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Mortal Kombat continues to hold numerous undisclosed elements and the ability to amaze, more than 30 years after its initial debut in arcades. The recent anthology covering the brand's formative years, featuring a quartet of arcade releases, several home system versions, and spinoffs, transcends simply a faithfully reproduced collection of iconic titles along with lesser-known entries — it functions as a detailed chronicle about the development of the renowned brand.

Even as a lifelong devotee of the franchise who has carefully followed its development and progression, there was much to discover for me to discover and admire about the series.

What Defines the Legacy Kollection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like other vintage game anthologies from the development team Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, part playable archive. This compilation features emulated versions 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. The collection even includes the brand's experiments at spinoffs, like action games Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — some of the brand's least successful installments.

The Legacy Kollection consequently doesn't represent a “best of” collection, but an examination of Mortal Kombat's early days, when developer Midway and franchise originators the creative duo behind the series were figuring out how to develop a battle series, digitized from footage of actual people, through experimentation. Observing the archival material — that features archival footage, contemporary discussions, and scans of old flyers, graphic novels, and including internal communications — it's remarkable to see how the franchise evolved from humble beginnings to a worldwide phenomenon. It's genuinely amazing to watch a handful of pioneering developers, working with minimal planning or oversight, direct their entertainment passions into creating a legendary video game series.

Educational Component

The historical documentation of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection charts the rise of Mortal Kombat and its creators' careers at the currently closed Midway. It subsequently demonstrates how the very same individuals reckoned with how to regularly outdo their previous work, facing no small amount of stress to duplicate their success. It serves as a compelling period piece composed of video recordings and film-based pictures and manual drawings, which demonstrate the hands-on approach of Mortal Kombat's development and how oral tradition helped disseminate its secrets and secrets of MK in its golden era in coin-op establishments. Told in bite-sized chunks, it's an eminently watchable set of brief historical films that spans games, comics, films and even the silly live-action tour. The collection additionally features some unused moves and character sprites among its previously unreleased material.

Interactive Gaming

Distributed throughout the five-part documentary's timeline are opportunities to engage with the games themselves. At various points, viewers can hop into a combat game session or one of its home console ports to reexperience its mechanics and visual presentation, recreated with impressive accuracy on contemporary systems.

I allocated the majority of my time experiencing the original arcade titles, especially Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Many of the games here remain enjoyable, particularly during direct competitive sessions. Yet competing with the computer-controlled adversaries in these titles is a demonstration of how basic and unjust the programming was in early Mortal Kombat games. AI-managed characters obviously use unfair advantages or are conversely remarkably unintelligent. Without having another person to compete with — internet multiplayer exists in numerous anthology releases, but somewhat limited in options — the experience will be incomplete.

Visual Options

The twenty-three accessible Mortal Kombat titles in the collection, a combination of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are accurately emulated, though I have noticed a couple minor issues — mainly control latency and the occasional bug, particularly in Mortal Kombat 4. Although the titles are largely presented as-is, the development team has included some smart quality-of-life features and graphical adjustment settings. For instance, users can elect to display fighter-specific techniques on-screen and choose to enable endless periods to complete lethal techniques. Also included are choices for accessing hidden fighters, without having to perform complicated methods to obtain them.

Graphically, the titles can be enjoyed with multiple visual enhancements and presentation styles. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection offers very realistic options that simulate the CRT monitors of coin-op establishments or home televisions, or the monochrome green display of a Nintendo handheld. A notably appreciated element is the choice to enable arcade-like bezels surrounding the screen, with the specific combat game you're playing precisely and gently mirroring against the faux black plastic borders. It's quite aesthetically pleasing.

Additional Features

The collection includes numerous welcome features besides the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, including a music player that allows users to rediscover the tunes of various Mortal Kombat games absent the noise of fighters brutally eliminating opponents. Additionally included are fighter biographies that include bios and the various bits of lore displayed via the demo sequences of coin-op titles and endings.

Archival Discovery

A particularly notable inclusion for hardcore Mortal Kombat fans is the opportunity to play a piece of "lost media" in the form 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 arcades. The online-enabled release of the game is virtually identical to UMK3, but featured the capability to compete against internet adversaries and included some minor bug fixes and balance. But the Wavenet update failed to achieve popularity, in part