🔗 Share this article

This iconic fighting game continues to hold its share of secrets and the capacity to surprise, well past its 30th anniversary after its initial debut in coin-op establishments. The recent anthology spanning the franchise's earliest days, which includes four original arcade titles, multiple console adaptations, and derivative games, is more than only a accurately simulated collection of iconic titles and not-so-classics — it additionally serves as a detailed chronicle about the development of the renowned brand.

As a dedicated devotee of the franchise who has paid close attention its creation and evolution, there was plenty new for me to understand and value about the series.

What Defines the Legacy Kollection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection comparable to previous classic compilations from developer Digital Eclipse, part documentary, section playable historical record. The anthology contains 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 several of these titles. This compilation also features the brand's experiments 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 thus isn't a “best of” collection, but an examination of Mortal Kombat's early days, when the development team Midway and series co-creators Ed Boon and John Tobias were figuring out how to develop a battle series, created from video recordings of actual people, as they went along. Watching the documentary — that features 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 modest origins to a international craze. It's frankly astounding to observe several pioneering developers, developing without clear direction or supervision, focus their cultural enthusiasms into creating a legendary video game series.

Educational Component

The educational segment of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection traces the growth of the fighting series and the developers' professional journeys at the no-longer-operating Midway. It then goes on to show how those same creators reckoned with how to regularly outdo their previous work, encountering significant pressure to repeat their achievements. It represents an intriguing historical record constructed using VHS tapes and analog photographs and pencil sketches, which reveal the self-made character of the franchise's production method and how word of mouth helped circulate its mysteries and undisclosed elements of the series in its arcade heyday. Delivered in easily digestible portions, it's an eminently watchable collection of mini-documentaries that covers video games, graphic novels, movies and even the silly live-action tour. The compilation also contains some unused moves and game character images among its archived development assets.

Interactive Experience

Placed within the five-part documentary's timeline are invitations to experience the games themselves. At various points, users can directly access a game of Mortal Kombat or a console adaptation to reexperience its mechanics and graphics, emulated nearly perfectly on modern hardware.

I allocated the majority of my time playing the arcade classics, especially Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Numerous titles here hold up, especially in one-on-one local play. Yet competing with the artificial intelligence fighters in these releases is a reminder of how crude and unfair the development approached in the series' initial installments. CPU-controlled opponents clearly employ dishonest tactics or are alternatively incredibly stupid. Without having someone to play against — online play is available in most titles in the collection, but too light on features — the experience will be incomplete.

Visual Options

The two dozen available combat games in the compilation, a mix of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are faithfully recreated, though I detected a couple minor issues — mainly control latency and the occasional bug, notably within Mortal Kombat 4. Although the titles are primarily displayed authentically, the development team has incorporated various clever quality-of-life features and visual presentation options. For example, players have the option to display fighter-specific techniques during gameplay and opt to have unlimited duration to perform a Fatality. Also included are choices for revealing concealed combatants, removing the requirement to complete some esoteric trick to access them.

Artistically, the releases can be enjoyed with multiple filters and visual treatments. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection includes remarkably accurate filters that mimic the cathode-ray tube displays of gaming halls or domestic TVs, 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 your selected Mortal Kombat title accurately and softly reflecting against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's very artistically charming.

Bonus Elements

Players will discover multiple appreciated elements beyond the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, containing a soundtrack mode that allows users to rediscover the music from multiple combat titles excluding the sounds of fighters brutally eliminating opponents. Also present are combatant descriptions that contain backgrounds and multiple story elements presented by arcade games' attract mode screens and final sequences.

Historical Preservation

A particularly notable inclusion for hardcore Mortal Kombat fans is the ability to access a piece of "lost media" in the format of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This specific release, a somewhat revised iteration of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an early attempt by Midway at direct online competitive gaming in arcades. The Wavenet Edition of the game is virtually identical to UMK3, but provided the ability to compete against internet adversaries and featured various slight glitch repairs and refinements. Yet this online edition failed to achieve popularity, in part