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This iconic fighting game continues to hold numerous undisclosed elements and the ability to amaze, more than 30 years after its first appearance in coin-op establishments. A new collection covering the franchise's earliest days, featuring a quartet of arcade releases, various home ports, and spinoffs, goes beyond simply a faithfully reproduced set of legendary games including less celebrated releases — it additionally serves as a comprehensive historical account about the development of the legendary series.

Being a long-time Mortal Kombat fan who has paid close attention 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 vintage game anthologies from developer Digital Eclipse, part documentary, portion interactive museum. The collection includes digitally recreated editions of the pioneering 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 series' ventures at spinoffs, like action games Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — some of the brand's least successful installments.

The Legacy Kollection thus isn't a highlight reel anthology, but a study of the franchise's initial era, when the development team Midway and franchise originators the visionary developers were determining how to create a combat title, produced using film material of real actors, through experimentation. Watching the documentary — containing vintage recordings, recent conversations, and reproductions of classic advertisements, comics, and even company memos — it's astonishing to observe how Mortal Kombat went from humble beginnings to a international craze. It's truly remarkable to watch a handful of young game developers, operating with virtually no plan or guidance, direct their entertainment passions into creating a legendary video game series.

Documentary Portion

The historical documentation of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection documents the ascent of the combat franchise and its creators' careers at the no-longer-operating Midway. It then goes on to show how these identical developers addressed how to routinely one-up themselves, experiencing considerable demand to replicate their success. It represents an intriguing historical record made from VHS tapes and analog photographs and pencil sketches, which showcase the DIY nature of the franchise's production method and how personal recommendations helped spread its rumors and undisclosed elements of the series in its peak period in gaming halls. Presented in manageable segments, it's an eminently watchable series of documentary shorts that includes titles, illustrated stories, cinematic adaptations and even the comical physical events. The collection additionally features some unreleased actions and digital fighter representations among its archived development assets.

Interactive Experience

Placed within the five-segment historical film's chronology are invitations to experience the actual titles. At certain intervals, audience members can jump into a combat game session or a home system version to rediscover its combat system and visual presentation, emulated nearly perfectly on contemporary systems.

I spent the bulk of my time experiencing the original arcade titles, specifically Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Numerous titles here stand the test of time, particularly during local multiplayer matches. Yet competing with the aforementioned game's AI-controlled opponents is a testament to how primitive and unbalanced the development approached in the franchise's pioneering releases. CPU-controlled opponents obviously use unfair advantages or are otherwise dumb as rocks. Lacking a human opponent — network gaming is included in most titles in the collection, but rather basic in functionality — the experience will be incomplete.

Technical Presentation

The 23 playable Mortal Kombat games in the collection, a combination of gaming hall, television, and mobile releases, are precisely simulated, though I've observed a handful slight anomalies — mostly input lag and sporadic glitches, especially with Mortal Kombat 4. And while the games are largely presented as-is, developer Digital Eclipse has added several intelligent quality-of-life features and graphical adjustment settings. For instance, users can elect to show each character's special moves during gameplay and select to activate infinite time to complete lethal techniques. Also included are choices for revealing concealed combatants, without having to perform complicated methods to access 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 gaming halls or home televisions, or the monochrome green display of a Nintendo handheld. A notably appreciated element is the setting to activate gaming hall-style borders surrounding the screen, with the MK game of your choice precisely and gently mirroring against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's quite aesthetically pleasing.

Bonus Elements

There are plenty of welcome features besides the educational material and simulated classic games, including a music player that enables players to reexperience the music from multiple combat titles excluding the sounds of two kombatants viciously slaughtering each other. Additionally included are fighter biographies that include bios and the various bits of lore displayed via arcade games' attract mode screens and endings.

Lost Media Recovery

A particularly notable inclusion for committed franchise followers is the chance to experience a example of historically missing material in the format of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This version of the game, a slightly updated version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an early attempt by Midway at direct online competitive gaming in arcades. The online-enabled release of the game is virtually identical to UMK3, but included the option to challenge online opponents and contained several small bug fixes and balance. Yet this online edition failed to achieve popularity, in part