🔗 Share this article

The Mortal Kombat series retains its share of secrets and the ability to amaze, more than 30 years after its original launch in coin-op establishments. This latest compilation covering the franchise's earliest days, featuring a quartet of arcade releases, multiple console adaptations, and spinoffs, is more than just a well-emulated set of legendary games along with lesser-known entries — it's also a rich documentary about the development of the legendary series.

Even as a lifelong devotee of the franchise who has carefully followed its development and progression, there was numerous fresh aspects for me to discover and admire about the series.

What Constitutes the Legacy Collection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like other retro collections from the creators at Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, part playable archive. The collection includes emulated versions of the original arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, including television and mobile versions of certain releases. This compilation also features the franchise's attempts at spin-off titles, like action games Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — among the series' worst entries.

The Legacy Kollection consequently doesn't represent a “best of” collection, but an examination of the series' formative period, when the creators at Midway and franchise originators Ed Boon and John Tobias were figuring out how to develop a battle series, digitized from footage of real actors, as they went along. Watching the documentary — which includes vintage recordings, recent conversations, and scans of old flyers, illustrated stories, and even interoffice faxes — it's incredible to witness how the franchise evolved from modest origins to a worldwide phenomenon. It's truly remarkable to observe several early video game creators, developing without clear direction or oversight, direct their entertainment passions into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Documentary Portion

The historical documentation of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection traces the growth of the fighting series and the founders' vocational paths at the currently closed Midway. It further illustrates how those same creators reckoned with how to consistently surpass their achievements, facing no small amount of stress to duplicate their success. It represents an intriguing historical record composed of analog films and traditional photos and hand-drawn illustrations, which demonstrate the hands-on approach of Mortal Kombat's development and how word of mouth helped circulate its mysteries and secrets of MK in its golden era in coin-op establishments. Presented in manageable segments, it's highly engaging set of brief historical films that includes titles, illustrated stories, cinematic adaptations and including the humorous real-world tour. The collection additionally features some unreleased actions and digital fighter representations among its cutting-room-floor content.

Playable Component

Placed within the five-segment historical film's chronology are opportunities to engage with the actual titles. During specific moments, audience members can jump into a combat game session or a home system version to reexperience its mechanics and artistic style, recreated with impressive accuracy on modern hardware.

I dedicated most 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 one-on-one local play. But playing against the computer-controlled adversaries in these titles is a demonstration of how basic and unjust the coding existed in early Mortal Kombat games. CPU-controlled opponents obviously use unfair advantages or are conversely remarkably unintelligent. Lacking someone to play against — internet multiplayer exists in the majority of included games, but somewhat limited in options — you'll miss the full enjoyment.

Technical Presentation

The 23 playable Mortal Kombat games in the anthology, a blend of arcade, console, and handheld games, are precisely simulated, though I have noticed a handful slight anomalies — primarily delayed responses and the occasional bug, particularly in Mortal Kombat 4. Although the titles are primarily displayed authentically, the development team has incorporated various clever quality-of-life features and graphical adjustment settings. For instance, you can choose to show each character's special moves on-screen and select to activate endless periods to complete lethal techniques. There are also options for revealing concealed combatants, eliminating the need to execute complicated methods to access them.

Visually, the games can be played with a variety of graphical effects and display options. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection offers very realistic options that simulate the traditional television screens of arcades or household displays, or the monochrome green display of a portable gaming device. An especially welcome feature is the option to have gaming hall-style borders framing the gameplay, with the MK game of your choice accurately and softly reflecting against the simulated dark plastic edges. It's remarkably visually appealing.

Bonus Elements

The collection includes numerous welcome features besides the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, containing a soundtrack mode that allows users to rediscover the soundtracks of different fighting releases absent the noise of two kombatants viciously slaughtering each other. There are also fighter biographies that include bios and the various bits of lore shown through the idle displays of gaming hall releases and final sequences.

Historical Preservation

A particularly notable inclusion for committed franchise followers is the ability to access a example of historically missing material in the guise of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This specific release, a moderately improved edition of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an initial venture by the company at one-on-one internet-based play in arcades. The Wavenet Edition of the game is practically indistinguishable to UMK3, but provided the ability to compete against internet adversaries and featured various slight error corrections and adjustments. But the Wavenet update never gained traction, in part