The Legacy Kollection of Mortal Kombat: A Near-Flawless Victory for the Combat Series Brand

The Mortal Kombat series continues to hold numerous undisclosed elements and the power to astonish, well past its 30th anniversary after its first appearance in coin-op establishments. This latest compilation spanning the franchise's earliest days, comprising four arcade games, various home ports, and spinoffs, is more than just a well-emulated set of legendary games including less celebrated releases — it's also a comprehensive historical account about the creation of the renowned brand.

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

What Makes the Historical Compilation

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like previous classic compilations from the creators at Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, section playable historical record. The collection includes digitally recreated editions of the original 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 brand's experiments at spin-off titles, like action-oriented titles 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 examination of the series' formative period, when developer Midway and series co-creators the creative duo behind the series were discovering methods to create a combat title, created from video recordings of real actors, as they went along. Observing the archival material — which includes archival footage, contemporary discussions, and scans of old flyers, illustrated stories, and including internal communications — it's remarkable to see how the franchise evolved from humble beginnings to a worldwide phenomenon. It's genuinely amazing to observe several pioneering developers, operating with virtually no plan or supervision, channel their pop-culture interests into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Educational Component

The documentary portion of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection charts the rise of the fighting series and the developers' professional journeys at the now-defunct Midway. It further illustrates how these identical developers contended with how to regularly outdo their previous work, encountering significant pressure to repeat their success. It serves as a compelling period piece composed of video recordings and traditional photos and hand-drawn illustrations, which reveal the self-made character of the franchise's production method and how oral tradition 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 series of documentary shorts that spans games, comics, films and even the silly live-action tour. The collection additionally features some unused moves and character sprites among its previously unreleased material.

Interactive Experience

Interspersed along the five-part documentary's timeline are opportunities to engage with the original releases. During specific moments, audience members can jump into a Mortal Kombat title or a home system version to revisit its gameplay and graphics, simulated with remarkable precision on modern hardware.

I spent the bulk of my time experiencing the original arcade titles, especially Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Many of the games here hold up, notably with local multiplayer matches. Yet competing with the aforementioned game's AI-controlled opponents is a testament to how primitive and unbalanced the coding existed in the franchise's pioneering releases. AI-managed characters obviously use unfair advantages or are conversely remarkably unintelligent. If you don't have a human opponent — network gaming is included in numerous anthology releases, but rather basic in functionality — you'll miss the full enjoyment.

Technical Presentation

The two dozen available combat games in the compilation, a blend of arcade, console, and handheld games, are faithfully recreated, though I've observed a handful slight anomalies — mainly control latency and sporadic glitches, particularly in Mortal Kombat 4. Even though the releases are mostly shown in their original form, developer Digital Eclipse has added several intelligent quality-of-life features and visual presentation options. For example, you can choose to reveal combatant-unique actions on the display and select to activate infinite time to execute finishing moves. Also included are choices for accessing hidden fighters, removing the requirement to complete some esoteric trick to unlock them.

Visually, the games can be played with a variety of visual enhancements and presentation styles. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection includes remarkably accurate effects that reproduce the CRT monitors of coin-op establishments or household displays, or the limited color monitor of a Nintendo handheld. A particularly nice touch is the setting to activate coin-op-inspired frames surrounding the screen, with the MK game of your choice precisely and gently mirroring against the faux black plastic borders. It's quite aesthetically pleasing.

Bonus Elements

There are plenty of welcome features besides the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, containing a soundtrack mode that enables players to reexperience the tunes of various Mortal Kombat games absent the noise of two kombatants viciously slaughtering each other. There are also character profiles that feature histories and the various bits of lore displayed via the demo sequences of coin-op titles and final sequences.

Historical Preservation

A particularly notable inclusion for hardcore Mortal Kombat fans is the chance to experience a segment of previously unavailable content in the guise of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This specific release, a slightly updated version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an pioneering effort from the developer at head-to-head network battles in arcades. This network version of the game is practically indistinguishable to UMK3, but featured the capability to challenge online opponents and contained several small bug fixes and balance. Yet this online edition never gained traction, in part