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This iconic fighting game continues to hold many hidden mysteries and the power to astonish, over three decades after its first appearance in gaming halls. The recent anthology including the series' initial period, comprising four arcade games, multiple console adaptations, and related titles, transcends only a accurately simulated series of classics along with lesser-known entries — it additionally serves as a detailed chronicle about the making of the renowned brand.

Even as a lifelong Mortal Kombat fan who has closely monitored its development and progression, there was much to discover for me to learn and appreciate about the series.

What Constitutes the Legacy Kollection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection comparable to other vintage game anthologies from developer Digital Eclipse, part historical documentation, section playable historical record. The collection includes digitally recreated editions of the pioneering arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, plus console and handheld ports of certain releases. The collection even includes the franchise's attempts at spin-off titles, like action-oriented titles Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — two of the franchise's worst entries.

The Legacy Kollection consequently doesn't represent a greatest hits compilation, but a study of Mortal Kombat's early days, when the creators at Midway and brand founders Ed Boon and John Tobias were determining how to develop a battle series, produced using film material of real actors, as they went along. Viewing the historical footage — which includes vintage recordings, new interviews, and digital copies of vintage posters, illustrated stories, and even company memos — it's incredible to witness how the franchise evolved from modest origins to a global sensation. It's genuinely amazing to watch a handful of pioneering developers, operating with virtually no plan or guidance, direct their entertainment passions into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Historical Section

The documentary portion of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection documents the ascent of Mortal Kombat and its creators' careers at the currently closed Midway. It then goes on to show how those same creators reckoned with how to routinely one-up themselves, encountering significant stress to duplicate their success. It serves as a compelling period piece made from analog films and traditional photos and hand-drawn illustrations, which reveal the self-made character of Mortal Kombat's development and how oral tradition helped spread its rumors and hidden aspects of Mortal Kombat in its peak period in gaming halls. Delivered in easily digestible portions, it's an eminently watchable set of brief historical films that includes titles, illustrated stories, cinematic adaptations and including the humorous real-world tour. The compilation also contains some unreleased actions and character sprites among its archived development assets.

Playable Component

Distributed throughout the quintet of documentary episodes' progression are invitations to experience the original releases. At various points, users can directly access a Mortal Kombat title or one of its home console ports to reexperience its mechanics and artistic style, recreated with impressive accuracy on modern hardware.

I spent the bulk 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 direct competitive sessions. Yet competing with the aforementioned game's AI-controlled opponents is a reminder of how crude and unbalanced the coding existed in the franchise's pioneering releases. AI-managed characters obviously use unfair advantages or are otherwise dumb as rocks. Lacking someone to play against — online play is available in the majority of included games, but too light on features — the experience will be incomplete.

Technical Presentation

The 23 playable Mortal Kombat games in the anthology, a combination of arcade, console, and handheld games, are accurately emulated, though I've observed a few small quirks — primarily delayed responses and the occasional bug, especially with Mortal Kombat 4. Even though the releases are primarily displayed authentically, developer Digital Eclipse has incorporated various clever user experience improvements and graphical adjustment settings. For example, users can elect to show each character's special moves on-screen and choose to enable infinite time to complete lethal techniques. Additionally available are settings for accessing hidden fighters, removing the requirement to complete complicated methods to unlock them.

Graphically, the titles can be experienced with numerous visual enhancements and presentation styles. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection provides highly authentic effects that reproduce the cathode-ray tube displays of arcades or home televisions, or the monochrome green display of a Nintendo handheld. A particularly nice touch is the setting to activate gaming hall-style borders framing the gameplay, with the specific combat game you're playing accurately and softly reflecting against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's very artistically charming.

Additional Features

There are plenty of nice touches beyond the educational material and simulated classic games, containing a soundtrack mode that lets you revisit the tunes of various combat titles without the din of two kombatants viciously slaughtering each other. There are also fighter biographies that feature histories and multiple story elements displayed via arcade games' attract mode screens and endings.

Archival Discovery

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 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 included the option to battle network competitors and contained several small bug fixes and balance. But the Wavenet update failed to achieve popularity, in part