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This iconic fighting game retains numerous undisclosed elements and the capacity to surprise, over three decades after its original launch in arcades. A new collection covering the brand's formative years, featuring a quartet of arcade releases, multiple console adaptations, and related titles, goes beyond simply a faithfully reproduced series of classics along with lesser-known entries — it's also a detailed chronicle about the making of the legendary series.

Being a long-time enthusiast of the series who has carefully followed its creation and evolution, there was numerous fresh aspects for me to learn and appreciate about the series.

What Defines the Legacy Collection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like other retro collections from the development team Digital Eclipse, part documentary, section playable historical record. The collection includes emulated versions of the original arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, including television and mobile versions of certain releases. The collection even includes the brand's experiments at spinoffs, like action games 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 the franchise's initial era, when the creators at Midway and brand founders the visionary developers were figuring out how to create a combat title, created from video recordings of actual people, as they went along. Observing the archival material — that features vintage recordings, contemporary discussions, and reproductions of classic advertisements, illustrated stories, and even company memos — it's astonishing to observe how Mortal Kombat went from simple starts to a worldwide phenomenon. It's genuinely amazing to see a group of early video game creators, operating with virtually no plan or supervision, focus their cultural enthusiasms into establishing an enduring gaming brand.

Educational Component

The historical documentation of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection traces the growth of the fighting series and its creators' careers at the now-defunct Midway. It further illustrates how those same creators contended with how to consistently surpass their achievements, experiencing considerable pressure to repeat their triumphs. It represents an intriguing historical record constructed using video recordings and analog photographs and manual drawings, which demonstrate the hands-on approach of Mortal Kombat's development and how personal recommendations helped circulate its mysteries and hidden aspects of Mortal Kombat in its peak period in gaming halls. Delivered in easily digestible portions, it's an eminently watchable collection of mini-documentaries that includes titles, illustrated stories, cinematic adaptations and even the comical physical events. The collection additionally features some unused moves and game character images among its previously unreleased material.

Interactive Experience

Distributed throughout the five-part documentary's timeline are opportunities to engage with the actual titles. At certain intervals, audience members can jump into a Mortal Kombat title or one of its home console ports to revisit its gameplay and artistic style, recreated with impressive accuracy on contemporary systems.

I allocated the majority of my time engaging with the vintage coin-op games, especially Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Numerous titles here remain enjoyable, particularly during local multiplayer matches. 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. CPU-controlled opponents obviously use unfair advantages or are alternatively incredibly stupid. If you don't have someone to play against — internet multiplayer exists in numerous anthology releases, but rather basic in functionality — the experience will be incomplete.

Visual Options

The 23 playable Mortal Kombat games in the collection, a mix of gaming hall, television, and mobile releases, are precisely simulated, though I detected a couple minor issues — mostly input lag and sporadic glitches, especially with Mortal Kombat 4. Although the titles are mostly shown in their original form, the development team has added several intelligent user experience improvements and display customization choices. For example, you can choose to reveal combatant-unique actions on-screen and opt to have endless periods to complete lethal techniques. There are also options for accessing hidden fighters, eliminating the need to execute some esoteric trick to access them.

Visually, the games can be played with a variety of filters and visual treatments. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection includes remarkably accurate options that simulate the CRT monitors of arcades or household displays, or the monochrome green display of a Nintendo handheld. A particularly nice touch is the option to have coin-op-inspired frames surrounding the screen, with the MK game of your choice accurately and softly reflecting against the faux black plastic borders. It's quite aesthetically pleasing.

Additional Features

Players will discover multiple welcome features besides the educational material and simulated classic games, including a music player that allows users to rediscover the soundtracks of different Mortal Kombat games without the din of combatants violently defeating each other. There are also combatant descriptions that contain backgrounds and multiple story elements shown through the demo sequences of coin-op titles and endings.

Historical Preservation

A particularly notable inclusion for committed franchise followers is the chance to experience a segment of previously unavailable content in the guise of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This particular edition, a moderately improved edition of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an pioneering effort from the developer at direct online competitive gaming in coin-op establishments. This network version of the game is almost exactly the same to UMK3, but featured the capability to battle network competitors and included some minor glitch repairs and refinements. But the Wavenet update failed to achieve popularity, in part