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The Mortal Kombat series still possesses many hidden mysteries and the ability to amaze, more than 30 years after its first appearance in gaming halls. This latest compilation spanning the series' initial period, which includes a quartet of arcade releases, multiple console adaptations, and related titles, is more than just a well-emulated series of classics along with lesser-known entries — it additionally serves as a comprehensive historical account about the making of the iconic franchise.

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

What Defines the Legacy Collection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection comparable to previous classic compilations from developer Digital Eclipse, part documentary, section playable historical record. The anthology contains digitally recreated editions of the first 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 franchise's attempts at spinoffs, like action games Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — two of the franchise's worst entries.

The Legacy Kollection thus isn't a highlight reel anthology, but an exploration into the franchise's initial era, when the creators at Midway and franchise originators the creative duo behind the series were discovering methods to develop a battle series, created from video recordings of real actors, on the fly. Watching the documentary — which includes vintage recordings, contemporary discussions, and scans of old flyers, graphic novels, and including internal communications — it's remarkable to see how the series transformed from modest origins to a global sensation. It's frankly astounding to observe several young game developers, developing without clear direction or guidance, focus their cultural enthusiasms into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Educational Component

The historical documentation of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection charts the rise of the combat franchise and the developers' professional journeys at the no-longer-operating Midway. It then goes on to show how these identical developers reckoned with how to routinely one-up themselves, experiencing considerable demand to replicate their achievements. It represents an intriguing historical record composed of VHS tapes and film-based pictures and manual drawings, which showcase the DIY nature of Mortal Kombat's development and how word of mouth helped spread its rumors and hidden aspects of Mortal Kombat in its peak period in gaming halls. Presented in manageable segments, it's highly engaging set of brief historical films that spans games, comics, films and including the humorous real-world tour. The compilation also contains some never-implemented techniques and character sprites among its archived development assets.

Playable Component

Placed within the quintet of documentary episodes' progression are invitations to experience the actual titles. At certain intervals, audience members can jump into a game of Mortal Kombat or one of its home console ports to reexperience its mechanics and graphics, recreated with impressive accuracy on current technology.

I allocated the majority of my time playing the arcade classics, especially Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Many of the games here hold up, notably with local multiplayer matches. However, facing the computer-controlled adversaries in these titles is a reminder of how crude and unbalanced the coding existed in the series' initial installments. CPU-controlled opponents obviously use unfair advantages or are conversely remarkably unintelligent. If you don't have another person to compete with — network gaming is included in the majority of included games, but somewhat limited in options — the experience will be incomplete.

Technical Presentation

The two dozen available combat games in the anthology, a mix of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are accurately emulated, though I detected a couple minor issues — primarily delayed responses and intermittent errors, particularly in Mortal Kombat 4. And while the games are largely presented as-is, the development team has added several intelligent quality-of-life features and graphical adjustment settings. For instance, users can elect to show each character's special moves during gameplay and choose to enable endless periods to execute finishing moves. Also included are choices for revealing concealed combatants, eliminating the need to execute some esoteric trick to access them.

Graphically, the titles can be experienced with numerous filters and visual treatments. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection offers very realistic options that simulate the traditional television screens of arcades or domestic TVs, or the greenscale screen of a Game Boy. An especially welcome feature is the option to have arcade-like bezels surrounding the screen, with the MK game of your choice precisely and gently mirroring against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's quite aesthetically pleasing.

Bonus Elements

Players will discover multiple nice touches beyond the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, containing a soundtrack mode that lets you revisit the music from multiple Mortal Kombat games without the din of combatants violently defeating each other. There are also combatant descriptions that include bios and multiple story elements shown through the idle displays of gaming hall releases and conclusions.

Historical Preservation

One of the biggest highlights for hardcore Mortal Kombat fans is the opportunity to play a piece of "lost media" in the format of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This particular edition, a somewhat revised iteration of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an early attempt by Midway at one-on-one internet-based play in arcades. The online-enabled release of the game is practically indistinguishable to UMK3, but included the option to challenge online opponents and featured various slight glitch repairs and refinements. Yet this online edition never gained traction, in part