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The Mortal Kombat series retains its share of secrets and the capacity to surprise, well past its 30th anniversary after its first appearance in coin-op establishments. This latest compilation covering the brand's formative years, which includes four original arcade titles, various home ports, and spinoffs, goes beyond simply a faithfully reproduced set of legendary games along with lesser-known entries — it functions as a detailed chronicle about the creation of the legendary series.

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

What Defines the Legacy Collection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like other vintage game anthologies from the creators at Digital Eclipse, part documentary, part playable archive. The collection includes 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 some of those games. The collection even includes the brand's experiments at spinoffs, like action-oriented titles Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — some of the brand's most criticized releases.

The Legacy Kollection consequently doesn't represent a greatest hits compilation, but an exploration into Mortal Kombat's early days, when the development team Midway and series co-creators the visionary developers were discovering methods to make a fighting game, digitized from footage of live performers, through experimentation. Observing the archival material — containing historical videos, new interviews, and reproductions of classic advertisements, illustrated stories, and even company memos — it's astonishing to observe how the franchise evolved from simple starts to a global sensation. It's truly remarkable to observe several young game developers, developing without clear direction or guidance, channel their pop-culture interests into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Documentary Portion

The documentary portion of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection traces the growth of Mortal Kombat and the developers' professional journeys at the no-longer-operating Midway. It then goes on to show how those same creators reckoned with how to routinely one-up themselves, encountering significant pressure to repeat their success. It represents an intriguing historical record composed of VHS tapes and traditional photos and manual drawings, which showcase the DIY nature of the series' creation process and how oral tradition helped disseminate its secrets and hidden aspects of Mortal Kombat in its arcade heyday. Presented in manageable segments, it's highly engaging series of documentary shorts that includes titles, illustrated stories, cinematic adaptations and including the humorous real-world tour. The collection additionally features some unused moves and digital fighter representations among its cutting-room-floor content.

Playable Component

Distributed throughout the five-part documentary's timeline are prompts to play the actual titles. During specific moments, viewers can hop into a combat game session or one of its home console ports to reexperience its mechanics and graphics, simulated with remarkable precision on modern hardware.

I allocated the majority of my time experiencing the original arcade titles, specifically Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Several releases here hold up, notably with local multiplayer matches. Yet competing with the aforementioned game's AI-controlled opponents is a reminder of how crude and unfair the development approached in the franchise's pioneering releases. CPU-controlled opponents clearly employ dishonest tactics or are alternatively incredibly stupid. If you don't have someone to play against — network gaming is included in numerous anthology releases, but too light on features — you'll be missing out.

Technical Presentation

The two dozen available combat games in the compilation, a combination of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are accurately emulated, though I've observed a couple minor issues — mostly input lag and sporadic glitches, particularly in Mortal Kombat 4. Even though the releases are primarily displayed authentically, developer Digital Eclipse has added several intelligent user experience improvements and graphical adjustment settings. For instance, you can choose to reveal combatant-unique actions during gameplay and select to activate unlimited duration to perform a Fatality. There are also options for accessing hidden fighters, eliminating the need to execute some esoteric trick to obtain them.

Visually, the games can be played with a variety of filters and visual treatments. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection provides highly authentic filters that mimic the cathode-ray tube displays of gaming halls or domestic TVs, or the greenscale screen of a Nintendo handheld. An especially welcome feature is the setting to activate gaming hall-style borders framing the gameplay, with the specific combat game you're playing faithfully and subtly duplicating against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's very artistically charming.

Extra Content

There are plenty of appreciated elements beyond the documentary and emulated arcade classics, including a music player that enables players to reexperience the soundtracks of different fighting releases absent the noise of fighters brutally eliminating opponents. There are also character profiles that include bios and numerous narrative components displayed via the idle displays of gaming hall releases and conclusions.

Lost Media Recovery

Among the most significant features 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 version of the game, a slightly updated version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an early attempt by Midway at head-to-head network battles in coin-op establishments. The Wavenet Edition of the game is almost exactly the same to UMK3, but provided the ability to challenge online opponents and featured various slight bug fixes and balance. But the Wavenet update never gained traction, in part