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This iconic fighting game still possesses its share of secrets and the capacity to surprise, well past its 30th anniversary after its initial debut in arcades. A new collection including the brand's formative years, which includes four original arcade titles, various home ports, and related titles, is more than simply a faithfully reproduced collection of iconic titles and not-so-classics — it additionally serves as a detailed chronicle about the making of the iconic franchise.

As a dedicated enthusiast of the series who has carefully followed its origins and transformation, there was numerous fresh aspects for me to understand and value about the series.

What Constitutes the Legacy Collection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like previous classic compilations from the creators at Digital Eclipse, part documentary, portion interactive museum. The collection includes emulated versions 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 series' ventures at spinoffs, like action games Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — among the series' worst entries.

The Legacy Kollection consequently doesn't represent a “best of” collection, but an examination of the franchise's initial era, when the creators at Midway and series co-creators the visionary developers were figuring out how to make a fighting game, created from video recordings of real actors, through experimentation. Observing the archival material — containing archival footage, new interviews, and digital copies of vintage posters, illustrated stories, and including internal communications — it's remarkable to see how Mortal Kombat went from modest origins to a global sensation. It's genuinely amazing to observe several pioneering developers, working with minimal planning or guidance, channel their pop-culture interests into creating a legendary video game series.

Educational Component

The historical documentation of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection documents the ascent of Mortal Kombat and the founders' vocational paths at the now-defunct Midway. It then goes on to show how these identical developers reckoned with how to regularly outdo their previous work, encountering significant pressure to repeat their success. It's a fascinating time capsule made from analog films and analog photographs and manual drawings, which showcase the DIY nature of the franchise's production method and how personal recommendations helped spread its rumors and hidden aspects of Mortal Kombat in its arcade heyday. Told in bite-sized chunks, it's an eminently watchable set of brief historical films that spans games, comics, films and even the comical physical events. It also includes some never-implemented techniques and character sprites among its archived development assets.

Interactive Gaming

Placed within the quintet of documentary episodes' progression are prompts to play the games themselves. At certain intervals, viewers can hop into a combat game session or a home system version to rediscover its combat system and visual presentation, simulated with remarkable precision on current technology.

I spent the bulk of my time engaging with the vintage coin-op games, specifically Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Many of the games here stand the test of time, especially in local multiplayer matches. Yet competing with the aforementioned game's AI-controlled opponents is a testament to how primitive and unjust the programming was in the franchise's pioneering releases. AI-managed characters blatantly cheat to win or are otherwise dumb as rocks. Lacking a human opponent — online play is available in most titles in the collection, but somewhat limited in options — you'll be missing out.

Display Features

The two dozen available combat games in the anthology, a blend of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are faithfully recreated, though I have noticed a few small quirks — primarily delayed responses and the occasional bug, notably within Mortal Kombat 4. Even though the releases are mostly shown in their original form, the creators has incorporated various clever quality-of-life features and graphical adjustment settings. For instance, you can choose to reveal combatant-unique actions on-screen and opt to have infinite time to execute finishing moves. There are also options for unlocking secret characters, removing the requirement to complete some esoteric trick to obtain them.

Artistically, the releases can be enjoyed with multiple visual enhancements and presentation styles. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection provides highly authentic options that simulate the CRT monitors of arcades or home televisions, or the monochrome green display of a Nintendo handheld. A notably appreciated element is the choice to enable coin-op-inspired frames encircling the display, with the specific combat game you're playing accurately and softly reflecting against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's remarkably visually appealing.

Bonus Elements

The collection includes numerous nice touches beyond the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, featuring an audio component that enables players to reexperience the music from multiple combat titles excluding the sounds of two kombatants viciously slaughtering each other. There are also character profiles that contain backgrounds and numerous narrative components displayed via the idle displays of gaming hall releases and final sequences.

Historical Preservation

A particularly notable inclusion for committed franchise followers is the chance to experience a segment of previously unavailable content in the form of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This particular edition, a moderately improved edition of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an pioneering effort from the developer at head-to-head network battles in arcades. The online-enabled release of the game is practically indistinguishable to UMK3, but included the option to battle network competitors and contained several small bug fixes and balance. Yet this online edition failed to achieve popularity, in part