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This iconic fighting game still possesses its share of secrets and the capacity to surprise, more than 30 years after its initial debut in gaming halls. The recent anthology including the brand's formative years, featuring four original arcade titles, several home system versions, and spinoffs, goes beyond only a accurately simulated series of classics and not-so-classics — it's also a comprehensive historical account about the making of the renowned brand.

Even as a lifelong enthusiast of the series who has carefully followed its creation and evolution, there was much to discover for me to discover and admire about the series.

What Constitutes the Legacy Collection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection similar to previous classic compilations from developer Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, part playable archive. The collection includes digitally recreated editions of the first arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, plus console and handheld ports of some of those games. The anthology additionally contains the series' ventures at derivative games, like combat-focused releases 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 Mortal Kombat's early days, when developer Midway and series co-creators Ed Boon and John Tobias were figuring out how to create a combat title, digitized from footage of actual people, on the fly. Observing the archival material — which includes vintage recordings, recent conversations, and scans of old flyers, illustrated stories, and even company memos — it's incredible to witness how the franchise evolved from simple starts to a worldwide phenomenon. It's genuinely amazing to watch a handful of early video game creators, working with minimal planning or guidance, channel their pop-culture interests into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Educational Component

The historical documentation of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection charts the rise of the fighting series and its creators' careers at the now-defunct Midway. It then goes on to show how those same creators reckoned with how to regularly outdo their previous work, experiencing considerable pressure to repeat their achievements. It represents an intriguing historical record composed of analog films and film-based pictures and hand-drawn illustrations, which reveal the self-made character of the franchise's production method and how oral tradition helped circulate its mysteries and secrets of MK in its peak period in gaming halls. Told in bite-sized chunks, 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

Distributed throughout the quintet of documentary episodes' progression are prompts to play the actual titles. At various points, audience members can jump into a Mortal Kombat title or a console adaptation to rediscover its combat system and graphics, recreated with impressive accuracy on modern hardware.

I spent the bulk of my time engaging with the vintage coin-op games, especially Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Many of the games 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 unfair the programming was in the franchise's pioneering releases. Computer-directed fighters clearly employ dishonest tactics or are alternatively incredibly stupid. Lacking a human opponent — online play is available in most titles in the collection, but somewhat limited in options — you'll be missing out.

Visual Options

The two dozen available combat games in the anthology, a blend of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are faithfully recreated, though I've observed a couple minor issues — mainly control latency and sporadic glitches, notably within Mortal Kombat 4. And while the games are mostly shown in their original form, developer Digital Eclipse has incorporated various clever convenience enhancements and graphical adjustment settings. For instance, players have the option to reveal combatant-unique actions on the display and choose to enable endless periods to perform a Fatality. Also included are choices for unlocking secret characters, eliminating the need to execute some esoteric trick to access them.

Visually, the games can be experienced with numerous graphical effects and display options. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection provides highly authentic effects that reproduce the CRT monitors of coin-op establishments or domestic TVs, or the limited color monitor of a Game Boy. A particularly nice touch is the choice to enable arcade-like bezels framing the gameplay, with the specific combat game you're playing accurately and softly reflecting against the faux black plastic borders. It's very artistically charming.

Additional Features

There are plenty of appreciated elements beyond the educational material and simulated classic games, including a music player that enables players to reexperience the tunes of various Mortal Kombat games excluding the sounds of combatants violently defeating each other. Also present are combatant descriptions that include bios and multiple story elements displayed via arcade games' attract mode screens and endings.

Archival Discovery

Among the most significant features for committed franchise followers is the opportunity to play a example of historically missing material in the form of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This particular edition, a somewhat revised iteration of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an pioneering effort from the developer at one-on-one internet-based play in coin-op establishments. This network version of the game is virtually identical to UMK3, but provided the ability to compete against internet adversaries and included some minor bug fixes and balance. However, this network version didn't find widespread adoption, in part