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The Mortal Kombat series still possesses many hidden mysteries and the ability to amaze, over three decades after its first appearance in arcades. A new collection covering the franchise's earliest days, comprising four arcade games, various home ports, and spinoffs, goes beyond only a accurately simulated set of legendary games including less celebrated releases — it additionally serves as a rich documentary about the making of the legendary series.

Being a long-time enthusiast of the series who has closely monitored its origins and transformation, there was much to discover for me to learn and appreciate about the series.

What Defines the Historical Compilation

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like other retro collections from developer Digital Eclipse, part historical documentation, portion interactive museum. The anthology contains simulated releases of the original arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, plus console and handheld ports of several of these titles. The collection even includes the brand's experiments at spin-off titles, like action-oriented titles Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — some of the brand's most criticized releases.

The Legacy Kollection is therefore not a greatest hits compilation, but a study of Mortal Kombat's early days, when the development team Midway and series co-creators Ed Boon and John Tobias were discovering methods to make a fighting game, produced using film material of actual people, as they went along. Observing the archival material — that features archival footage, new interviews, and scans of old flyers, graphic novels, and including internal communications — it's remarkable to see how the franchise evolved from humble beginnings to a worldwide phenomenon. It's frankly astounding to observe several young game developers, working with minimal planning or guidance, channel their pop-culture interests into establishing an enduring gaming brand.

Historical Section

The historical documentation of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection traces the growth of Mortal Kombat and the developers' professional journeys at the now-defunct Midway. It further illustrates how the very same individuals addressed how to routinely one-up themselves, experiencing considerable stress to duplicate their triumphs. It's a fascinating time capsule composed of VHS tapes and traditional photos and hand-drawn illustrations, which demonstrate the hands-on approach of the franchise's production method and how word of mouth helped circulate its mysteries and secrets of MK in its golden era in coin-op establishments. Told in bite-sized chunks, it's thoroughly enjoyable series of documentary shorts that covers video games, graphic novels, movies and even the comical physical events. The collection additionally features some unreleased actions and game character images among its cutting-room-floor content.

Interactive Experience

Interspersed along the quintet of documentary episodes' progression are prompts to play the original releases. At certain intervals, audience members can jump into a combat game session or a console adaptation to revisit its gameplay and visual presentation, emulated nearly perfectly on current technology.

I allocated the majority of my time experiencing the original arcade titles, particularly Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Many of the games here hold up, notably with local multiplayer matches. But playing against the artificial intelligence fighters in these releases is a demonstration of how basic and unbalanced the coding existed in the series' initial installments. Computer-directed fighters blatantly cheat to win or are conversely remarkably unintelligent. If you don't have a human opponent — online play is available in the majority of included games, but rather basic in functionality — the experience will be incomplete.

Visual Options

The two dozen available combat games in the anthology, a mix of gaming hall, television, and mobile releases, are accurately emulated, though I've observed a handful slight anomalies — mainly control latency and the occasional bug, particularly in Mortal Kombat 4. And while the games are largely presented as-is, developer Digital Eclipse has added several intelligent user experience improvements and graphical adjustment settings. For example, players have the option to show each character's special moves during gameplay and select to activate infinite time to execute finishing moves. Also included are choices for unlocking secret characters, without having to perform some esoteric trick to unlock them.

Artistically, the releases can be played with a variety of visual enhancements and presentation styles. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection offers very realistic options that simulate the traditional television screens of arcades or domestic TVs, or the greenscale screen of a Game Boy. An especially welcome feature is the choice to enable coin-op-inspired frames surrounding the screen, with the specific combat game you're playing faithfully and subtly duplicating against the simulated dark plastic edges. It's remarkably visually appealing.

Bonus Elements

Players will discover multiple appreciated elements beyond the documentary and emulated arcade classics, including a music player that enables players to reexperience the music from multiple combat titles absent the noise of two kombatants viciously slaughtering each other. Also present are combatant descriptions that contain backgrounds and the various bits of lore displayed via the idle displays of gaming hall releases and endings.

Archival Discovery

One of the biggest highlights for dedicated series enthusiasts is the chance to experience a segment of previously unavailable content in the guise of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This specific release, a slightly updated version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an early attempt by Midway at direct online competitive gaming in coin-op establishments. The online-enabled release of the game is almost exactly the same to UMK3, but included the option to challenge online opponents and contained several small glitch repairs and refinements. Yet this online edition never gained traction, in part