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This iconic fighting game retains its share of secrets and the capacity to surprise, more than 30 years after its original launch in gaming halls. This latest compilation including the series' initial period, featuring a quartet of arcade releases, several home system versions, and derivative games, transcends simply a faithfully reproduced series of classics including less celebrated releases — it additionally serves as a rich documentary about the development of the renowned brand.

Being a long-time devotee of the franchise who has paid close attention its development and progression, there was numerous fresh aspects for me to understand and value about the series.

What Makes the Historical Compilation

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like other vintage game anthologies from the development team Digital Eclipse, part historical documentation, portion interactive museum. The anthology contains simulated releases of the pioneering arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, plus console and handheld ports of several of these titles. The anthology additionally contains the franchise's attempts at derivative games, like combat-focused releases Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — two of the franchise's most criticized releases.

The Legacy Kollection thus isn't a greatest hits compilation, but a study of the series' formative period, when the creators at Midway and brand founders the visionary developers were figuring out how to create a combat title, created from video recordings of real actors, on the fly. Observing the archival material — containing vintage recordings, recent conversations, and scans of old flyers, illustrated stories, and even interoffice faxes — it's astonishing to observe how the series transformed from modest origins to a worldwide phenomenon. It's truly remarkable to observe several young game developers, operating with virtually no plan or supervision, focus their cultural enthusiasms into creating a legendary video game series.

Documentary Portion

The historical documentation of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection documents the ascent of Mortal Kombat and the developers' professional journeys at the no-longer-operating Midway. It subsequently demonstrates how the very same individuals reckoned with how to consistently surpass their achievements, facing no small amount of pressure to repeat their triumphs. It represents an intriguing historical record made from VHS tapes and film-based pictures and manual drawings, which showcase the DIY nature of the series' creation process and how oral tradition helped circulate its mysteries and secrets of MK in its peak period in gaming halls. Presented in manageable segments, it's an eminently watchable series of documentary shorts that spans games, comics, films and even the silly live-action tour. The compilation also contains some unreleased actions and character sprites among its cutting-room-floor content.

Playable Component

Distributed throughout the quintet of documentary episodes' progression are prompts to play the original releases. During specific moments, viewers can hop into a combat game session or a home system version to reexperience its mechanics and artistic style, emulated nearly perfectly on contemporary systems.

I spent the bulk of my time engaging with the vintage coin-op games, especially Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Many of the games here hold up, notably with direct competitive sessions. But playing against the computer-controlled adversaries in these titles is a reminder of how crude and unbalanced the programming was in early Mortal Kombat games. AI-managed characters blatantly cheat to win or are otherwise dumb as rocks. Lacking another person to compete with — online play is available in numerous anthology releases, but too light on features — you'll miss the full enjoyment.

Technical Presentation

The 23 playable Mortal Kombat games in the compilation, a combination of gaming hall, television, and mobile releases, are faithfully recreated, though I detected a couple minor issues — mostly input lag and the occasional bug, notably within Mortal Kombat 4. Although the titles are largely presented as-is, the creators has incorporated various clever user experience improvements and display customization choices. For instance, players have the option to reveal combatant-unique actions on the display and select to activate unlimited duration to perform a Fatality. Also included are choices for revealing concealed combatants, eliminating the need to execute complicated methods to access them.

Graphically, the titles can be enjoyed with multiple filters and visual treatments. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection offers very realistic effects that reproduce the traditional television screens of gaming halls or home televisions, or the monochrome green display of a Game Boy. An especially welcome feature is the setting to activate coin-op-inspired frames surrounding the screen, with your selected Mortal Kombat title precisely and gently mirroring against the faux black plastic borders. It's very artistically charming.

Additional Features

There are plenty of welcome features besides the documentary and emulated arcade classics, including a music player that allows users to rediscover the soundtracks of different combat titles excluding the sounds of two kombatants viciously slaughtering each other. Additionally included are combatant descriptions that contain backgrounds and multiple story elements displayed via arcade games' attract mode screens and final sequences.

Lost Media Recovery

Among the most significant features for dedicated series enthusiasts is the opportunity to play a piece of "lost media" in the guise of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This particular edition, a moderately improved edition of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an pioneering effort from the developer at one-on-one internet-based play in arcades. The Wavenet Edition of the game is virtually identical to UMK3, but featured the capability to compete against internet adversaries and included some minor glitch repairs and refinements. But the Wavenet update didn't find widespread adoption, in part