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Mortal Kombat still possesses many hidden mysteries and the ability to amaze, over three decades after its initial debut in arcades. This latest compilation covering the brand's formative years, which includes a quartet of arcade releases, multiple console adaptations, and derivative games, goes beyond only a accurately simulated series of classics including less celebrated releases — it's also a rich documentary about the development of the renowned brand.

As a dedicated enthusiast of the series who has carefully followed its development and progression, there was numerous fresh aspects for me to learn and appreciate about the series.

What Constitutes the Legacy Kollection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection similar to other retro collections from the development team Digital Eclipse, part historical documentation, section playable historical record. The anthology contains digitally recreated editions of the original arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, including television and mobile versions of several of these titles. This compilation also features the franchise's attempts at derivative games, like action-oriented titles Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — some of the brand's worst entries.

The Legacy Kollection is therefore not a “best of” collection, but a study of the series' formative period, when developer Midway and franchise originators Ed Boon and John Tobias were discovering methods to develop a battle series, created from video recordings of real actors, through experimentation. Observing the archival material — containing vintage recordings, new interviews, and scans of old flyers, illustrated stories, and including internal communications — it's astonishing to observe how Mortal Kombat went from humble beginnings to a international craze. It's genuinely amazing to watch a handful of pioneering developers, working with minimal planning or guidance, direct their entertainment passions into establishing an enduring gaming brand.

Historical Section

The educational segment of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection charts the rise of the combat franchise and the developers' professional journeys at the currently closed Midway. It subsequently demonstrates how the very same individuals addressed how to regularly outdo their previous work, encountering significant stress to duplicate their triumphs. It's a fascinating time capsule composed of VHS tapes and film-based pictures and pencil sketches, which demonstrate the hands-on approach of the series' creation process and how oral tradition helped circulate its mysteries and secrets of MK in its arcade heyday. Told in bite-sized chunks, it's highly engaging collection of mini-documentaries that spans games, comics, films and including the humorous real-world tour. The compilation also contains some never-implemented techniques and game character images among its cutting-room-floor content.

Interactive Gaming

Placed within the five-segment historical film's chronology are invitations to experience the actual titles. During specific moments, viewers can hop into a combat game session or a home system version to reexperience its mechanics and artistic style, simulated with remarkable precision on contemporary systems.

I dedicated most of my time engaging with the vintage coin-op games, specifically Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Many of the games here hold up, especially in direct competitive sessions. Yet competing with the aforementioned game's AI-controlled opponents is a demonstration of how basic and unjust the coding existed in the franchise's pioneering releases. AI-managed characters clearly employ dishonest tactics or are alternatively incredibly stupid. Without having a human opponent — network gaming is included in numerous anthology releases, but rather basic in functionality — the experience will be incomplete.

Visual Options

The twenty-three accessible Mortal Kombat titles in the compilation, a blend of gaming hall, television, and mobile releases, are accurately emulated, though I detected a few small quirks — mainly control latency and the occasional bug, especially with Mortal Kombat 4. Although the titles are largely presented as-is, developer Digital Eclipse has incorporated various clever convenience enhancements and graphical adjustment settings. As an illustration, players have the option to reveal combatant-unique actions during gameplay and choose to enable infinite time to complete lethal techniques. Also included are choices for accessing hidden fighters, eliminating the need to execute obscure techniques to obtain them.

Visually, the games can be played with a variety of filters and visual treatments. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection provides highly authentic options that simulate the traditional television screens of gaming halls or household displays, or the limited color monitor of a portable gaming device. A particularly nice touch is the option to have coin-op-inspired frames encircling the display, with the specific combat game you're playing precisely and gently mirroring against the simulated dark plastic edges. It's remarkably visually appealing.

Bonus Elements

There are plenty of appreciated elements beyond the documentary and emulated arcade classics, featuring an audio component that enables players to reexperience the music from multiple Mortal Kombat games absent the noise of two kombatants viciously slaughtering each other. Also present are fighter biographies that include bios and the various bits of lore displayed via the idle displays of gaming hall releases and endings.

Lost Media Recovery

Among the most significant features for hardcore Mortal Kombat fans is the chance to experience a piece of "lost media" in the form of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This specific release, 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 featured the capability to challenge online opponents and featured various slight error corrections and adjustments. However, this network version never gained traction, in part