🔗 Share this article

The Mortal Kombat series still possesses its share of secrets and the power to astonish, over three decades after its original launch in coin-op establishments. The recent anthology including the brand's formative years, which includes four original arcade titles, various home ports, and derivative games, transcends only a accurately simulated set of legendary games along with lesser-known entries — it's also a rich documentary about the creation of the legendary series.

As a dedicated enthusiast of the series who has closely monitored its development and progression, there was plenty new for me to understand and value about the series.

What Defines the Legacy Kollection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like previous classic compilations from developer Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, portion interactive museum. The anthology contains emulated versions of the pioneering arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, along with home system and portable adaptations of certain releases. The anthology additionally contains the franchise's attempts at derivative games, like action-oriented titles Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — two of the franchise's most criticized releases.

The Legacy Kollection is therefore not a “best of” collection, but a study of the franchise's initial era, when the creators at Midway and series co-creators the creative duo behind the series were determining how to develop a battle series, digitized from footage of actual people, through experimentation. Observing the archival material — containing vintage recordings, contemporary discussions, and scans of old flyers, graphic novels, and even company memos — it's remarkable to see how the franchise evolved from simple starts to a global sensation. It's truly remarkable to observe several pioneering developers, operating with virtually no plan or oversight, direct their entertainment passions into creating a legendary video game series.

Documentary Portion

The educational segment of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection traces the growth of the combat franchise and the developers' professional journeys at the now-defunct Midway. It subsequently demonstrates how these identical developers addressed how to regularly outdo their previous work, experiencing considerable demand to replicate their success. It's a fascinating time capsule made from video recordings and film-based pictures and manual drawings, which showcase the DIY nature of the series' creation process and how personal recommendations helped disseminate its secrets and secrets of MK in its arcade heyday. Delivered in easily digestible portions, it's an eminently watchable series of documentary shorts that spans games, comics, films and even the comical physical events. The compilation also contains some unused moves and digital fighter representations among its archived development assets.

Playable Component

Distributed throughout the five-part documentary's timeline are prompts to play the original releases. At certain intervals, viewers can hop into a combat game session or a home system version to reexperience its mechanics and visual presentation, recreated with impressive accuracy on modern hardware.

I spent the bulk of my time experiencing the original arcade titles, specifically Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Several releases here stand the test of time, notably with direct competitive sessions. But playing against the artificial intelligence fighters in these releases is a reminder of how crude and unbalanced the programming was in the franchise's pioneering releases. AI-managed characters obviously use unfair advantages or are conversely remarkably unintelligent. If you don't have another person to compete with — internet multiplayer exists in the majority of included games, but rather basic in functionality — the experience will be incomplete.

Technical Presentation

The twenty-three accessible Mortal Kombat titles in the anthology, a combination of arcade, console, and handheld games, are precisely simulated, though I have noticed a handful slight anomalies — mostly input lag and sporadic glitches, notably within Mortal Kombat 4. And while the games are mostly shown in their original form, the creators has incorporated various clever convenience enhancements and visual presentation options. For example, you can choose to display fighter-specific techniques on-screen and opt to have unlimited duration to complete lethal techniques. Also included are choices for accessing hidden fighters, removing the requirement to complete some esoteric trick to access them.

Visually, the games can be experienced with numerous filters and visual treatments. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection includes remarkably accurate options that simulate the CRT monitors of gaming halls or household displays, or the greenscale screen of a portable gaming device. An especially welcome feature is the choice to enable gaming hall-style borders framing the gameplay, with the specific combat game you're playing faithfully and subtly duplicating against the faux black plastic borders. It's quite aesthetically pleasing.

Extra Content

There are plenty of nice touches beyond the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, containing a soundtrack mode that lets you revisit the tunes of various combat titles absent the noise of combatants violently defeating each other. Additionally included are combatant descriptions that contain backgrounds and multiple story elements displayed via the idle displays of gaming hall releases and conclusions.

Historical Preservation

A particularly notable inclusion for committed franchise followers is the opportunity to play 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 early attempt by Midway at direct online competitive gaming in arcades. The Wavenet Edition of the game is almost exactly the same to UMK3, but included the option to challenge online opponents and included some minor glitch repairs and refinements. Yet this online edition never gained traction, in part