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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 gaming halls. This latest compilation covering the brand's formative years, featuring a quartet of arcade releases, several home system versions, and spinoffs, is more than only a accurately simulated series of classics along with lesser-known entries — it additionally serves as a detailed chronicle about the development of the iconic franchise.

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

What Constitutes the Historical Compilation

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like other retro collections from the creators at Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, portion interactive museum. The anthology contains simulated releases 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 series' ventures at spin-off titles, 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 consequently doesn't represent a “best of” collection, but an exploration into the series' formative period, when the development team Midway and franchise originators Ed Boon and John Tobias were figuring out how to develop a battle series, created from video recordings of actual people, through experimentation. Observing the archival material — containing archival footage, recent conversations, and scans of old flyers, illustrated stories, and even interoffice faxes — it's incredible to witness how the series transformed from modest origins to a international craze. It's truly remarkable to see a group of young game developers, operating with virtually no plan or oversight, focus their cultural enthusiasms into establishing an enduring gaming brand.

Historical Section

The educational segment of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection traces the growth of Mortal Kombat and the founders' vocational paths at the no-longer-operating Midway. It subsequently demonstrates how those same creators reckoned with how to consistently surpass their achievements, encountering significant demand to replicate their achievements. It serves as a compelling period piece composed of analog films and film-based pictures and manual drawings, which reveal the self-made character of the franchise's production method and how oral tradition helped circulate its mysteries and hidden aspects of Mortal Kombat in its golden era in coin-op establishments. Told in bite-sized chunks, it's thoroughly enjoyable set of brief historical films that spans games, comics, films and including the humorous real-world tour. The collection additionally features some unused moves and game character images among its previously unreleased material.

Interactive Gaming

Interspersed along the quintet of documentary episodes' progression are opportunities to engage with the original releases. At various points, viewers can hop into a game of Mortal Kombat or one of its home console ports to revisit its gameplay and visual presentation, emulated nearly perfectly on current technology.

I spent the bulk of my time playing the arcade classics, specifically Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Numerous titles here stand the test of time, particularly during one-on-one local play. Yet competing with the aforementioned game's AI-controlled opponents is a reminder of how crude and unjust the coding existed in early Mortal Kombat games. Computer-directed fighters clearly employ dishonest tactics or are conversely remarkably unintelligent. Lacking another person to compete with — online play is available in numerous anthology releases, but rather basic in functionality — the experience will be incomplete.

Technical Presentation

The 23 playable Mortal Kombat games in the compilation, a combination of arcade, console, and handheld games, are precisely simulated, though I have noticed a couple minor issues — primarily delayed responses and intermittent errors, notably within Mortal Kombat 4. Even though the releases are primarily displayed authentically, developer Digital Eclipse has added several intelligent user experience improvements and visual presentation options. For instance, you can choose to display fighter-specific techniques during gameplay and opt to have infinite time to perform a Fatality. Also included are choices for accessing hidden fighters, removing the requirement to complete some esoteric trick to unlock them.

Visually, the games can be experienced with numerous filters and visual treatments. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection offers very realistic options that simulate the CRT monitors of coin-op establishments or household displays, or the monochrome green display of a portable gaming device. A particularly nice touch is the option to have gaming hall-style borders surrounding the screen, with the specific combat game you're playing faithfully and subtly duplicating against the simulated dark plastic edges. It's very artistically charming.

Extra Content

The collection includes numerous appreciated elements beyond the documentary and emulated arcade classics, containing a soundtrack mode that lets you revisit the music from multiple combat titles excluding the sounds of fighters brutally eliminating opponents. Additionally included are character profiles that feature histories and the various bits of lore presented by the demo sequences of coin-op titles and final sequences.

Lost Media Recovery

One of the biggest highlights for hardcore Mortal Kombat fans is the opportunity to play a example of historically missing material in the form 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 practically indistinguishable to UMK3, but included the option to battle network competitors and featured various slight glitch repairs and refinements. However, this network version never gained traction, in part