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Mortal Kombat continues to hold numerous undisclosed elements and the capacity to surprise, over three decades after its first appearance in gaming halls. This latest compilation covering the brand's formative years, comprising four arcade games, multiple console adaptations, and related titles, transcends only a accurately simulated collection of iconic titles and not-so-classics — it additionally serves as a rich documentary about the development of the legendary series.

Being a long-time enthusiast of the series who has carefully followed its origins and transformation, there was plenty new for me to discover and admire about the series.

What Makes the Historical Compilation

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection comparable to other vintage game anthologies from the creators at Digital Eclipse, part historical documentation, portion interactive museum. This compilation features emulated versions of the original 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 franchise's attempts 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 thus isn't a “best of” collection, but an exploration into the franchise's initial era, when the development team Midway and brand founders the visionary developers were figuring out how to create a combat title, digitized from footage of live performers, as they went along. Observing the archival material — containing historical videos, new interviews, and scans of old flyers, comics, and even company memos — it's incredible to witness how the franchise evolved from modest origins to a global sensation. It's frankly astounding to watch a handful of young game developers, operating with virtually no plan or guidance, channel their pop-culture interests into creating a legendary video game series.

Documentary Portion

The educational segment of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection charts the rise of Mortal Kombat and the founders' vocational paths at the no-longer-operating Midway. It further illustrates how these identical developers reckoned with how to consistently surpass their achievements, experiencing considerable pressure to repeat their success. It represents an intriguing historical record composed of video recordings and traditional photos and pencil sketches, which demonstrate the hands-on approach of the franchise's production method and how personal recommendations helped circulate its mysteries and hidden aspects of Mortal Kombat in its golden era in coin-op establishments. Told in bite-sized chunks, it's an eminently watchable set of brief historical films that spans games, comics, films and even the silly live-action tour. It also includes some unreleased actions and game character images among its archived development assets.

Interactive Gaming

Distributed throughout the quintet of documentary episodes' progression are invitations to experience the original releases. During specific moments, viewers can hop into a Mortal Kombat title or one of its home console ports to rediscover its combat system and graphics, recreated with impressive accuracy on current technology.

I dedicated most of my time engaging with the vintage coin-op games, particularly Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Numerous titles here stand the test of time, especially in direct competitive sessions. But playing against the aforementioned game's AI-controlled opponents is a reminder of how crude and unjust the programming was in the series' initial installments. AI-managed characters clearly employ dishonest tactics or are alternatively incredibly stupid. If you don't have another person to compete with — network gaming is included in numerous anthology releases, but somewhat limited in options — you'll miss the full enjoyment.

Technical Presentation

The 23 playable Mortal Kombat games in the compilation, a combination of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are faithfully recreated, though I've observed a handful slight anomalies — mainly control latency and sporadic glitches, especially with Mortal Kombat 4. And while the games are primarily displayed authentically, the creators has included some smart user experience improvements and visual presentation options. As an illustration, players have the option to show each character's special moves on-screen and select to activate infinite time to complete lethal techniques. Also included are choices for unlocking secret characters, eliminating the need to execute some esoteric trick to unlock them.

Artistically, the releases can be played with a variety of visual enhancements and presentation styles. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection offers very realistic options that simulate the cathode-ray tube displays of coin-op establishments or domestic TVs, or the greenscale screen of a portable gaming device. A particularly nice touch is the setting to activate arcade-like bezels framing the gameplay, with the MK game of your choice precisely and gently mirroring against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's quite aesthetically pleasing.

Additional Features

There are plenty of appreciated elements beyond the documentary and emulated arcade classics, featuring an audio component that enables players to reexperience the music from multiple fighting releases excluding the sounds of two kombatants viciously slaughtering each other. Also present are character profiles that contain backgrounds and the various bits of lore shown through arcade games' attract mode screens and endings.

Historical Preservation

One of the biggest highlights for hardcore Mortal Kombat fans is the opportunity to play a example of historically missing material in the guise of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This specific release, a moderately improved edition of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an early attempt by Midway at direct online competitive gaming in coin-op establishments. The online-enabled release of the game is almost exactly the same to UMK3, but included the option to compete against internet adversaries and featured various slight error corrections and adjustments. However, this network version didn't find widespread adoption, in part