experimentation. Viewing the historical footage — containing historical videos, contemporary discussions, and digital copies of vintage posters, illustrated stories, and even interoffice faxes — it's incredible to witness how the franchise evolved from humble beginnings to a worldwide phenomenon. It's frankly astounding to watch a handful of pioneering developers, operating with virtually no plan or supervision, channel their pop-culture interests into creating a legendary video game series.

Historical Section

The documentary portion of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection traces the growth of Mortal Kombat and its creators' careers at the no-longer-operating Midway. It further illustrates how these identical developers addressed how to consistently surpass their achievements, facing no small amount of demand to replicate their achievements. It serves as a compelling period piece composed of analog films and traditional photos and hand-drawn illustrations, which showcase the DIY nature of the series' creation process and how oral tradition helped circulate its mysteries and hidden aspects of Mortal Kombat in its golden era in coin-op establishments. Delivered in easily digestible portions, it's thoroughly enjoyable collection of mini-documentaries that covers video games, graphic novels, movies and even the comical physical events. The compilation also contains some unreleased actions and game character images among its cutting-room-floor content.

Interactive Experience

Distributed throughout the five-part documentary's timeline are invitations to experience the original releases. At various points, viewers can hop into a combat game session or a console adaptation to reexperience its mechanics and visual presentation, emulated nearly perfectly on contemporary systems.

I dedicated most of my time engaging with the vintage coin-op games, specifically Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Many of the games here remain enjoyable, particularly during direct competitive sessions. However, facing the artificial intelligence fighters in these releases is a demonstration of how basic and unfair the development approached in the franchise's pioneering releases. Computer-directed fighters clearly employ dishonest tactics or are otherwise dumb as rocks. Without having someone to play against — internet multiplayer exists in the majority of included games, but somewhat limited in options — you'll be missing out.

Visual Options

The twenty-three accessible Mortal Kombat titles in the anthology, a combination of arcade, console, and handheld games, are precisely simulated, though I've observed a few small quirks — mainly control latency and sporadic glitches, particularly in Mortal Kombat 4. Even though the releases are largely presented as-is, developer Digital Eclipse has included some smart user experience improvements and graphical adjustment settings. As an illustration, users can elect to reveal combatant-unique actions on-screen and opt to have endless periods to perform a Fatality. Also included are choices for accessing hidden fighters, eliminating the need to execute some esoteric trick to unlock them.

Artistically, the releases can be played with a variety of graphical effects and display options. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection provides highly authentic 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 setting to activate arcade-like bezels surrounding the screen, with the MK game of your choice accurately and softly reflecting against the faux black plastic borders. It's quite aesthetically pleasing.

Extra Content

There are plenty of nice touches beyond the educational material and simulated classic games, containing a soundtrack mode that allows users to rediscover the music from multiple combat titles without the din of combatants violently defeating each other. Also present are character profiles that feature histories and numerous narrative components shown through the demo sequences of coin-op titles and final sequences.

Archival Discovery

Among the most significant features for hardcore Mortal Kombat fans is the chance to experience a segment of previously unavailable content in the guise 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 direct online competitive gaming in coin-op establishments. This network version of the game is almost exactly the same to UMK3, but provided the ability to challenge online opponents and contained several small error corrections and adjustments. Yet this online edition never gained traction, in part