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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 initial debut in gaming halls. The recent anthology including the franchise's earliest days, featuring four arcade games, various home ports, and related titles, goes beyond just a well-emulated series of classics and not-so-classics — it additionally serves as a comprehensive historical account about the development of the renowned brand.

Being a long-time devotee of the franchise who has carefully followed its creation and evolution, there was plenty new for me to understand and value about the series.

What Defines the Legacy Collection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection comparable to other vintage game anthologies from the development team Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, section playable historical record. The collection includes 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 anthology additionally contains the brand's experiments at derivative games, like combat-focused releases Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — some of the brand's worst entries.

The Legacy Kollection consequently doesn't represent a highlight reel anthology, but a study of Mortal Kombat's early days, when developer Midway and brand founders the visionary developers were discovering methods to create a combat title, produced using film material of real actors, through experimentation. Watching the documentary — that features vintage recordings, contemporary discussions, and scans of old flyers, illustrated stories, and even company memos — it's incredible to witness how Mortal Kombat went from modest origins to a international craze. It's truly remarkable to observe several young game developers, developing without clear direction or supervision, channel their pop-culture interests into establishing an enduring gaming brand.

Documentary Portion

The educational segment of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection documents the ascent of the combat franchise and its creators' careers at the currently closed Midway. It subsequently demonstrates how these identical developers contended with how to regularly outdo their previous work, experiencing considerable stress to duplicate their achievements. It serves as a compelling period piece made from VHS tapes and film-based pictures and pencil sketches, which demonstrate the hands-on approach of Mortal Kombat's development and how word of mouth helped spread its rumors and secrets of MK in its golden era in coin-op establishments. Presented in manageable segments, it's thoroughly enjoyable collection of mini-documentaries that covers video games, graphic novels, movies and even the silly live-action tour. The compilation also contains some unreleased actions and game character images among its cutting-room-floor content.

Interactive Gaming

Interspersed along the five-segment historical film's chronology are invitations to experience the original releases. At certain intervals, users can directly access a game of Mortal Kombat or a home system version to rediscover its combat system and graphics, recreated with impressive accuracy on current technology.

I spent the bulk of my time engaging with the vintage coin-op games, particularly Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Several releases here hold up, particularly during local multiplayer matches. However, facing the computer-controlled adversaries in these titles is a demonstration of how basic and unbalanced the coding existed in the franchise's pioneering releases. CPU-controlled opponents obviously use unfair advantages or are alternatively incredibly stupid. If you don't have another person to compete with — online play is available in the majority of included games, but too light on features — you'll be missing out.

Display Features

The 23 playable Mortal Kombat games in the anthology, a mix of gaming hall, television, and mobile releases, are faithfully recreated, though I have noticed a handful slight anomalies — mainly control latency and the occasional bug, notably within Mortal Kombat 4. Although the titles are largely presented as-is, developer Digital Eclipse has added several intelligent convenience enhancements and graphical adjustment settings. For instance, users can elect to reveal combatant-unique actions on-screen and opt to have infinite time to execute finishing moves. Additionally available are settings for revealing concealed combatants, removing the requirement to complete some esoteric trick to unlock them.

Artistically, the releases can be experienced with numerous filters and visual treatments. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection provides highly authentic effects that reproduce the traditional television screens of gaming halls or home televisions, or the monochrome green display of a portable gaming device. An especially welcome feature is the setting to activate arcade-like bezels surrounding the screen, with the MK game of your choice faithfully and subtly duplicating against the simulated dark plastic edges. It's very artistically charming.

Bonus Elements

Players will discover multiple nice touches beyond the documentary and emulated arcade classics, including a music player that enables players to reexperience the music from multiple Mortal Kombat games without the din of fighters brutally eliminating opponents. Also present are combatant descriptions that contain backgrounds and the various bits of lore shown through the demo sequences of coin-op titles and conclusions.

Historical Preservation

A particularly notable inclusion for committed franchise followers is the ability to access a piece of "lost media" in the guise of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This version of the game, a somewhat revised iteration of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an pioneering effort from the developer at direct online competitive gaming in gaming halls. The online-enabled release of the game is practically indistinguishable to UMK3, but provided the ability to compete against internet adversaries and included some minor error corrections and adjustments. But the Wavenet update failed to achieve popularity, in part