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Mortal Kombat continues to hold its share of secrets and the ability to amaze, more than 30 years after its first appearance in gaming halls. A new collection including the brand's formative years, which includes a quartet of arcade releases, multiple console adaptations, and derivative games, is more than only a accurately simulated collection of iconic titles and not-so-classics — it functions as a detailed chronicle about the making of the renowned brand.

Even as a lifelong devotee of the franchise who has closely monitored its origins and transformation, there was numerous fresh aspects for me to learn and appreciate about the series.

What Defines the Legacy Collection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection similar to previous classic compilations from the development team Digital Eclipse, part documentary, part playable archive. This compilation features emulated versions of the pioneering arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, including television and mobile versions of some of those games. This compilation also features the franchise's attempts at derivative games, like combat-focused releases Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — some of the brand's worst entries.

The Legacy Kollection consequently doesn't represent a “best of” collection, but an examination of Mortal Kombat's early days, when developer Midway and franchise originators Ed Boon and John Tobias were determining how to make a fighting game, digitized from footage of real actors, on the fly. Viewing the historical footage — containing vintage recordings, contemporary discussions, and digital copies of vintage posters, comics, and even interoffice faxes — it's astonishing to observe how Mortal Kombat went from modest origins to a worldwide phenomenon. It's genuinely amazing to watch a handful of pioneering developers, operating with virtually no plan or supervision, direct their entertainment passions into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Documentary Portion

The educational segment of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection charts the rise of the fighting series and the founders' vocational paths at the no-longer-operating Midway. It further illustrates how those same creators reckoned with how to regularly outdo their previous work, encountering significant stress to duplicate their success. It represents an intriguing historical record made from VHS tapes and film-based pictures and hand-drawn illustrations, which reveal the self-made character of the series' creation process and how word of mouth helped spread its rumors and undisclosed elements of the series in its peak period in gaming halls. Delivered in easily digestible portions, it's thoroughly enjoyable set of brief historical films that covers video games, graphic novels, movies and including the humorous real-world tour. The collection additionally features some unused moves and character sprites among its cutting-room-floor content.

Playable Component

Placed within the five-segment historical film's chronology are invitations to experience the original releases. During specific moments, audience members can jump into a Mortal Kombat title or a home system version to rediscover its combat system and artistic style, simulated with remarkable precision on current technology.

I allocated the majority of my time experiencing the original arcade titles, particularly Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Many of the games here remain enjoyable, particularly during local multiplayer matches. But playing against the computer-controlled adversaries in these titles is a demonstration of how basic and unjust the development approached in the franchise's pioneering releases. AI-managed characters clearly employ dishonest tactics or are conversely remarkably unintelligent. If you don't have a human opponent — online play is available in numerous anthology releases, but rather basic in functionality — the experience will be incomplete.

Visual Options

The two dozen available combat games in the compilation, a combination of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are faithfully recreated, though I detected a handful slight anomalies — primarily delayed responses and intermittent errors, particularly in Mortal Kombat 4. Although the titles are largely presented as-is, the creators has added several intelligent user experience improvements and display customization choices. For instance, you can choose to show each character's special moves on the display and opt to have endless periods to complete lethal techniques. Also included are choices for revealing concealed combatants, removing the requirement to complete obscure techniques to unlock them.

Visually, the games can be enjoyed with multiple filters and visual treatments. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection includes remarkably accurate effects that reproduce the CRT monitors of arcades or home televisions, or the greenscale screen of a Nintendo handheld. An especially welcome feature is the option to have gaming hall-style borders encircling the display, with the MK game of your choice faithfully and subtly duplicating against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's very artistically charming.

Extra Content

Players will discover multiple nice touches beyond the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, containing a soundtrack mode that lets you revisit the music from multiple Mortal Kombat games excluding the sounds of fighters brutally eliminating opponents. Also present are fighter biographies that contain backgrounds and numerous narrative components presented by the demo sequences of coin-op titles and endings.

Lost Media Recovery

One of the biggest highlights for committed franchise followers is the ability to access 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 initial venture by the company at direct online competitive gaming in coin-op establishments. The Wavenet Edition of the game is virtually identical to UMK3, but featured the capability to battle network competitors and contained several small bug fixes and balance. However, this network version failed to achieve popularity, in part