🔗 Share this article

The Mortal Kombat series continues to hold many hidden mysteries and the ability to amaze, more than 30 years after its first appearance in coin-op establishments. This latest compilation including the franchise's earliest days, featuring four arcade games, several home system versions, 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 making of the renowned brand.

Even as a lifelong devotee of the franchise who has closely monitored its creation and evolution, there was numerous fresh aspects for me to understand and value about the series.

What Defines the Historical Compilation

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection comparable to previous classic compilations from the creators at Digital Eclipse, part documentary, part playable archive. The collection includes digitally recreated editions of the pioneering arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, along with home system and portable adaptations of some of those games. The anthology additionally contains the franchise's attempts at spin-off titles, like action games 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 highlight reel anthology, but an exploration into the franchise's initial era, when developer Midway and franchise originators Ed Boon and John Tobias were determining how to make a fighting game, digitized from footage of actual people, as they went along. Viewing the historical footage — that features historical videos, recent conversations, and reproductions of classic advertisements, graphic novels, and even interoffice faxes — it's incredible to witness how Mortal Kombat went from simple starts to a international craze. It's frankly astounding to see a group of pioneering developers, developing without clear direction or oversight, channel their pop-culture interests into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Educational Component

The historical documentation of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection traces the growth of the fighting series and the developers' professional journeys at the currently closed Midway. It further illustrates how those same creators contended with 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 VHS tapes and traditional photos and manual drawings, which demonstrate the hands-on approach of the series' creation process and how oral tradition helped disseminate its secrets and hidden aspects of Mortal Kombat in its golden era in coin-op establishments. Presented in manageable segments, it's highly engaging collection of mini-documentaries that includes titles, illustrated stories, cinematic adaptations and even the comical physical events. The compilation also contains some unreleased actions and character sprites among its previously unreleased material.

Playable Component

Placed within the five-part documentary's timeline are prompts to play the games themselves. During specific moments, viewers can hop into a Mortal Kombat title or a console adaptation to rediscover its combat system and artistic style, recreated with impressive accuracy on contemporary systems.

I spent the bulk of my time playing the arcade classics, especially Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Many of the games here remain enjoyable, particularly during direct competitive sessions. However, facing the artificial intelligence fighters in these releases is a demonstration of how basic and unjust the coding existed in the franchise's pioneering releases. CPU-controlled opponents clearly employ dishonest tactics or are conversely remarkably unintelligent. Lacking a human opponent — internet multiplayer exists in numerous anthology releases, but too light on features — the experience will be incomplete.

Visual Options

The twenty-three accessible Mortal Kombat titles in the compilation, a combination of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are accurately emulated, though I've observed a couple minor issues — primarily delayed responses and the occasional bug, notably within Mortal Kombat 4. Although the titles are primarily displayed authentically, the development team has added several intelligent convenience enhancements and visual presentation options. For example, players have the option to reveal combatant-unique actions during gameplay and choose to enable infinite time to execute finishing moves. Additionally available are settings for accessing hidden fighters, without having to perform obscure techniques to obtain them.

Artistically, the releases can be enjoyed with multiple graphical effects and display options. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection provides highly authentic effects that reproduce the traditional television screens of arcades or home televisions, or the greenscale screen of a portable gaming device. A notably appreciated element is the choice to enable arcade-like bezels framing the gameplay, with the specific combat game you're playing faithfully and subtly duplicating against the faux black plastic borders. It's very artistically charming.

Bonus Elements

The collection includes numerous nice touches beyond the educational material and simulated classic games, containing a soundtrack mode that enables players to reexperience the tunes of various combat titles excluding the sounds of two kombatants viciously slaughtering each other. Additionally included are character profiles that include bios and numerous narrative components presented by the demo sequences of coin-op titles and endings.

Lost Media Recovery

One of the biggest highlights for hardcore Mortal Kombat fans is the opportunity to play a example of historically missing material in the guise of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This particular edition, a moderately improved edition of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an pioneering effort from the developer at direct online competitive gaming in coin-op establishments. This network version of the game is almost exactly the same to UMK3, but included the option to challenge online opponents and contained several small glitch repairs and refinements. But the Wavenet update never gained traction, in part