🔗 Share this article

Mortal Kombat retains many hidden mysteries and the power to astonish, more than 30 years after its first appearance in coin-op establishments. The recent anthology spanning the brand's formative years, comprising four original arcade titles, multiple console adaptations, and spinoffs, transcends just a well-emulated series of classics including less celebrated releases — it additionally serves as a rich documentary about the making of the renowned brand.

As a dedicated Mortal Kombat fan 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 Legacy Kollection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection comparable to other retro collections from the development team Digital Eclipse, part documentary, portion interactive museum. This compilation features simulated releases of the pioneering 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 brand's experiments at spin-off titles, like action-oriented titles Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — among the series' most criticized releases.

The Legacy Kollection consequently doesn't represent a “best of” collection, but a study of the series' formative period, when the creators at Midway and series co-creators the creative duo behind the series were determining how to create a combat title, digitized from footage of live performers, as they went along. Viewing the historical footage — which includes archival footage, recent conversations, and reproductions of classic advertisements, illustrated stories, and even company memos — it's incredible to witness how the series transformed from modest origins to a worldwide phenomenon. It's truly remarkable to observe several pioneering developers, developing without clear direction or oversight, channel their pop-culture interests into creating a legendary video game series.

Historical Section

The educational segment of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection charts the rise of the combat franchise and the developers' professional journeys at the no-longer-operating Midway. It then goes on to show how those same creators contended with how to regularly outdo their previous work, facing no small amount of pressure to repeat their achievements. It represents an intriguing historical record composed of video recordings and analog photographs and manual drawings, which showcase the DIY nature of Mortal Kombat's development and how personal recommendations helped circulate its mysteries and undisclosed elements of the series in its golden era in coin-op establishments. Told in bite-sized chunks, it's an eminently watchable set of brief historical films that covers video games, graphic novels, movies and even the silly live-action tour. The compilation also contains some unreleased actions and game character images among its archived development assets.

Playable Component

Distributed throughout the quintet of documentary episodes' progression are prompts to play the original releases. At various points, viewers can hop into a combat game session or a home system version to rediscover its combat system and graphics, emulated nearly perfectly on current technology.

I dedicated most of my time experiencing the original arcade titles, particularly Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Several releases here remain enjoyable, notably with direct competitive sessions. But playing against the artificial intelligence fighters in these releases is a reminder of how crude and unjust the coding existed in the series' initial installments. CPU-controlled opponents obviously use unfair advantages or are conversely remarkably unintelligent. Lacking a human opponent — online play is available in numerous anthology releases, but rather basic in functionality — you'll miss the full enjoyment.

Technical Presentation

The 23 playable Mortal Kombat games in the anthology, a mix of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are precisely simulated, though I detected a few small quirks — mainly control latency and the occasional bug, particularly in Mortal Kombat 4. Although the titles are primarily displayed authentically, the creators has added several intelligent user experience improvements and display customization choices. For instance, users can elect to display fighter-specific techniques during gameplay and opt to have endless periods to complete lethal techniques. There are also options for revealing concealed combatants, eliminating the need to execute some esoteric trick to access them.

Graphically, the titles can be played with a variety of filters and visual treatments. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection offers very realistic filters that mimic the CRT monitors of coin-op establishments or domestic TVs, or the monochrome green display of a Nintendo handheld. A particularly nice touch is the option to have gaming hall-style borders encircling the display, with your selected Mortal Kombat title accurately and softly reflecting against the faux black plastic borders. It's very artistically charming.

Additional Features

Players will discover multiple appreciated elements beyond the documentary and emulated arcade classics, containing a soundtrack mode that lets you revisit the soundtracks of different combat titles without the din of fighters brutally eliminating opponents. There are also combatant descriptions that contain backgrounds and multiple story elements presented by the demo sequences of coin-op titles and final sequences.

Archival Discovery

A particularly notable inclusion for hardcore Mortal Kombat fans is the ability to access a piece of "lost media" in the form of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This specific release, a moderately improved edition of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an pioneering effort from the developer at head-to-head network battles in gaming halls. This network version of the game is practically indistinguishable to UMK3, but provided the ability to battle network competitors and included some minor error corrections and adjustments. However, this network version failed to achieve popularity, in part