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Mortal Kombat continues to hold many hidden mysteries and the ability to amaze, over three decades after its first appearance in gaming halls. The recent anthology spanning the brand's formative years, comprising four original arcade titles, various home ports, and spinoffs, is more than simply a faithfully reproduced series of classics including less celebrated releases — it's also a rich documentary about the making of the iconic franchise.

Being a long-time devotee of the franchise who has carefully followed its development and progression, there was plenty new for me to learn and appreciate about the series.

What Constitutes the Legacy Collection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection similar to other vintage game anthologies from the development team Digital Eclipse, part historical documentation, section playable historical record. The anthology contains simulated releases 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 series' ventures at spin-off titles, like combat-focused releases Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — two of the franchise's worst entries.

The Legacy Kollection is therefore not a “best of” collection, but an exploration into Mortal Kombat's early days, when the development team Midway and series co-creators Ed Boon and John Tobias were discovering methods to create a combat title, digitized from footage of real actors, through experimentation. Observing the archival material — which includes archival footage, recent conversations, and scans of old flyers, comics, and even company memos — it's astonishing to observe how Mortal Kombat went from simple starts to a international craze. It's genuinely amazing to watch a handful of young game developers, working with minimal planning or guidance, direct their entertainment passions into creating a legendary video game series.

Historical Section

The educational segment of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection charts the rise of the fighting series and the developers' professional journeys at the no-longer-operating Midway. It further illustrates how the very same individuals addressed how to regularly outdo their previous work, experiencing considerable pressure to repeat their success. It serves as a compelling period piece made from VHS tapes and traditional photos and pencil sketches, which reveal the self-made character of the series' creation process and how word of mouth helped disseminate its secrets and hidden aspects of Mortal Kombat in its peak period in gaming halls. Delivered in easily digestible portions, it's an eminently watchable series of documentary shorts that spans games, comics, films and even the silly live-action tour. It also includes some unreleased actions and game character images among its previously unreleased material.

Interactive Experience

Distributed throughout the five-segment historical film's chronology are opportunities to engage with the games themselves. At various points, viewers can hop into a game of Mortal Kombat or one of its home console ports to reexperience its mechanics and visual presentation, recreated with impressive accuracy on current technology.

I spent the bulk of my time playing the arcade classics, specifically Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Many of the games here hold up, particularly during direct competitive sessions. However, facing the artificial intelligence fighters in these releases is a testament to how primitive and unfair the development approached in the series' initial installments. AI-managed characters obviously use unfair advantages or are alternatively incredibly stupid. If you don't have someone to play against — network gaming is included in most titles in the collection, but somewhat limited in options — the experience will be incomplete.

Technical Presentation

The two dozen available combat games in the compilation, a combination of gaming hall, television, and mobile releases, are accurately emulated, though I've observed a few small quirks — mostly input lag and intermittent errors, especially with Mortal Kombat 4. Although the titles are primarily displayed authentically, developer Digital Eclipse has added several intelligent user experience improvements and graphical adjustment settings. For instance, players have the option to show each character's special moves during gameplay and select to activate infinite time to execute finishing moves. Additionally available are settings for accessing hidden fighters, without having to perform some esoteric trick to access them.

Visually, the games can be played with a variety of filters and visual treatments. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection provides highly authentic filters that mimic the cathode-ray tube displays of arcades or household displays, or the greenscale screen of a portable gaming device. An especially welcome feature is the choice to enable gaming hall-style borders surrounding the screen, with your selected Mortal Kombat title precisely and gently mirroring against the faux black plastic borders. It's quite aesthetically pleasing.

Bonus Elements

There are plenty of welcome features besides the educational material and simulated classic games, containing a soundtrack mode that enables players to reexperience 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 the various bits of lore shown through arcade games' attract mode screens and conclusions.

Archival Discovery

A particularly notable inclusion for dedicated series enthusiasts is the ability to access a piece of "lost media" in the guise of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This particular edition, a somewhat revised iteration of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an early attempt by Midway at one-on-one internet-based play in coin-op establishments. This network version of the game is virtually identical to UMK3, but provided the ability to compete against internet adversaries and included some minor error corrections and adjustments. But the Wavenet update never gained traction, in part