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Mortal Kombat retains its share of secrets and the power to astonish, more than 30 years after its first appearance in gaming halls. A new collection covering the franchise's earliest days, featuring four original arcade titles, various home ports, and spinoffs, is more than just a well-emulated set of legendary games including less celebrated releases — it functions as a rich documentary about the making of the renowned brand.

As a dedicated devotee of the franchise who has closely monitored its development and progression, there was much to discover for me to learn and appreciate about the series.

What Defines the Legacy Kollection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection comparable to previous classic compilations from the development team Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, section playable historical record. This compilation features 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. This compilation also features the brand's experiments at spinoffs, like combat-focused releases Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — two of the franchise's least successful installments.

The Legacy Kollection thus isn't a “best of” collection, but a study of the series' formative period, when developer Midway and franchise originators the visionary developers were figuring out how to develop a battle series, created from video recordings of real actors, as they went along. Viewing the historical footage — that features historical videos, recent conversations, and digital copies of vintage posters, graphic novels, and even interoffice faxes — it's astonishing to observe how the franchise evolved from simple starts to a international craze. It's truly remarkable to watch a handful of young game developers, working with minimal planning or guidance, focus their cultural enthusiasms into creating a legendary video game series.

Historical Section

The documentary portion of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection documents the ascent of the fighting series and its creators' careers at the no-longer-operating Midway. It then goes on to show how those same creators addressed how to routinely one-up themselves, facing no small amount of demand to replicate their achievements. It serves as a compelling period piece made from video recordings and analog photographs and hand-drawn illustrations, which showcase the DIY nature of the franchise's production method and how word of mouth helped disseminate its secrets and hidden aspects of Mortal Kombat in its golden era in coin-op establishments. Told in bite-sized chunks, it's highly engaging series of documentary shorts that covers video games, graphic novels, movies and even the silly live-action tour. It also includes some unreleased actions and character sprites among its previously unreleased material.

Interactive Experience

Distributed throughout the five-segment historical film's chronology are prompts to play the games themselves. During specific moments, viewers can hop into a combat game session or one of its home console ports to reexperience its mechanics and visual presentation, emulated nearly perfectly on modern hardware.

I allocated the majority of my time playing the arcade classics, particularly Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Many of the games here stand the test of time, particularly during local multiplayer matches. Yet competing with the computer-controlled adversaries in these titles is a demonstration of how basic and unfair the coding existed in early Mortal Kombat games. Computer-directed fighters clearly employ dishonest tactics or are otherwise dumb as rocks. Lacking another person to compete with — internet multiplayer exists in the majority of included games, but too light on features — you'll miss the full enjoyment.

Display Features

The 23 playable Mortal Kombat games in the anthology, a combination of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are accurately emulated, though I detected a handful slight anomalies — mainly control latency and sporadic glitches, particularly in Mortal Kombat 4. Even though the releases are largely presented as-is, the development team has added several intelligent user experience improvements and display customization choices. As an illustration, players have the option to display fighter-specific techniques during gameplay and select to activate unlimited duration to complete lethal techniques. Additionally available are settings for accessing hidden fighters, eliminating the need to execute obscure techniques to obtain them.

Artistically, the releases can be played with a variety of graphical effects and display options. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection provides highly authentic effects that reproduce the traditional television screens of arcades or home televisions, or the limited color monitor of a portable gaming device. A notably appreciated element is the option to have arcade-like bezels surrounding the screen, with the specific combat game you're playing accurately and softly reflecting against the simulated dark plastic edges. It's quite aesthetically pleasing.

Extra Content

There are plenty of appreciated elements beyond the documentary and emulated arcade classics, containing a soundtrack mode that lets you revisit the soundtracks of different fighting releases absent the noise of two kombatants viciously slaughtering each other. Additionally included are combatant descriptions that feature histories and numerous narrative components displayed via arcade games' attract mode screens and conclusions.

Historical Preservation

One of the biggest highlights for committed franchise followers is the opportunity to play a segment of previously unavailable content in the guise of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This version of the game, a moderately improved edition of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an initial venture by the company at head-to-head network battles in arcades. 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. Yet this online edition never gained traction, in part