The Legacy Kollection of Mortal Kombat: A Near-Flawless Victory for the Fighting Game Brand

This iconic fighting game continues to hold its share of secrets and the ability to amaze, well past its 30th anniversary after its original launch in arcades. This latest compilation spanning the series' initial period, which includes four original arcade titles, various home ports, and related titles, goes beyond just a well-emulated set of legendary games along with lesser-known entries — it additionally serves as a rich documentary about the making of the iconic franchise.

Even as a lifelong enthusiast of the series who has closely monitored its development and progression, there was much to discover for me to learn and appreciate about the series.

What Defines the Historical Compilation

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection similar to other retro collections from the development team Digital Eclipse, part documentary, part playable archive. The anthology contains emulated versions of the pioneering arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, including television and mobile versions of some of those games. The collection even includes the franchise's attempts at derivative games, like action-oriented titles Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — two of the franchise's worst entries.

The Legacy Kollection is therefore not a greatest hits compilation, but an examination of the franchise's initial era, when the development team Midway and brand founders the creative duo behind the series were determining how to create a combat title, produced using film material of real actors, on the fly. Observing the archival material — which includes vintage recordings, recent conversations, and reproductions of classic advertisements, comics, and including internal communications — it's incredible to witness how the series transformed from modest origins to a international craze. It's frankly astounding to observe several young game developers, working with minimal planning or guidance, direct their entertainment passions into creating a legendary video game series.

Educational Component

The educational segment of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection documents the ascent of the fighting series and the founders' vocational paths at the currently closed Midway. It further illustrates how those same creators contended with how to routinely one-up themselves, experiencing considerable pressure to repeat their achievements. It serves as a compelling period piece made from VHS tapes and analog photographs and manual drawings, which demonstrate the hands-on approach of the series' creation process and how oral tradition helped spread its rumors and undisclosed elements of the series in its arcade heyday. Delivered in easily digestible portions, it's highly engaging collection of mini-documentaries that spans games, comics, films and including the humorous real-world tour. It also includes some unused moves and character sprites among its cutting-room-floor content.

Interactive Gaming

Distributed throughout the five-part documentary's timeline are prompts to play the games themselves. At various points, viewers can hop into a game of Mortal Kombat or a console adaptation to rediscover its combat system and visual presentation, recreated with impressive accuracy on current technology.

I allocated the majority of my time experiencing the original arcade titles, specifically Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Several releases here stand the test of time, particularly during local multiplayer matches. But playing against the artificial intelligence fighters in these releases is a demonstration of how basic and unfair the coding existed in the series' initial installments. CPU-controlled opponents blatantly cheat to win or are conversely remarkably unintelligent. If you don't have a human opponent — network gaming is included in numerous anthology releases, but rather basic in functionality — the experience will be incomplete.

Display Features

The twenty-three accessible Mortal Kombat titles in the anthology, a combination of arcade, console, and handheld games, are accurately emulated, though I detected a couple minor issues — mostly input lag and sporadic glitches, especially with Mortal Kombat 4. Even though the releases are primarily displayed authentically, the development team has incorporated various clever convenience enhancements and visual presentation options. For instance, you can choose to reveal combatant-unique actions on the display and choose to enable endless periods to execute finishing moves. Additionally available are settings for unlocking secret characters, eliminating the need to execute complicated methods to access them.

Visually, the games can be experienced with numerous filters and visual treatments. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection includes remarkably accurate options that simulate the traditional television screens of arcades or household displays, or the limited color monitor of a Nintendo handheld. A particularly nice touch is the setting to activate coin-op-inspired frames framing the gameplay, with the MK game of your choice accurately and softly reflecting against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's quite aesthetically pleasing.

Extra Content

The collection includes numerous nice touches beyond the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, featuring an audio component that allows users to rediscover the tunes of various fighting releases absent the noise of two kombatants viciously slaughtering each other. Additionally included are fighter biographies that feature histories and the various bits of lore presented by the idle displays of gaming hall releases and final sequences.

Historical Preservation

Among the most significant features for dedicated series enthusiasts is the opportunity to play a piece of "lost media" in the guise of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This particular edition, a somewhat revised iteration of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an early attempt by Midway at head-to-head network battles in arcades. The online-enabled release 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. Yet this online edition never gained traction, in part