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This iconic fighting game continues to hold its share of secrets and the ability to amaze, over three decades after its original launch in coin-op establishments. This latest compilation spanning the franchise's earliest days, which includes a quartet of arcade releases, multiple console adaptations, and related titles, is more than just a well-emulated set of legendary games and not-so-classics — it additionally serves as a comprehensive historical account about the making of the renowned brand.

Even as a lifelong enthusiast of the series who has paid close attention its creation and evolution, there was much to discover for me to understand and value about the series.

What Defines the Legacy Kollection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection similar to other vintage game anthologies from developer Digital Eclipse, part documentary, portion interactive museum. This compilation features digitally recreated editions of the first arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, along with home system and portable adaptations 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 — some of the brand's least successful installments.

The Legacy Kollection consequently doesn't represent a highlight reel anthology, but an examination of the franchise's initial era, when the creators at Midway and brand founders the visionary developers were figuring out how to create a combat title, digitized from footage of live performers, on the fly. Watching the documentary — which includes historical videos, new interviews, and reproductions of classic advertisements, illustrated stories, and including internal communications — it's astonishing to observe how the franchise evolved from humble beginnings to a international craze. It's genuinely amazing to observe several young game developers, working with minimal planning or guidance, direct their entertainment passions into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Historical Section

The historical documentation of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection charts the rise of Mortal Kombat and its creators' careers at the currently closed Midway. It then goes on to show how those same creators addressed how to regularly outdo their previous work, experiencing considerable demand to replicate their success. It's a fascinating time capsule made from video recordings and film-based pictures and manual drawings, which reveal the self-made character of the series' creation process and how word of mouth helped circulate its mysteries and hidden aspects of Mortal Kombat in its golden era in coin-op establishments. Delivered in easily digestible portions, it's highly engaging set of brief historical films that covers video games, graphic novels, movies and even the comical physical events. It also includes some never-implemented techniques and game character images among its previously unreleased material.

Interactive Experience

Placed within the five-part documentary's timeline are invitations to experience the games themselves. At certain intervals, users can directly access a game of Mortal Kombat or a console adaptation to reexperience its mechanics and visual presentation, simulated with remarkable precision on modern hardware.

I spent the bulk of my time playing the arcade classics, especially Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Many of the games here hold up, notably with direct competitive sessions. Yet competing with the aforementioned game's AI-controlled opponents is a demonstration of how basic and unjust the development approached in early Mortal Kombat games. AI-managed characters blatantly cheat to win or are otherwise dumb as rocks. Without having a human opponent — internet multiplayer exists in most titles in the collection, but too light on features — you'll be missing out.

Visual Options

The 23 playable Mortal Kombat games in the compilation, a blend of arcade, console, and handheld games, are faithfully recreated, though I've observed a few small quirks — primarily delayed responses and intermittent errors, notably within Mortal Kombat 4. And while the games are largely presented as-is, the development team has incorporated various clever convenience enhancements and graphical adjustment settings. For example, users can elect to display fighter-specific techniques on the display and choose to enable unlimited duration to execute finishing moves. Also included are choices for unlocking secret characters, without having to perform some esoteric trick to access them.

Visually, the games can be experienced with numerous visual enhancements and presentation styles. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection provides highly authentic options that simulate the cathode-ray tube displays of arcades or home televisions, or the limited color monitor of a Game Boy. A notably appreciated element is the setting to activate arcade-like bezels encircling the display, with your selected Mortal Kombat title accurately and softly reflecting against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's quite aesthetically pleasing.

Extra Content

The collection includes numerous appreciated elements beyond the documentary and emulated arcade classics, including a music player that lets you revisit the soundtracks of different Mortal Kombat games excluding the sounds of combatants violently defeating each other. There are also combatant descriptions that feature histories and the various bits of lore shown through the demo sequences of coin-op titles and final sequences.

Lost Media Recovery

Among the most significant features 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 specific release, a somewhat revised iteration of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an early attempt by Midway at direct online competitive gaming in gaming halls. The online-enabled release of the game is practically indistinguishable to UMK3, but featured the capability to compete against internet adversaries and included some minor error corrections and adjustments. However, this network version failed to achieve popularity, in part