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The Mortal Kombat series continues to hold many hidden mysteries and the capacity to surprise, more than 30 years after its original launch in gaming halls. This latest compilation including the brand's formative years, comprising a quartet of arcade releases, various home ports, and derivative games, goes beyond simply a faithfully reproduced series of classics and not-so-classics — it additionally serves as a rich documentary about the creation of the legendary series.

Being a long-time enthusiast of the series who has closely monitored its development and progression, there was numerous fresh aspects for me to discover and admire about the series.

What Constitutes the Historical Compilation

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like other vintage game anthologies from the creators at Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, portion interactive museum. The anthology contains emulated versions of the pioneering arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, plus console and handheld ports of several of these titles. This compilation also features the brand's experiments at derivative games, like action games Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — two of the franchise's worst entries.

The Legacy Kollection consequently doesn't represent a highlight reel anthology, but an examination of the series' formative period, when the development team Midway and brand founders Ed Boon and John Tobias were determining how to make a fighting game, produced using film material of live performers, on the fly. Watching the documentary — that features archival footage, new interviews, and scans of old flyers, comics, and even interoffice faxes — it's astonishing to observe how the franchise evolved from modest origins to a global sensation. It's frankly astounding to see a group of young game developers, operating with virtually no plan or guidance, direct their entertainment passions into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Educational Component

The documentary portion of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection documents the ascent of Mortal Kombat and the founders' vocational paths at the currently closed Midway. It then goes on to show how the very same individuals reckoned with how to consistently surpass their achievements, experiencing considerable stress to duplicate their triumphs. It serves as a compelling period piece made from 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 secrets of MK in its arcade heyday. Delivered in easily digestible portions, it's highly engaging collection of mini-documentaries that includes titles, illustrated stories, cinematic adaptations and including the humorous real-world tour. It also includes some unreleased actions and character sprites among its archived development assets.

Interactive Gaming

Distributed throughout the five-segment historical film's chronology are prompts to play the actual titles. At certain intervals, users can directly access a Mortal Kombat title or a home system version to reexperience its mechanics and artistic style, emulated nearly perfectly on current technology.

I dedicated most of my time engaging with the vintage coin-op games, especially Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Many of the games here remain enjoyable, especially in local multiplayer matches. Yet competing with the computer-controlled adversaries in these titles is a testament to how primitive and unfair the programming was in early Mortal Kombat games. CPU-controlled opponents clearly employ dishonest tactics or are otherwise dumb as rocks. If you don't have someone to play against — online play is available in the majority of included games, but too light on features — you'll miss the full enjoyment.

Visual Options

The 23 playable Mortal Kombat games in the collection, a blend of gaming hall, television, and mobile releases, are faithfully recreated, though I have noticed a few small quirks — mainly control latency and intermittent errors, particularly in Mortal Kombat 4. Although the titles are primarily displayed authentically, developer Digital Eclipse has incorporated various clever convenience enhancements and display customization choices. For instance, you can choose to display fighter-specific techniques on the display and choose to enable infinite time to perform a Fatality. There are also options for revealing concealed combatants, removing the requirement to complete complicated methods to obtain them.

Visually, the games can be enjoyed with multiple filters and visual treatments. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection provides highly authentic effects that reproduce the traditional television screens of arcades or domestic TVs, or the monochrome green display of a Game Boy. A particularly nice touch is the setting to activate arcade-like bezels encircling the display, with the specific combat game you're playing accurately and softly reflecting against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's remarkably visually appealing.

Additional Features

The collection includes numerous welcome features besides the educational material and simulated classic games, including a music player that lets you revisit the soundtracks of different fighting releases absent the noise of combatants violently defeating each other. Also present are character profiles that feature histories and the various bits of lore shown through the demo sequences of coin-op titles and final sequences.

Lost Media Recovery

A particularly notable inclusion for hardcore Mortal Kombat fans is the opportunity to play a segment of previously unavailable content in the guise of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This version of the game, a moderately improved edition of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an initial venture by the company at direct online competitive gaming in coin-op establishments. The Wavenet Edition of the game is practically indistinguishable to UMK3, but included the option to battle network competitors and included some minor error corrections and adjustments. However, this network version failed to achieve popularity, in part