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The Mortal Kombat series retains its share of secrets and the power to astonish, well past its 30th anniversary after its first appearance in coin-op establishments. A new collection including the brand's formative years, comprising four original arcade titles, various home ports, and derivative games, transcends just a well-emulated set of legendary games and not-so-classics — it additionally serves as a comprehensive historical account about the development of the legendary series.

Even as a lifelong enthusiast of the series who has closely monitored its development and progression, there was much to discover for me to understand and value about the series.

What Defines the Legacy Kollection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like previous classic compilations from the creators at Digital Eclipse, part historical documentation, portion interactive museum. The anthology contains 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. 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 — some of the brand's most criticized releases.

The Legacy Kollection is therefore not a greatest hits compilation, but an exploration into Mortal Kombat's early days, when developer Midway and series co-creators the visionary developers were discovering methods to create a combat title, created from video recordings of actual people, on the fly. Observing the archival material — containing archival footage, contemporary discussions, and digital copies of vintage posters, comics, and including internal communications — it's remarkable to see how the series transformed from modest origins to a global sensation. It's frankly astounding to observe several young game developers, working with minimal planning or guidance, focus their cultural enthusiasms into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Historical Section

The documentary portion of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection charts the rise of the combat franchise and its creators' careers at the currently closed Midway. It then goes on to show how the very same individuals contended with how to consistently surpass their achievements, encountering significant pressure to repeat their success. It serves as a compelling period piece constructed using video recordings and traditional photos and hand-drawn illustrations, which showcase the DIY nature of the franchise's production method and how personal recommendations helped spread its rumors and hidden aspects of Mortal Kombat 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. It also includes some unused moves and game character images among its archived development assets.

Interactive Experience

Distributed throughout the five-part documentary's timeline are invitations to experience the original releases. During specific moments, viewers can hop into a Mortal Kombat title or one of its home console ports to reexperience its mechanics and artistic style, recreated with impressive accuracy on modern hardware.

I spent the bulk of my time playing the arcade classics, specifically Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Numerous titles here stand the test of time, notably with one-on-one local play. But playing against the computer-controlled adversaries in these titles is a demonstration of how basic and unfair the coding existed in the franchise's pioneering releases. CPU-controlled opponents blatantly cheat to win or are conversely remarkably unintelligent. Without having someone to play against — internet multiplayer exists in most titles in the collection, but too light on features — the experience will be incomplete.

Display Features

The two dozen available combat games in the anthology, a mix of arcade, console, and handheld games, are precisely simulated, though I have noticed a handful slight anomalies — primarily delayed responses and intermittent errors, especially with Mortal Kombat 4. Although the titles are mostly shown in their original form, developer Digital Eclipse has incorporated various clever quality-of-life features and visual presentation options. For example, users can elect to display fighter-specific techniques during gameplay and choose to enable infinite time to complete lethal techniques. Additionally available are settings for accessing hidden fighters, eliminating the need to execute some esoteric trick to obtain them.

Visually, the games can be played with a variety of visual enhancements and presentation styles. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection provides highly authentic options that simulate the CRT monitors of gaming halls or household displays, or the limited color monitor of a Game Boy. An especially welcome feature is the choice to enable gaming hall-style borders surrounding the screen, with the specific combat game you're playing faithfully and subtly duplicating against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's very artistically charming.

Extra Content

The collection includes numerous nice touches beyond the documentary and emulated arcade classics, featuring an audio component that lets you revisit the music from multiple Mortal Kombat games excluding the sounds of combatants violently defeating each other. Also present are fighter biographies that include bios and multiple story elements displayed via the idle displays of gaming hall releases and endings.

Historical Preservation

One of the biggest highlights for dedicated series enthusiasts is the ability to access a example of historically missing material in the format of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This particular edition, a moderately improved edition of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an pioneering effort from the developer at direct online competitive gaming in arcades. The Wavenet Edition of the game is virtually identical to UMK3, but provided the ability to battle network competitors and contained several small glitch repairs and refinements. Yet this online edition didn't find widespread adoption, in part