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This iconic fighting game still possesses its share of secrets and the ability to amaze, over three decades after its first appearance in gaming halls. The recent anthology covering the brand's formative years, comprising a quartet of arcade releases, multiple console adaptations, and spinoffs, is more than just a well-emulated collection of iconic titles along with lesser-known entries — it additionally serves as a comprehensive historical account about the making of the legendary series.

As a dedicated devotee of the franchise who has carefully followed its development and progression, there was numerous fresh aspects for me to understand and value about the series.

What Defines the Legacy Collection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection similar to previous classic compilations from the development team Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, portion interactive museum. The collection includes emulated versions of the original arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, along with home system and portable adaptations of some of those games. The anthology additionally contains the brand's experiments at derivative games, like action-oriented titles Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — among the series' least successful installments.

The Legacy Kollection consequently doesn't represent a greatest hits compilation, but an exploration into Mortal Kombat's early days, when the creators at Midway and series co-creators the visionary developers were figuring out how to make a fighting game, digitized from footage of live performers, as they went along. Observing the archival material — which includes archival footage, new interviews, and scans of old flyers, comics, and including internal communications — it's remarkable to see how the franchise evolved from humble beginnings to a worldwide phenomenon. It's truly remarkable to see a group of early video game creators, working with minimal planning or guidance, channel their pop-culture interests into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Documentary Portion

The historical documentation of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection traces the growth of Mortal Kombat and its creators' careers at the no-longer-operating Midway. It subsequently demonstrates how those same creators reckoned with how to routinely one-up themselves, facing no small amount of demand to replicate their success. It serves as a compelling period piece made from analog films and film-based pictures and hand-drawn illustrations, which reveal the self-made character of the franchise's production method and how oral tradition helped circulate its mysteries and undisclosed elements of the series in its peak period in gaming halls. Told in bite-sized chunks, it's an eminently watchable set of brief historical films that includes titles, illustrated stories, cinematic adaptations and including the humorous real-world tour. The compilation also contains some unused moves and digital fighter representations among its previously unreleased material.

Interactive Experience

Placed within the quintet of documentary episodes' progression are invitations to experience the actual titles. At various points, viewers can hop into a Mortal Kombat title or a home system version to rediscover its combat system and artistic style, recreated with impressive accuracy on modern hardware.

I spent the bulk 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 hold up, particularly during local multiplayer matches. But playing against the computer-controlled adversaries in these titles is a demonstration of how basic and unjust the programming was in early Mortal Kombat games. Computer-directed fighters blatantly cheat to win or are conversely remarkably unintelligent. Lacking another person to compete with — online play is available in most titles in the collection, but somewhat limited in options — you'll be missing out.

Display Features

The 23 playable Mortal Kombat games in the anthology, a blend of arcade, console, and handheld games, are faithfully recreated, though I have noticed a handful slight anomalies — mostly input lag and the occasional bug, notably within Mortal Kombat 4. Even though the releases are mostly shown in their original form, the development team has included some smart convenience enhancements and visual presentation options. As an illustration, users can elect to reveal combatant-unique actions on the display and choose to enable infinite time to perform a Fatality. There are also options for unlocking secret characters, without having to perform obscure techniques to access them.

Artistically, the releases can be played with a variety of filters and visual treatments. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection provides highly authentic options that simulate the cathode-ray tube displays of gaming halls or home televisions, or the monochrome green display of a Game Boy. A notably appreciated element is the option to have coin-op-inspired frames surrounding the screen, 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

There are plenty of nice touches beyond the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, containing a soundtrack mode that enables players to reexperience the soundtracks of different fighting releases without the din of two kombatants viciously slaughtering each other. Also present are character profiles that feature histories 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 opportunity to play a example of historically missing material in the form of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This specific release, a moderately improved edition of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an initial venture by the company at direct online competitive gaming in gaming halls. The Wavenet Edition of the game is almost exactly the same to UMK3, but provided the ability to compete against internet adversaries and featured various slight bug fixes and balance. However, this network version didn't find widespread adoption, in part