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The Mortal Kombat series still possesses its share of secrets and the power to astonish, well past its 30th anniversary after its first appearance in arcades. This latest compilation including the brand's formative years, which includes four arcade games, various home ports, and spinoffs, is more than simply a faithfully reproduced set of legendary games and not-so-classics — it's also a detailed chronicle about the creation of the legendary series.

Being a long-time devotee of the franchise who has paid close attention 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 other vintage game anthologies from developer Digital Eclipse, part documentary, part playable archive. The anthology contains simulated releases of the first arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, including television and mobile versions of certain releases. This compilation also features the brand's experiments at derivative games, like action-oriented titles 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 examination of Mortal Kombat's early days, when developer Midway and brand founders the visionary developers were figuring out how to make a fighting game, created from video recordings of real actors, as they went along. Watching the documentary — containing vintage recordings, new interviews, and scans of old flyers, illustrated stories, and even company memos — it's astonishing to observe how Mortal Kombat went from modest origins to a international craze. It's genuinely amazing to observe several early video game creators, working with minimal planning or supervision, direct their entertainment passions into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Educational Component

The documentary portion of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection traces the growth of Mortal Kombat and its creators' careers at the currently closed Midway. It further illustrates how those same creators contended with how to routinely one-up themselves, experiencing considerable stress to duplicate their triumphs. It serves as a compelling period piece constructed using VHS tapes and analog photographs and hand-drawn illustrations, which showcase the DIY nature of the franchise's production method and how personal recommendations helped circulate its mysteries and hidden aspects of Mortal Kombat in its golden era in coin-op establishments. Told in bite-sized chunks, it's highly engaging collection of mini-documentaries that includes titles, illustrated stories, cinematic adaptations and even the comical physical events. The collection additionally features some unreleased actions and digital fighter representations among its cutting-room-floor content.

Interactive Gaming

Distributed throughout the quintet of documentary episodes' progression are invitations to experience the actual titles. At certain intervals, audience members can jump into a Mortal Kombat title or a home system version to reexperience its mechanics and artistic style, recreated with impressive accuracy on current technology.

I allocated the majority of my time experiencing the original arcade titles, particularly Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Several releases here remain enjoyable, particularly during one-on-one local play. Yet competing with the aforementioned game's AI-controlled opponents is a reminder of how crude and unjust the coding existed in early Mortal Kombat games. AI-managed characters blatantly cheat to win or are conversely remarkably unintelligent. If you don't have another person to compete with — internet multiplayer exists in most titles in the collection, but rather basic in functionality — you'll miss the full enjoyment.

Visual Options

The 23 playable Mortal Kombat games in the compilation, a mix of arcade, console, and handheld games, are accurately emulated, though I've observed a handful slight anomalies — mostly input lag and the occasional bug, especially with Mortal Kombat 4. Although the titles are mostly shown in their original form, the development team has added several intelligent user experience improvements and graphical adjustment settings. For example, players have the option to show each character's special moves on the display and choose to enable infinite time to complete lethal techniques. Also included are choices for accessing hidden fighters, eliminating the need to execute some esoteric trick to obtain them.

Graphically, the titles can be experienced with numerous visual enhancements and presentation styles. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection provides highly authentic effects that reproduce the traditional television screens of coin-op establishments or household displays, or the monochrome green display of a Nintendo handheld. An especially welcome feature is the setting to activate coin-op-inspired frames surrounding the screen, with your selected Mortal Kombat title faithfully and subtly duplicating against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's quite aesthetically pleasing.

Extra Content

There are plenty of welcome features besides the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, including a music player that allows users to rediscover the music from multiple Mortal Kombat games absent the noise of fighters brutally eliminating opponents. Additionally included are combatant descriptions that feature histories and the various bits of lore displayed via the idle displays of gaming hall releases and conclusions.

Historical Preservation

One of the biggest highlights for hardcore Mortal Kombat fans is the chance to experience 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 early attempt by Midway at direct online competitive gaming in coin-op establishments. This network version of the game is virtually identical to UMK3, but provided the ability to challenge online opponents and contained several small error corrections and adjustments. But the Wavenet update didn't find widespread adoption, in part