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This iconic fighting game continues to hold its share of secrets and the power to astonish, over three decades after its initial debut in coin-op establishments. This latest compilation covering the franchise's earliest days, which includes four original arcade titles, various home ports, and spinoffs, is more than just a well-emulated set of legendary games along with lesser-known entries — it additionally serves as a rich documentary about the development of the iconic franchise.

Being a long-time Mortal Kombat fan who has closely monitored its origins and transformation, there was numerous fresh aspects for me to learn and appreciate about the series.

What Makes the Legacy Collection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like other retro collections from developer Digital Eclipse, part documentary, part playable archive. This compilation features simulated releases of the original arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, along with home system and portable adaptations of several of these titles. This compilation also features 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 a study of Mortal Kombat's early days, when the development team Midway and franchise originators Ed Boon and John Tobias were discovering methods to create a combat title, created from video recordings of live performers, through experimentation. Viewing the historical footage — containing archival footage, recent conversations, and reproductions of classic advertisements, graphic novels, and even interoffice faxes — it's remarkable to see how Mortal Kombat went from humble beginnings to a global sensation. It's truly remarkable to see a group of pioneering developers, developing without clear direction or supervision, direct their entertainment passions into creating a legendary video game series.

Educational Component

The educational segment of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection documents the ascent of the fighting series and the founders' vocational paths at the no-longer-operating Midway. It subsequently demonstrates how the very same individuals reckoned with how to routinely one-up themselves, encountering significant demand to replicate their achievements. It represents an intriguing historical record made from analog films and analog photographs and pencil sketches, which reveal the self-made character of the franchise's production method and how personal recommendations helped circulate its mysteries and hidden aspects of Mortal Kombat in its peak period in gaming halls. Told in bite-sized chunks, it's highly engaging series of documentary shorts that includes titles, illustrated stories, cinematic adaptations and even the silly live-action tour. It also includes some unused moves and character sprites among its previously unreleased material.

Interactive Gaming

Distributed throughout the quintet of documentary episodes' progression are invitations to experience the games themselves. During specific moments, audience members can jump into a combat game session or a console adaptation to revisit its gameplay and artistic style, emulated nearly perfectly on contemporary systems.

I allocated the majority of my time experiencing the original arcade titles, particularly Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Several releases here hold up, notably with direct competitive sessions. Yet competing with the artificial intelligence fighters in these releases is a testament to how primitive and unfair the programming was in the franchise's pioneering releases. AI-managed characters obviously use unfair advantages or are alternatively incredibly stupid. Lacking another person to compete with — online play is available in most titles in the collection, but too light on features — the experience will be incomplete.

Technical Presentation

The twenty-three accessible Mortal Kombat titles in the anthology, a blend of arcade, console, and handheld games, are faithfully recreated, though I detected a couple minor issues — primarily delayed responses and intermittent errors, notably within Mortal Kombat 4. Even though the releases are primarily displayed authentically, the creators has incorporated various clever user experience improvements and graphical adjustment settings. For example, users can elect to display fighter-specific techniques on the display and opt to have unlimited duration to execute finishing moves. Also included are choices for revealing concealed combatants, eliminating the need to execute some esoteric trick to obtain them.

Graphically, the titles can be played with a variety of filters and visual treatments. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection includes remarkably accurate filters that mimic the cathode-ray tube displays of gaming halls or domestic TVs, or the limited color monitor of a Nintendo handheld. An especially welcome feature is the option to have coin-op-inspired frames surrounding the screen, with your selected Mortal Kombat title accurately and softly reflecting against the simulated dark plastic edges. It's quite aesthetically pleasing.

Extra Content

Players will discover multiple nice touches beyond the educational material and simulated classic games, including a music player that enables players to reexperience the tunes of various fighting releases absent the noise of two kombatants viciously slaughtering each other. Also present are character profiles that include bios and numerous narrative components presented by arcade games' attract mode screens and final sequences.

Archival Discovery

Among the most significant features for committed franchise followers is the opportunity to play a piece of "lost media" in the guise of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This specific release, a somewhat revised iteration of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an early attempt by Midway at direct online competitive gaming in coin-op establishments. The online-enabled release of the game is virtually identical to UMK3, but included the option to battle network competitors and contained several small error corrections and adjustments. Yet this online edition didn't find widespread adoption, in part