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Mortal Kombat still possesses many hidden mysteries and the capacity to surprise, over three decades after its initial debut in coin-op establishments. The recent anthology spanning the brand's formative years, featuring a quartet of arcade releases, several home system versions, and related titles, is more than simply a faithfully reproduced collection of iconic titles along with lesser-known entries — it functions as a comprehensive historical account about the making of the iconic franchise.

As a dedicated devotee of the franchise who has closely monitored its development and progression, there was numerous fresh aspects for me to learn and appreciate about the series.

What Constitutes the Historical Compilation

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection comparable to other retro collections from the development team Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, section playable historical record. The collection includes simulated releases 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. The collection even includes the brand's experiments at spinoffs, like action-oriented titles Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — two of the franchise's most criticized releases.

The Legacy Kollection is therefore not a “best of” collection, but an exploration into the series' formative period, when the development team Midway and franchise originators the creative duo behind the series were determining how to develop a battle series, digitized from footage of live performers, on the fly. Watching the documentary — that features archival footage, new interviews, and scans of old flyers, graphic novels, and including internal communications — it's remarkable to see how the series transformed from simple starts to a worldwide phenomenon. It's truly remarkable to see a group of pioneering developers, developing without clear direction or oversight, focus their cultural enthusiasms into creating a legendary video game series.

Educational Component

The documentary portion of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection documents the ascent of the fighting series and the developers' professional journeys at the now-defunct Midway. It further illustrates how the very same individuals addressed how to routinely one-up themselves, facing no small amount of demand to replicate their triumphs. It serves as a compelling period piece composed of video recordings and analog photographs and hand-drawn illustrations, which showcase the DIY nature of Mortal Kombat's development and how oral tradition helped spread its rumors and secrets of MK in its arcade heyday. Delivered in easily digestible portions, it's highly engaging series of documentary shorts that includes titles, illustrated stories, cinematic adaptations and including the humorous real-world tour. The collection additionally features some never-implemented techniques and character sprites among its previously unreleased material.

Interactive Experience

Interspersed along the quintet of documentary episodes' progression are prompts to play the original releases. At various points, audience members can jump into a game of Mortal Kombat or a console adaptation to reexperience its mechanics and graphics, emulated nearly perfectly 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. Several releases here stand the test of time, especially in direct competitive sessions. But playing against the computer-controlled adversaries in these titles is a reminder of how crude and unjust the programming was in the franchise's pioneering releases. CPU-controlled opponents blatantly cheat to win or are alternatively incredibly stupid. Without having a human opponent — network gaming is included in most titles in the collection, but rather basic in functionality — you'll be missing out.

Visual Options

The twenty-three accessible Mortal Kombat titles in the anthology, a mix of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are faithfully recreated, though I've observed a couple minor issues — primarily delayed responses and sporadic glitches, especially with Mortal Kombat 4. And while the games are mostly shown in their original form, developer Digital Eclipse has included some smart convenience enhancements and display customization choices. For example, players have the option to display fighter-specific techniques during gameplay and choose to enable infinite time to execute finishing moves. Also included are choices for accessing hidden fighters, without having to perform some esoteric trick to access them.

Visually, the games can be experienced with numerous filters and visual treatments. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection includes remarkably accurate effects that reproduce the CRT monitors of arcades or household displays, or the greenscale screen of a Game Boy. An especially welcome feature is the option to have gaming hall-style borders framing the gameplay, with your selected Mortal Kombat title precisely and gently mirroring against the simulated dark plastic edges. It's quite aesthetically pleasing.

Additional Features

The collection includes numerous welcome features besides the documentary and emulated arcade classics, featuring an audio component that lets you revisit the tunes of various Mortal Kombat games absent the noise of fighters brutally eliminating opponents. Also present are character profiles that include bios and numerous narrative components displayed via the demo sequences of coin-op titles and conclusions.

Archival Discovery

One of the biggest highlights for hardcore Mortal Kombat fans 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 pioneering effort from the developer at direct online competitive gaming in arcades. The online-enabled release of the game is almost exactly the same to UMK3, but provided the ability to challenge online opponents and contained several small error corrections and adjustments. But the Wavenet update didn't find widespread adoption, in part