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Mortal Kombat still possesses many hidden mysteries and the ability to amaze, over three decades after its original launch in gaming halls. This latest compilation covering the franchise's earliest days, featuring four arcade games, various home ports, and derivative games, goes beyond simply a faithfully reproduced series of classics including less celebrated releases — it functions as a comprehensive historical account about the development of the renowned brand.

Being a long-time Mortal Kombat fan who has paid close attention its origins and transformation, there was numerous fresh aspects for me to learn and appreciate about the series.

What Makes the Legacy Kollection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection similar to previous classic compilations from developer Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, section playable historical record. The collection includes digitally recreated editions of the pioneering 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 derivative games, like action games Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — among the series' worst entries.

The Legacy Kollection is therefore not a highlight reel anthology, but a study of Mortal Kombat's early days, when the development team Midway and series co-creators the creative duo behind the series were discovering methods to create a combat title, digitized from footage of actual people, through experimentation. Observing the archival material — containing vintage recordings, contemporary discussions, and digital copies of vintage posters, comics, and even interoffice faxes — it's astonishing to observe how the franchise evolved from humble beginnings to a worldwide phenomenon. It's truly remarkable to observe several pioneering developers, developing without clear direction or supervision, direct their entertainment passions into creating a legendary video game series.

Documentary Portion

The historical documentation of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection traces the growth of the combat franchise and the developers' professional journeys at the no-longer-operating Midway. It then goes on to show how these identical developers addressed how to regularly outdo their previous work, encountering significant stress to duplicate their triumphs. It serves as a compelling period piece made from analog films and analog photographs and manual drawings, which demonstrate the hands-on approach of Mortal Kombat's development and how oral tradition helped circulate its mysteries and undisclosed elements of the series in its arcade heyday. Delivered in easily digestible portions, it's an eminently watchable series of documentary shorts 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.

Playable Component

Placed within the quintet of documentary episodes' progression are opportunities to engage with the games themselves. At various points, viewers can hop into a combat game session or a console adaptation to rediscover its combat system and graphics, recreated with impressive accuracy on contemporary systems.

I spent the bulk of my time playing the arcade classics, particularly Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Several releases here hold up, especially in one-on-one local play. However, facing the computer-controlled adversaries in these titles is a demonstration of how basic and unjust the coding existed in early Mortal Kombat games. CPU-controlled opponents clearly employ dishonest tactics or are otherwise dumb as rocks. If you don't have a human opponent — online play is available in the majority of included games, but too light on features — the experience will be incomplete.

Technical Presentation

The two dozen available combat games in the collection, a combination of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are accurately emulated, though I have noticed a couple minor issues — mostly input lag and the occasional bug, particularly in Mortal Kombat 4. Even though the releases are largely presented as-is, developer Digital Eclipse has incorporated various clever user experience improvements and graphical adjustment settings. For instance, players have the option to show each character's special moves on the display and choose to enable unlimited duration to complete lethal techniques. Additionally available are settings for unlocking secret characters, removing the requirement to complete some esoteric trick to access them.

Graphically, the titles can be enjoyed with multiple visual enhancements and presentation styles. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection offers very realistic effects that reproduce the cathode-ray tube displays of coin-op establishments or home televisions, or the limited color monitor of a portable gaming device. An especially welcome feature is the choice to enable gaming hall-style borders encircling the display, with the MK game of your choice accurately and softly reflecting against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's remarkably visually appealing.

Bonus Elements

There are plenty of welcome features besides the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, including a music player that enables players to reexperience the music from multiple fighting releases absent the noise of fighters brutally eliminating opponents. Also present are character profiles that include bios and numerous narrative components shown through the idle displays of gaming hall releases and final sequences.

Lost Media Recovery

Among the most significant features for dedicated series enthusiasts is the chance to experience a piece of "lost media" in the format of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This specific release, a moderately improved edition of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an initial venture by the company at head-to-head network battles in gaming halls. The Wavenet Edition of the game is practically indistinguishable to UMK3, but featured the capability to battle network competitors and contained several small bug fixes and balance. Yet this online edition failed to achieve popularity, in part