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The Mortal Kombat series still possesses its share of secrets and the power to astonish, over three decades after its first appearance in gaming halls. The recent anthology spanning the franchise's earliest days, featuring four arcade games, multiple console adaptations, and spinoffs, is more than simply a faithfully reproduced collection of iconic titles along with lesser-known entries — it additionally serves as a comprehensive historical account about the development of the iconic franchise.

Being a long-time Mortal Kombat fan who has closely monitored its origins and transformation, 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 developer Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, portion interactive museum. 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 brand's experiments at derivative games, like action games 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 an examination of the franchise's initial era, when developer Midway and series co-creators the creative duo behind the series were determining how to create a combat title, digitized from footage of real actors, on the fly. Observing the archival material — which includes archival footage, new interviews, and digital copies of vintage posters, illustrated stories, and even company memos — it's astonishing to observe how the series transformed from simple starts to a global sensation. It's genuinely amazing to watch a handful of early video game creators, working with minimal planning or oversight, channel their pop-culture interests into establishing an enduring gaming brand.

Educational Component

The documentary portion of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection traces the growth of the combat franchise and the developers' professional journeys at the no-longer-operating Midway. It further illustrates how the very same individuals contended with how to consistently surpass their achievements, encountering significant stress to duplicate their achievements. It's a fascinating time capsule made from video recordings and film-based pictures and hand-drawn illustrations, which showcase the DIY nature of the series' creation process and how personal recommendations helped circulate its mysteries and hidden aspects of Mortal Kombat in its arcade heyday. Told in bite-sized chunks, it's an eminently watchable set of brief historical films that spans games, comics, films and even the silly live-action tour. It also includes some unreleased actions and game character images among its archived development assets.

Interactive Experience

Distributed throughout the five-part documentary's timeline are opportunities to engage with the actual titles. During specific moments, viewers can hop into a game of Mortal Kombat or one of its home console ports to revisit its gameplay and visual presentation, simulated with remarkable precision on modern hardware.

I dedicated most of my time playing the arcade classics, particularly Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Many of the games here remain enjoyable, notably with local multiplayer matches. However, facing the artificial intelligence fighters in these releases is a reminder of how crude and unjust the development approached in the series' initial installments. CPU-controlled opponents clearly employ dishonest tactics or are conversely remarkably unintelligent. Without having another person to compete with — internet multiplayer exists in numerous anthology releases, but somewhat limited in options — the experience will be incomplete.

Technical Presentation

The 23 playable Mortal Kombat games in the compilation, a combination of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are faithfully recreated, though I detected a few small quirks — mainly control latency and the occasional bug, particularly in Mortal Kombat 4. And while the games are mostly shown in their original form, the development team has added several intelligent convenience enhancements and display customization choices. For instance, players have the option to display fighter-specific techniques during gameplay and select to activate unlimited duration to complete lethal techniques. Additionally available are settings for accessing hidden fighters, removing the requirement to complete obscure techniques to obtain them.

Graphically, the titles can be experienced with numerous filters and visual treatments. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection offers very realistic effects that reproduce the traditional television screens of gaming halls or household displays, or the limited color monitor of a Game Boy. A particularly nice touch is the option to have coin-op-inspired frames framing the gameplay, with the specific combat game you're playing faithfully and subtly duplicating against the simulated dark plastic edges. It's quite aesthetically pleasing.

Extra Content

Players will discover multiple nice touches beyond the educational material and simulated classic games, featuring an audio component that lets you revisit the music from multiple combat titles excluding the sounds of fighters brutally eliminating opponents. There are also character profiles that include bios and multiple story elements presented by the demo sequences of coin-op titles and final sequences.

Historical Preservation

A particularly notable inclusion for committed franchise followers is the chance to experience a example of historically missing material in the form of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This specific release, a slightly updated version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an early attempt by Midway at one-on-one internet-based play in coin-op establishments. This network version of the game is practically indistinguishable to UMK3, but provided the ability to compete against internet adversaries and contained several small glitch repairs and refinements. However, this network version failed to achieve popularity, in part