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Mortal Kombat retains its share of secrets and the power to astonish, more than 30 years after its original launch in arcades. A new collection covering the franchise's earliest days, comprising four arcade games, multiple console adaptations, and related titles, goes beyond only a accurately simulated set of legendary games including less celebrated releases — it functions as a rich documentary about the making of the renowned brand.

Being a long-time enthusiast of the series who has closely monitored its creation and evolution, there was plenty new for me to learn and appreciate about the series.

What Constitutes the Legacy Kollection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection similar to other vintage game anthologies from developer Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, section playable historical record. This compilation features digitally recreated editions of the pioneering 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. The collection even includes the franchise's attempts at derivative games, like action games Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — some of the brand's most criticized releases.

The Legacy Kollection thus isn't a “best of” collection, but an exploration into the franchise's initial era, when the development team Midway and series co-creators Ed Boon and John Tobias were figuring out how to develop a battle series, produced using film material of real actors, on the fly. Observing the archival material — that features historical videos, recent conversations, and reproductions of classic advertisements, graphic novels, and including internal communications — it's incredible to witness how the franchise evolved from humble beginnings to a international craze. It's genuinely amazing to watch a handful of young game developers, working with minimal planning or guidance, channel their pop-culture interests into creating a legendary video game series.

Educational Component

The historical documentation of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection charts the rise of the fighting series and its creators' careers at the now-defunct Midway. It subsequently demonstrates how those same creators reckoned with how to routinely one-up themselves, experiencing considerable demand to replicate their success. It represents an intriguing historical record composed of analog films and analog photographs and pencil sketches, which demonstrate the hands-on approach of Mortal Kombat's development and how personal recommendations helped spread its rumors and hidden aspects of Mortal Kombat in its peak period in gaming halls. Told in bite-sized chunks, it's thoroughly enjoyable collection of mini-documentaries that spans games, comics, films and even the silly live-action tour. It also includes some unreleased actions and digital fighter representations among its cutting-room-floor content.

Interactive Experience

Interspersed along the five-part documentary's timeline are prompts to play the actual titles. At certain intervals, viewers can hop into a Mortal Kombat title or a home system version to revisit its gameplay and artistic style, recreated with impressive accuracy on modern hardware.

I spent the bulk of my time engaging with the vintage coin-op games, specifically Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Numerous titles here stand the test of time, notably with one-on-one local play. However, facing the computer-controlled adversaries in these titles is a testament to how primitive and unjust the coding existed in the franchise's pioneering releases. Computer-directed fighters obviously use unfair advantages or are conversely remarkably unintelligent. If you don't have someone to play against — internet multiplayer exists in most titles in the collection, but too light on features — you'll be missing out.

Visual Options

The twenty-three accessible Mortal Kombat titles in the collection, a mix of arcade, console, and handheld games, are faithfully recreated, though I have noticed a few small quirks — mostly input lag and intermittent errors, particularly in Mortal Kombat 4. Even though the releases are mostly shown in their original form, developer Digital Eclipse has added several intelligent quality-of-life features and graphical adjustment settings. For instance, you can choose to reveal combatant-unique actions during gameplay and opt to have infinite time to complete lethal techniques. Also included are choices for unlocking secret characters, eliminating the need to execute obscure techniques to access them.

Visually, the games can be enjoyed with multiple filters and visual treatments. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection includes remarkably accurate options that simulate the cathode-ray tube displays of gaming halls or household displays, or the greenscale screen of a portable gaming device. A particularly nice touch is the choice to enable arcade-like bezels framing the gameplay, with the MK game of your choice faithfully and subtly duplicating against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's quite aesthetically pleasing.

Bonus Elements

Players will discover multiple appreciated elements beyond the educational material and simulated classic games, including a music player that lets you revisit the tunes of various combat titles without the din of combatants violently defeating each other. There are also character profiles that feature histories and numerous narrative components shown through the idle displays of gaming hall releases and final sequences.

Historical Preservation

One of the biggest highlights for dedicated series enthusiasts is the opportunity to play a example of historically missing material in the format 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 one-on-one internet-based play in coin-op establishments. The Wavenet Edition of the game is virtually identical to UMK3, but provided the ability to battle network competitors and included some minor glitch repairs and refinements. But the Wavenet update didn't find widespread adoption, in part