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Mortal Kombat retains its share of secrets and the capacity to surprise, more than 30 years after its original launch in gaming halls. This latest compilation spanning the franchise's earliest days, featuring a quartet of arcade releases, several home system versions, and related titles, goes beyond only a accurately simulated set of legendary games and not-so-classics — it's also a rich documentary about the making of the renowned brand.

Being a long-time enthusiast of the series who has carefully followed its development and progression, there was plenty new for me to discover and admire about the series.

What Makes the Historical Compilation

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like other retro collections from the development team Digital Eclipse, part documentary, section playable historical record. The anthology contains emulated versions of the original arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, along with home system and portable adaptations of several of these titles. This compilation also features the series' ventures at spinoffs, like action-oriented titles Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — among the series' least successful installments.

The Legacy Kollection consequently doesn't represent a greatest hits compilation, but a study of the franchise's initial era, when the creators at Midway and series co-creators Ed Boon and John Tobias were figuring out how to make a fighting game, created from video recordings of real actors, as they went along. Viewing the historical footage — containing historical videos, new interviews, and scans of old flyers, comics, and even interoffice faxes — it's incredible to witness how Mortal Kombat went from simple starts to a global sensation. It's frankly astounding to observe several pioneering developers, developing without clear direction or guidance, focus their cultural enthusiasms into creating a legendary video game series.

Documentary Portion

The educational segment of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection documents the ascent of the fighting series and the developers' professional journeys at the currently closed Midway. It further illustrates how the very same individuals contended with how to regularly outdo their previous work, facing no small amount of pressure to repeat their achievements. It's a fascinating time capsule constructed using analog films and analog photographs and hand-drawn illustrations, which showcase the DIY nature of Mortal Kombat's development and how oral tradition helped disseminate its secrets and secrets of MK in its arcade heyday. Delivered in easily digestible portions, it's highly engaging series of documentary shorts that covers video games, graphic novels, movies and including the humorous real-world tour. The collection additionally features some unreleased actions and digital fighter representations among its cutting-room-floor content.

Interactive Experience

Distributed throughout the five-segment historical film's chronology are prompts to play the actual titles. During specific moments, users can directly access a game of Mortal Kombat or a console adaptation to revisit its gameplay and graphics, emulated nearly perfectly on contemporary systems.

I spent the bulk of my time engaging with the vintage coin-op games, especially Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Many of the games here hold up, particularly during direct competitive sessions. However, facing the computer-controlled adversaries in these titles is a testament to how primitive and unjust the coding existed in early Mortal Kombat games. AI-managed characters obviously use unfair advantages or are otherwise dumb as rocks. Without having a human opponent — internet multiplayer exists in the majority of included games, but rather basic in functionality — you'll be missing out.

Technical Presentation

The two dozen available combat games in the compilation, a mix of arcade, console, and handheld games, are faithfully recreated, though I've observed a few small quirks — mostly input lag and the occasional bug, particularly in Mortal Kombat 4. And while the games are mostly shown in their original form, the development team has included some smart quality-of-life features and display customization choices. For instance, players have the option to show each character's special moves on the display and select to activate infinite time to execute finishing moves. Also included are choices for accessing hidden fighters, eliminating the need to execute some esoteric trick to access them.

Graphically, the titles can be experienced with numerous visual enhancements and presentation styles. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection provides highly authentic options that simulate the CRT monitors of gaming halls or home televisions, or the limited color monitor of a Game Boy. An especially welcome feature is the option to have arcade-like bezels surrounding the screen, with the MK game of your choice accurately and softly reflecting against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's remarkably visually appealing.

Bonus Elements

The collection includes numerous appreciated elements beyond the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, containing a soundtrack mode that allows users to rediscover the tunes of various combat titles without the din of two kombatants viciously slaughtering each other. Additionally included are fighter biographies that contain backgrounds and numerous narrative components presented by the demo sequences of coin-op titles and endings.

Archival Discovery

A particularly notable inclusion for dedicated series enthusiasts is the chance to experience 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 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 included the option to battle network competitors and featured various slight glitch repairs and refinements. However, this network version failed to achieve popularity, in part