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This iconic fighting game retains many hidden mysteries and the capacity to surprise, over three decades after its first appearance in gaming halls. The recent anthology spanning the brand's formative years, which includes a quartet of arcade releases, various home ports, and spinoffs, transcends just a well-emulated set of legendary games 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 paid close attention its creation and evolution, there was much to discover for me to understand and value about the series.

What Constitutes the Legacy Collection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection similar to previous classic compilations from the creators at Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, part playable archive. The anthology contains simulated releases of the original arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, including television and mobile versions of certain releases. This compilation also features the franchise's attempts at spin-off titles, like combat-focused releases Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — among the series' worst entries.

The Legacy Kollection is therefore not a greatest hits compilation, but a study of Mortal Kombat's early days, when developer Midway and brand founders the creative duo behind the series were determining how to create a combat title, produced using film material of actual people, on the fly. Viewing the historical footage — that features vintage recordings, recent conversations, and reproductions of classic advertisements, comics, and including internal communications — it's remarkable to see how the franchise evolved from simple starts to a worldwide phenomenon. It's genuinely amazing to watch a handful of young game developers, developing without clear direction or guidance, direct their entertainment passions into establishing an enduring gaming brand.

Historical Section

The educational segment of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection traces the growth of the combat franchise and its creators' careers at the currently closed Midway. It subsequently demonstrates how those same creators addressed how to regularly outdo their previous work, encountering significant stress to duplicate their triumphs. It's a fascinating time capsule composed of analog films and traditional photos and pencil sketches, which demonstrate the hands-on approach of Mortal Kombat's development and how oral tradition helped circulate its mysteries and undisclosed elements of the series in its peak period in gaming halls. Told in bite-sized chunks, it's thoroughly enjoyable collection of mini-documentaries that includes titles, illustrated stories, cinematic adaptations and even the comical physical events. The collection additionally features some unused moves and game character images among its previously unreleased material.

Interactive Gaming

Distributed throughout the quintet of documentary episodes' progression are invitations to experience the original releases. At certain intervals, viewers can hop into a combat game session or a console adaptation to revisit its gameplay and graphics, recreated with impressive accuracy on modern hardware.

I spent the bulk of my time playing the arcade classics, particularly Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Several releases here hold up, notably with direct competitive sessions. However, facing the aforementioned game's AI-controlled opponents is a reminder of how crude and unbalanced the coding existed in the series' initial installments. AI-managed characters clearly employ dishonest tactics or are otherwise dumb as rocks. Without having someone to play against — online play is available in the majority of included games, but somewhat limited in options — you'll be missing out.

Visual Options

The 23 playable Mortal Kombat games in the compilation, a blend of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are precisely simulated, though I have noticed a handful slight anomalies — 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 visual presentation options. As an illustration, you can choose to reveal combatant-unique actions on-screen and choose to enable endless periods to complete lethal techniques. There are also options for revealing concealed combatants, removing the requirement to complete some esoteric trick to access them.

Artistically, the releases can be enjoyed with multiple filters and visual treatments. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection offers very realistic options that simulate the CRT monitors of coin-op establishments or domestic TVs, or the limited color monitor of a Game Boy. A particularly nice touch is the option to have arcade-like bezels framing the gameplay, with your selected Mortal Kombat title accurately and softly reflecting against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's remarkably visually appealing.

Additional Features

There are plenty of welcome features besides the documentary and emulated arcade classics, containing a soundtrack mode that enables players to reexperience the tunes of various Mortal Kombat games excluding the sounds of combatants violently defeating each other. Also present are character profiles that feature histories and the various bits of lore presented by the demo sequences of coin-op titles and conclusions.

Lost Media Recovery

Among the most significant features for hardcore Mortal Kombat fans is the chance to experience a example of historically missing material in the guise of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This version of the game, a slightly updated version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an early attempt by Midway at direct online competitive gaming in arcades. This network version of the game is virtually identical to UMK3, but provided the ability to compete against internet adversaries and featured various slight glitch repairs and refinements. However, this network version didn't find widespread adoption, in part