🔗 Share this article

The Mortal Kombat series still possesses numerous undisclosed elements and the capacity to surprise, more than 30 years after its original launch in gaming halls. This latest compilation covering the series' initial period, featuring a quartet of arcade releases, various home ports, and spinoffs, goes beyond only a accurately simulated series of classics including less celebrated releases — it additionally serves as a detailed chronicle about the creation of the legendary series.

As a dedicated Mortal Kombat fan who has carefully followed its origins and transformation, there was much to discover for me to learn and appreciate about the series.

What Constitutes the Legacy Kollection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like previous classic compilations from developer Digital Eclipse, part documentary, section playable historical record. This compilation features simulated releases of the pioneering arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, along with home system and portable adaptations of several of these titles. This compilation also features the brand's experiments at derivative games, like combat-focused releases Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — two of the franchise's least successful installments.

The Legacy Kollection consequently doesn't represent a greatest hits compilation, but a study of the series' formative period, when the development team Midway and series co-creators Ed Boon and John Tobias were figuring out how to create a combat title, created from video recordings of real actors, on the fly. Watching the documentary — that features historical videos, contemporary discussions, and reproductions of classic advertisements, comics, and even interoffice faxes — it's astonishing to observe how the series transformed from humble beginnings to a worldwide phenomenon. It's truly remarkable to observe several early video game creators, developing without clear direction or oversight, focus their cultural enthusiasms into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Educational Component

The educational segment of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection traces the growth of the combat franchise and the founders' vocational paths at the no-longer-operating Midway. It further illustrates how the very same individuals contended with how to consistently surpass their achievements, experiencing considerable pressure to repeat their triumphs. It represents an intriguing historical record made from 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 undisclosed elements of the series in its golden era in coin-op establishments. Presented in manageable segments, it's thoroughly enjoyable series of documentary shorts that spans games, comics, films and including the humorous real-world tour. It also includes some unreleased actions and character sprites among its archived development assets.

Interactive Gaming

Distributed throughout the five-segment historical film's chronology are prompts to play the original releases. At various points, viewers can hop into a combat game session or a home system version to rediscover its combat system and visual presentation, simulated with remarkable precision on current technology.

I spent the bulk of my time experiencing the original arcade titles, specifically Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Many of the games here remain enjoyable, notably with local multiplayer matches. However, facing the artificial intelligence fighters in these releases is a demonstration of how basic and unbalanced the programming was in the franchise's pioneering releases. Computer-directed fighters clearly employ dishonest tactics or are otherwise dumb as rocks. Without having a human opponent — online play is available in the majority of included games, but too light on features — you'll be missing out.

Display Features

The 23 playable Mortal Kombat games in the compilation, a mix of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are faithfully recreated, though I detected a handful slight anomalies — primarily delayed responses and intermittent errors, especially with Mortal Kombat 4. And while the games are largely presented as-is, developer Digital Eclipse has included some smart quality-of-life features and graphical adjustment settings. As an illustration, you can choose to display fighter-specific techniques on the display and select to activate infinite time to perform a Fatality. Also included are choices for revealing concealed combatants, eliminating the need to execute obscure techniques to unlock them.

Visually, the games can be enjoyed with multiple visual enhancements and presentation styles. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection includes remarkably accurate effects that reproduce the CRT monitors of coin-op establishments or home televisions, or the limited color monitor of a Game Boy. A notably appreciated element is the setting to activate coin-op-inspired frames surrounding the screen, with your selected Mortal Kombat title precisely and gently mirroring against the faux black plastic borders. It's remarkably visually appealing.

Additional Features

The collection includes numerous welcome features besides the educational material and simulated classic games, containing a soundtrack mode that enables players to reexperience the tunes of various combat titles absent the noise of fighters brutally eliminating opponents. Also present are combatant descriptions that include bios and the various bits of lore shown through the idle displays of gaming hall releases and endings.

Archival Discovery

One of the biggest highlights for hardcore Mortal Kombat fans is the ability to access a segment of previously unavailable content in the form of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This particular edition, a slightly updated version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an initial venture by the company at one-on-one internet-based play in gaming halls. This network version of the game is almost exactly the same to UMK3, but provided the ability to challenge online opponents and included some minor bug fixes and balance. But the Wavenet update never gained traction, in part