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This iconic fighting game continues to hold its share of secrets and the power to astonish, more than 30 years after its first appearance in gaming halls. This latest compilation spanning the franchise's earliest days, featuring four arcade games, multiple console adaptations, and derivative games, is more than just a well-emulated set of legendary games along with lesser-known entries — it additionally serves as a comprehensive historical account about the creation of the iconic franchise.

Being a long-time enthusiast of the series who has closely monitored its origins and transformation, there was numerous fresh aspects for me to learn and appreciate about the series.

What Makes the Historical Compilation

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection comparable to previous classic compilations from developer Digital Eclipse, part historical documentation, portion interactive museum. The anthology contains emulated versions of the pioneering arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, including television and mobile versions of several of these titles. This compilation also features the brand's experiments at spin-off titles, like action games Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — some of the brand's least successful installments.

The Legacy Kollection consequently doesn't represent a “best of” collection, but an exploration into the franchise's initial era, when developer Midway and series co-creators the visionary developers were determining how to create a combat title, created from video recordings of real actors, through experimentation. Viewing the historical footage — that features vintage recordings, recent conversations, and scans of old flyers, illustrated stories, and even company memos — it's incredible to witness how Mortal Kombat went from humble beginnings to a global sensation. It's truly remarkable to observe several early video game creators, operating with virtually no plan or supervision, focus their cultural enthusiasms into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Educational Component

The historical documentation of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection traces the growth of Mortal Kombat and its creators' careers at the now-defunct Midway. It further illustrates how the very same individuals contended with how to consistently surpass their achievements, facing no small amount of demand to replicate their achievements. It represents an intriguing historical record made from video recordings and analog photographs and hand-drawn illustrations, which reveal the self-made character 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 series of documentary shorts that includes titles, illustrated stories, cinematic adaptations and even the comical physical events. It also includes some unreleased actions and game character images among its cutting-room-floor content.

Interactive Experience

Placed within the five-segment historical film's chronology are opportunities to engage with the actual titles. During specific moments, users can directly access a combat game session or a console adaptation to reexperience its mechanics and visual presentation, simulated with remarkable precision on current technology.

I dedicated most of my time engaging with the vintage coin-op games, especially Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Numerous titles here stand the test of time, especially in one-on-one local play. Yet competing with the computer-controlled adversaries in these titles is a testament to how primitive and unbalanced the programming was in early Mortal Kombat games. Computer-directed fighters blatantly cheat to win or are otherwise dumb as rocks. Without having someone to play against — network gaming is included in the majority of included games, but somewhat limited in options — you'll be missing out.

Visual Options

The 23 playable Mortal Kombat games in the anthology, a mix of arcade, console, and handheld games, are precisely simulated, though I detected a handful slight anomalies — mostly input lag and intermittent errors, especially with Mortal Kombat 4. Even though the releases are mostly shown in their original form, developer Digital Eclipse has incorporated various clever user experience improvements and display customization choices. For instance, players have the option to reveal combatant-unique actions during gameplay and opt to have endless periods to complete lethal techniques. There are also options for revealing concealed combatants, removing the requirement to complete complicated methods to obtain them.

Visually, the games can be enjoyed with multiple visual enhancements and presentation styles. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection includes remarkably accurate filters that mimic the CRT monitors of arcades or domestic TVs, or the monochrome green display of a portable gaming device. An especially welcome feature is the setting to activate arcade-like bezels framing the gameplay, with the specific combat game you're playing faithfully and subtly duplicating against the faux black plastic borders. It's remarkably visually appealing.

Additional Features

There are plenty of appreciated elements beyond the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, containing a soundtrack mode that allows users to rediscover the music from multiple Mortal Kombat games absent the noise of two kombatants viciously slaughtering each other. There are also combatant descriptions that feature histories and the various bits of lore displayed via the idle displays of gaming hall releases and conclusions.

Archival Discovery

One of the biggest highlights for dedicated series enthusiasts is the opportunity to play a segment of previously unavailable content in the guise of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This specific release, a slightly updated version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an pioneering effort from the developer at one-on-one internet-based play in arcades. The online-enabled release of the game is almost exactly the same to UMK3, but provided the ability to compete against internet adversaries and included some minor glitch repairs and refinements. Yet this online edition failed to achieve popularity, in part