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This iconic fighting game continues to hold its share of secrets and the ability to amaze, more than 30 years after its initial debut in coin-op establishments. A new collection spanning the brand's formative years, featuring a quartet of arcade releases, various home ports, and spinoffs, transcends just a well-emulated collection of iconic titles including less celebrated releases — it functions as a rich documentary about the making of the iconic franchise.

As a dedicated Mortal Kombat fan who has closely monitored its origins and transformation, there was plenty new for me to discover and admire about the series.

What Defines the Historical Compilation

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection similar to previous classic compilations from developer Digital Eclipse, part historical documentation, part playable archive. The anthology contains digitally recreated editions of the first arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, along with home system and portable adaptations of certain releases. The collection even includes the franchise's attempts at derivative games, like combat-focused releases Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — among the series' most criticized releases.

The Legacy Kollection consequently doesn't represent a “best of” collection, but an examination of Mortal Kombat's early days, when the development team Midway and franchise originators Ed Boon and John Tobias were determining how to develop a battle series, produced using film material of real actors, as they went along. Viewing the historical footage — containing vintage recordings, new interviews, and digital copies of vintage posters, comics, and even interoffice faxes — it's remarkable to see how Mortal Kombat went from humble beginnings to a global sensation. It's frankly astounding to see a group of young game developers, developing without clear direction or oversight, channel their pop-culture interests into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Educational Component

The educational segment of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection charts the rise of the fighting series and its creators' careers at the currently closed Midway. It subsequently demonstrates how those same creators reckoned with how to consistently surpass their achievements, facing no small amount of pressure to repeat their success. It represents an intriguing historical record made from video recordings and analog photographs and manual drawings, which showcase the DIY nature of Mortal Kombat's development and how oral tradition helped spread its rumors and undisclosed elements of the series in its arcade heyday. Presented in manageable segments, it's highly engaging set of brief historical films that spans games, comics, films and even the silly live-action tour. The collection additionally features some never-implemented techniques and game character images among its cutting-room-floor content.

Playable Component

Distributed throughout the quintet of documentary episodes' progression are prompts to play the games themselves. At certain intervals, viewers can hop into a game of Mortal Kombat or a home system version to revisit its gameplay and artistic style, emulated nearly perfectly on contemporary systems.

I allocated the majority of my time engaging with the vintage coin-op games, particularly Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Many of the games here stand the test of time, especially in direct competitive sessions. However, facing the artificial intelligence fighters in these releases is a reminder of how crude and unfair the coding existed in the series' initial installments. CPU-controlled opponents obviously use unfair advantages or are alternatively incredibly stupid. Without having someone to play against — online play is available in numerous anthology releases, but too light on features — the experience will be incomplete.

Visual Options

The twenty-three accessible Mortal Kombat titles in the compilation, a blend of arcade, console, and handheld games, are accurately emulated, though I detected a few small quirks — primarily delayed responses and sporadic glitches, especially with Mortal Kombat 4. Even though the releases are primarily displayed authentically, the creators has incorporated various clever convenience enhancements and display customization choices. As an illustration, you can choose to reveal combatant-unique actions during gameplay and opt to have endless periods to perform a Fatality. Additionally available are settings for revealing concealed combatants, removing the requirement to complete obscure techniques to access them.

Visually, the games can be enjoyed with multiple visual enhancements and presentation styles. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection provides highly authentic options that simulate the cathode-ray tube displays of arcades or domestic TVs, or the limited color monitor of a Nintendo handheld. A notably appreciated element is the option to have coin-op-inspired frames surrounding the screen, with the MK game of your choice accurately and softly reflecting against the faux black plastic borders. It's remarkably visually appealing.

Bonus Elements

The collection includes numerous appreciated elements beyond the educational material and simulated classic games, featuring an audio component that allows users to rediscover the soundtracks of different combat titles absent the noise of combatants violently defeating each other. Also present are combatant descriptions that feature histories and multiple story elements displayed via arcade games' attract mode screens and final sequences.

Archival Discovery

Among the most significant features for hardcore Mortal Kombat fans is the chance to experience a piece of "lost media" in the form of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This particular edition, a somewhat revised iteration of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an pioneering effort from the developer at head-to-head network battles 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 never gained traction, in part