🔗 Share this article

This iconic fighting game continues to hold numerous undisclosed elements and the capacity to surprise, well past its 30th anniversary after its first appearance in arcades. The recent anthology including the brand's formative years, which includes four arcade games, various home ports, and derivative games, transcends simply a faithfully reproduced collection of iconic titles and not-so-classics — it's also a comprehensive historical account about the making of the renowned brand.

Even as a lifelong Mortal Kombat fan who has paid close attention its development and progression, there was much to discover for me to understand and value about the series.

What Makes the Legacy Collection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like previous classic compilations from developer Digital Eclipse, part documentary, part playable archive. This compilation features 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 certain releases. The anthology additionally contains the series' ventures at derivative games, like action games 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 “best of” collection, but an examination of the franchise's initial era, when developer Midway and brand founders Ed Boon and John Tobias were figuring out how to create a combat title, produced using film material of real actors, through experimentation. Watching the documentary — that features vintage recordings, recent conversations, and scans of old flyers, comics, and even interoffice faxes — it's remarkable to see how Mortal Kombat went from humble beginnings to a worldwide phenomenon. It's genuinely amazing to see a group of early video game creators, developing without clear direction or oversight, channel their pop-culture interests into creating a legendary video game series.

Educational Component

The documentary portion of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection traces the growth of the combat franchise and its creators' careers at the currently closed Midway. It further illustrates how the very same individuals addressed how to regularly outdo their previous work, facing no small amount of stress to duplicate their triumphs. It's a fascinating time capsule constructed using analog films and analog photographs and hand-drawn illustrations, which showcase the DIY nature of Mortal Kombat's development and how word of mouth helped disseminate its secrets and undisclosed elements of the series in its arcade heyday. Presented in manageable segments, it's highly engaging series of documentary shorts that includes titles, illustrated stories, cinematic adaptations and even the silly live-action tour. The collection additionally features some unused moves and game character images among its previously unreleased material.

Interactive Experience

Interspersed along the five-part documentary's timeline are invitations to experience the games themselves. At certain intervals, audience members can jump into a combat game session or one of its home console ports to reexperience its mechanics and graphics, simulated with remarkable precision on modern hardware.

I spent the bulk of my time engaging with the vintage coin-op games, particularly Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Numerous titles here hold up, particularly during local multiplayer matches. However, facing the computer-controlled adversaries in these titles is a demonstration of how basic and unjust the programming was in the series' initial installments. Computer-directed fighters obviously use unfair advantages or are otherwise dumb as rocks. Without having a human opponent — internet multiplayer exists in most titles in the collection, but somewhat limited in options — you'll be missing out.

Display Features

The two dozen available combat games in the collection, a blend of gaming hall, television, and mobile releases, are accurately emulated, though I've observed a handful slight anomalies — mostly input lag and intermittent errors, notably within Mortal Kombat 4. And while the games are primarily displayed authentically, developer Digital Eclipse has included some smart user experience improvements and graphical adjustment settings. For example, you can choose to display fighter-specific techniques on the display and select to activate unlimited duration to execute finishing moves. Additionally available are settings for accessing hidden fighters, removing the requirement to complete obscure techniques to unlock them.

Artistically, the releases can be enjoyed with multiple visual enhancements and presentation styles. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection offers very realistic filters that mimic the CRT monitors of gaming halls or domestic TVs, or the greenscale screen of a Game Boy. A particularly nice touch is the option to have arcade-like bezels encircling the display, with the specific combat game you're playing faithfully and subtly duplicating against the faux black plastic borders. It's quite aesthetically pleasing.

Bonus Elements

Players will discover multiple welcome features besides the documentary and emulated arcade classics, including a music player that enables players to reexperience the soundtracks of different Mortal Kombat games without the din of combatants violently defeating each other. Additionally included are character profiles that feature histories and multiple story elements shown through the demo sequences of coin-op titles and conclusions.

Historical Preservation

One of the biggest highlights for dedicated series enthusiasts is the ability to access a example of historically missing material in the format of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This version of the game, a somewhat revised iteration of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an early attempt by Midway at direct online competitive gaming in gaming halls. The online-enabled release of the game is virtually identical to UMK3, but provided the ability to compete against internet adversaries and contained several small error corrections and adjustments. But the Wavenet update didn't find widespread adoption, in part