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This iconic fighting game retains many hidden mysteries and the power to astonish, more than 30 years after its initial debut in gaming halls. A new collection covering the franchise's earliest days, featuring a quartet of arcade releases, multiple console adaptations, and spinoffs, is more than simply a faithfully reproduced set of legendary games and not-so-classics — it functions as a rich documentary about the development of the renowned brand.

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

What Defines the Legacy Kollection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like previous classic compilations from the development team Digital Eclipse, part documentary, part playable archive. The anthology contains simulated releases of the first 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 franchise's attempts at derivative games, like action-oriented titles Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — some of the brand's most criticized releases.

The Legacy Kollection thus isn't a “best of” collection, but an examination of the series' formative period, when the development team Midway and series co-creators the visionary developers were figuring out how to create a combat title, created from video recordings of live performers, on the fly. Observing the archival material — containing historical videos, contemporary discussions, and reproductions of classic advertisements, illustrated stories, and including internal communications — it's incredible to witness how the franchise evolved from modest origins to a global sensation. It's truly remarkable to watch a handful of early video game creators, developing without clear direction or guidance, direct their entertainment passions into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Historical Section

The documentary portion of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection documents the ascent of Mortal Kombat and its creators' careers at the now-defunct Midway. It further illustrates how these identical developers addressed how to consistently surpass their achievements, facing no small amount of stress to duplicate their triumphs. It represents an intriguing historical record constructed using VHS tapes and analog photographs and pencil sketches, which reveal the self-made character of the franchise's production method and how word of mouth helped circulate its mysteries and hidden aspects of Mortal Kombat in its arcade heyday. Told in bite-sized chunks, it's highly engaging collection of mini-documentaries that covers video games, graphic novels, movies and including the humorous real-world tour. The compilation also contains some unreleased actions and character sprites among its archived development assets.

Interactive Gaming

Distributed throughout the five-segment historical film's chronology are opportunities to engage with the actual titles. At certain intervals, audience members can jump into a Mortal Kombat title or a home system version to revisit its gameplay and graphics, recreated with impressive accuracy on modern hardware.

I spent the bulk of my time experiencing the original arcade titles, especially Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Several releases here remain enjoyable, particularly during local multiplayer matches. But playing against the aforementioned game's AI-controlled opponents is a demonstration of how basic and unjust the development approached in the series' initial installments. CPU-controlled opponents clearly employ dishonest tactics or are alternatively incredibly stupid. If you don't have another person to compete with — online play is available in the majority of included games, but rather basic in functionality — you'll be missing out.

Visual Options

The two dozen available combat games in the collection, a mix of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are faithfully recreated, though I detected a couple minor issues — mainly control latency and intermittent errors, notably within Mortal Kombat 4. Although the titles are mostly shown in their original form, the creators has added several intelligent quality-of-life features and graphical adjustment settings. For instance, you can choose to reveal combatant-unique actions on-screen and choose to enable unlimited duration to perform a Fatality. Also included are choices for accessing hidden fighters, removing the requirement to complete complicated methods to obtain them.

Artistically, the releases can be played with a variety of visual enhancements and presentation styles. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection provides highly authentic effects that reproduce the traditional television screens of arcades or household displays, or the limited color monitor of a portable gaming device. A notably appreciated element is the setting to activate coin-op-inspired frames surrounding the screen, with the MK game of your choice faithfully and subtly duplicating against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's very artistically charming.

Bonus Elements

The collection includes numerous nice touches beyond the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, including a music player that allows users to rediscover the music from multiple Mortal Kombat games excluding the sounds of fighters brutally eliminating opponents. Also present are character profiles that include bios and multiple story elements presented by the demo sequences of coin-op titles and endings.

Historical Preservation

Among the most significant features for hardcore Mortal Kombat fans is the opportunity to play a segment of previously unavailable content in the form of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This version of the game, a somewhat revised iteration of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an pioneering effort from the developer at one-on-one internet-based play in arcades. The Wavenet Edition of the game is practically indistinguishable to UMK3, but featured the capability to compete against internet adversaries and featured various slight error corrections and adjustments. Yet this online edition didn't find widespread adoption, in part