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Mortal Kombat still possesses numerous undisclosed elements and the ability to amaze, more than 30 years after its first appearance in gaming halls. This latest compilation covering the franchise's earliest days, featuring a quartet of arcade releases, multiple console adaptations, and derivative games, goes beyond only a accurately simulated set of legendary games and not-so-classics — it additionally serves as a comprehensive historical account about the making of the iconic franchise.

As a dedicated Mortal Kombat fan who has paid close attention its origins and transformation, there was plenty new for me to learn and appreciate about the series.

What Makes the Legacy Collection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like previous classic compilations from the development team Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, part playable archive. The collection includes emulated versions of the original arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, including television and mobile versions of several of these titles. The collection even includes the series' ventures at spinoffs, 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 an examination of Mortal Kombat's early days, when developer Midway and franchise originators Ed Boon and John Tobias were discovering methods to make a fighting game, produced using film material of real actors, on the fly. Watching the documentary — that features vintage recordings, recent conversations, and reproductions of classic advertisements, comics, and even interoffice faxes — it's remarkable to see how the series transformed from humble beginnings to a global sensation. It's frankly astounding to see a group of young game developers, developing without clear direction or oversight, direct their entertainment passions into creating a legendary video game series.

Documentary Portion

The historical documentation of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection traces the growth of the fighting series and its creators' careers at the now-defunct Midway. It further illustrates how the very same individuals addressed how to consistently surpass their achievements, experiencing considerable stress to duplicate their achievements. It's a fascinating time capsule composed of video recordings and analog photographs and hand-drawn illustrations, which demonstrate the hands-on approach of the series' creation process and how oral tradition helped circulate its mysteries and secrets of MK in its arcade heyday. Delivered in easily digestible portions, it's an eminently watchable set of brief historical films that includes titles, illustrated stories, cinematic adaptations and even the comical physical events. It also includes some unused moves and digital fighter representations among its cutting-room-floor content.

Playable Component

Distributed throughout the five-part documentary's timeline are prompts to play the original releases. At certain intervals, audience members can jump into a Mortal Kombat title or one of its home console ports to revisit its gameplay and graphics, recreated with impressive accuracy on modern hardware.

I dedicated most of my time playing the arcade classics, especially Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Numerous titles here hold up, especially in direct competitive sessions. Yet competing with the artificial intelligence fighters in these releases is a reminder of how crude and unfair the development approached in the series' initial installments. Computer-directed fighters clearly employ dishonest tactics or are alternatively incredibly stupid. Lacking someone to play against — online play is available in numerous anthology releases, but rather basic in functionality — you'll be missing out.

Visual Options

The 23 playable Mortal Kombat games in the anthology, a mix of arcade, console, and handheld games, are accurately emulated, though I have noticed a couple minor issues — mostly input lag and intermittent errors, particularly in Mortal Kombat 4. Although the titles are primarily displayed authentically, the creators has included some smart user experience improvements and visual presentation options. For example, you can choose to reveal combatant-unique actions on the display and select to activate infinite time to perform a Fatality. Also included are choices for unlocking secret characters, eliminating the need to execute obscure techniques 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 gaming halls or home televisions, or the limited color monitor of a Nintendo handheld. A notably appreciated element is the setting to activate coin-op-inspired frames encircling the display, with your selected Mortal Kombat title faithfully and subtly duplicating against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's very artistically charming.

Additional Features

Players will discover multiple welcome features besides the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, including a music player that lets you revisit the soundtracks of different fighting releases absent the noise of combatants violently defeating each other. Additionally included are fighter biographies that feature histories and the various bits of lore displayed via arcade games' attract mode screens and conclusions.

Archival Discovery

Among the most significant features for dedicated series enthusiasts is the opportunity to play a segment of previously unavailable content in the format of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This particular edition, a moderately improved edition of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an initial venture by the company at head-to-head network battles in coin-op establishments. This network version of the game is practically indistinguishable to UMK3, but provided the ability to battle network competitors and contained several small error corrections and adjustments. However, this network version failed to achieve popularity, in part