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This iconic fighting game continues to hold numerous undisclosed elements and the capacity to surprise, well past its 30th anniversary after its initial debut in gaming halls. This latest compilation spanning the franchise's earliest days, featuring four arcade games, multiple console adaptations, and spinoffs, goes beyond simply a faithfully reproduced collection of iconic titles including less celebrated releases — it functions as a comprehensive historical account about the development of the legendary series.

As a dedicated Mortal Kombat fan who has carefully followed its origins and transformation, there was much to discover for me to understand and value about the series.

What Makes the Legacy Kollection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like other retro collections from the development team Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, portion interactive museum. This compilation features digitally recreated editions of the original arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, along with home system and portable adaptations of some of those games. This compilation also features the franchise's attempts at derivative games, like combat-focused releases Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — two of the franchise's least successful installments.

The Legacy Kollection is therefore not a “best of” collection, but a study of the series' formative period, when the development team Midway and franchise originators Ed Boon and John Tobias were determining how to develop a battle series, digitized from footage of actual people, as they went along. Viewing the historical footage — containing vintage recordings, contemporary discussions, and reproductions of classic advertisements, illustrated stories, and even interoffice faxes — it's remarkable to see how the series transformed from humble beginnings to a worldwide phenomenon. It's truly remarkable to watch a handful of young game developers, developing without clear direction or supervision, channel their pop-culture interests into creating a legendary video game series.

Documentary Portion

The historical documentation of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection traces the growth of the combat franchise and the developers' professional journeys at the currently closed Midway. It then goes on to show how those same creators reckoned with how to regularly outdo their previous work, facing no small amount of stress to duplicate their triumphs. It represents an intriguing historical record composed of video recordings and film-based pictures and hand-drawn illustrations, which demonstrate the hands-on approach of the series' creation process and how oral tradition helped disseminate its secrets and undisclosed elements of the series in its peak period in gaming halls. Told in bite-sized chunks, it's thoroughly enjoyable series of documentary shorts that includes titles, illustrated stories, cinematic adaptations and even the silly live-action tour. The collection additionally features some unreleased actions and character sprites among its previously unreleased material.

Interactive Gaming

Distributed throughout the five-part documentary's timeline are invitations to experience the actual titles. During specific moments, users can directly access a Mortal Kombat title or a home system version to revisit its gameplay and visual presentation, simulated with remarkable precision on modern hardware.

I dedicated most of my time playing the arcade classics, particularly Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Numerous titles here hold up, especially in local multiplayer matches. But playing against the computer-controlled adversaries in these titles is a testament to how primitive and unfair the coding existed in the franchise's pioneering releases. CPU-controlled opponents obviously use unfair advantages or are otherwise dumb as rocks. Lacking someone to play against — online play is available in most titles in the collection, but somewhat limited in options — the experience will be incomplete.

Visual Options

The twenty-three accessible Mortal Kombat titles in the compilation, a blend of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are accurately emulated, though I've observed a couple minor issues — mostly input lag and intermittent errors, notably within Mortal Kombat 4. Even though the releases are mostly shown in their original form, the creators has included some smart quality-of-life features and display customization choices. For example, players have the option to reveal combatant-unique actions on the display and select to activate unlimited duration to complete lethal techniques. Also included are choices for accessing hidden fighters, eliminating the need to execute some esoteric trick to unlock them.

Artistically, the releases can be experienced with numerous visual enhancements and presentation styles. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection offers very realistic filters that mimic the cathode-ray tube displays of gaming halls or household displays, or the greenscale screen of a Nintendo handheld. A particularly nice touch is the option to have arcade-like bezels surrounding the screen, with the MK game of your choice accurately and softly reflecting against the simulated dark plastic edges. It's very artistically charming.

Additional Features

There are plenty of welcome features besides the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, containing a soundtrack mode that allows users to rediscover the tunes of various fighting releases without the din of fighters brutally eliminating opponents. Also present are fighter biographies that feature histories and the various bits of lore displayed via arcade games' attract mode screens and final sequences.

Lost Media Recovery

Among the most significant features for committed franchise followers is the ability to access a piece of "lost media" in the format 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 head-to-head network battles in arcades. The Wavenet Edition of the game is almost exactly the same to UMK3, but provided the ability to challenge online opponents and featured various slight glitch repairs and refinements. However, this network version failed to achieve popularity, in part