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The Mortal Kombat series still possesses numerous undisclosed elements and the power to astonish, well past its 30th anniversary after its initial debut in arcades. A new collection covering the franchise's earliest days, which includes a quartet of arcade releases, several home system versions, and derivative games, transcends only a accurately simulated collection of iconic titles and not-so-classics — it additionally serves as a detailed chronicle about the development of the iconic franchise.

Even as a lifelong enthusiast of the series who has carefully followed its creation and evolution, there was much to discover for me to understand and value about the series.

What Defines the Legacy Collection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like other vintage game anthologies from the creators at Digital Eclipse, part historical documentation, part playable archive. The anthology contains simulated releases of the original arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, including television and mobile versions of some of those games. This compilation also features the series' ventures at spinoffs, like action games Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — two of the franchise's most criticized releases.

The Legacy Kollection consequently doesn't represent a highlight reel anthology, but a study of the franchise's initial era, when developer Midway and franchise originators the visionary developers were discovering methods to create a combat title, digitized from footage of real actors, as they went along. Viewing the historical footage — containing archival footage, contemporary discussions, and reproductions of classic advertisements, comics, and even company memos — it's incredible to witness how the franchise evolved from humble beginnings to a worldwide phenomenon. It's genuinely amazing to observe several young game developers, operating with virtually no plan or oversight, direct their entertainment passions into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Documentary Portion

The documentary portion of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection charts the rise of the fighting series and the developers' professional journeys at the now-defunct Midway. It further illustrates how those same creators reckoned with how to consistently surpass their achievements, encountering significant demand to replicate their achievements. It serves as a compelling period piece composed of VHS tapes and film-based pictures and hand-drawn illustrations, which reveal the self-made character of the series' creation process and how word of mouth helped disseminate its secrets and undisclosed elements of the series in its arcade heyday. Told in bite-sized chunks, it's highly engaging series of documentary shorts that covers video games, graphic novels, movies and including the humorous real-world tour. The compilation also contains some unreleased actions and game character images among its previously unreleased material.

Interactive Experience

Placed within the quintet of documentary episodes' progression are invitations to experience the games themselves. At various points, audience members can jump into a Mortal Kombat title or one of its home console ports to revisit its gameplay and graphics, simulated with remarkable precision on contemporary systems.

I allocated the majority of my time experiencing the original arcade titles, specifically Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Many of the games here hold up, particularly during direct competitive sessions. Yet competing with the artificial intelligence fighters in these releases is a reminder of how crude and unjust the coding existed in early Mortal Kombat games. Computer-directed fighters clearly employ dishonest tactics or are conversely remarkably unintelligent. Lacking a human opponent — internet multiplayer exists in the majority of included games, but too light on features — you'll be missing out.

Visual Options

The two dozen available combat games in the anthology, a mix of arcade, console, and handheld games, are faithfully recreated, though I detected a couple minor issues — mainly control latency and intermittent errors, especially with Mortal Kombat 4. Even though the releases are largely presented as-is, the creators has added several intelligent quality-of-life features and display customization choices. As an illustration, players have the option to display fighter-specific techniques during gameplay and opt to have infinite time to perform a Fatality. There are also options for unlocking secret characters, removing the requirement to complete complicated methods to obtain them.

Visually, the games can be experienced with numerous visual enhancements and presentation styles. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection offers very realistic options that simulate the traditional television screens of arcades or household displays, or the greenscale screen of a Game Boy. A notably appreciated element is the choice to enable coin-op-inspired frames framing the gameplay, with the MK game of your choice precisely and gently mirroring against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's quite aesthetically pleasing.

Additional Features

There are plenty of nice touches beyond the educational material and simulated classic games, containing a soundtrack mode that enables players to reexperience the soundtracks of different fighting releases excluding the sounds of combatants violently defeating each other. There are also fighter biographies that feature histories and the various bits of lore presented by the demo sequences of coin-op titles and conclusions.

Archival Discovery

One of the biggest highlights for dedicated series enthusiasts is the opportunity to play a segment of previously unavailable content in the format of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This particular edition, a slightly updated version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an early attempt by Midway at head-to-head network battles in gaming halls. 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 glitch repairs and refinements. But the Wavenet update failed to achieve popularity, in part