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The Mortal Kombat series continues to hold numerous undisclosed elements and the ability to amaze, more than 30 years after its first appearance in coin-op establishments. This latest compilation covering the series' initial period, comprising four original arcade titles, various home ports, and related titles, transcends simply a faithfully reproduced series of classics and not-so-classics — it functions as a comprehensive historical account about the development of the legendary series.

Even as a lifelong Mortal Kombat fan who has paid close attention its creation and evolution, there was plenty new for me to understand and value about the series.

What Defines the Historical Compilation

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like other retro collections from developer Digital Eclipse, part documentary, part playable archive. The anthology contains emulated versions of the pioneering 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 combat-focused releases Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — two of the franchise's most criticized releases.

The Legacy Kollection thus isn't a greatest hits compilation, but an exploration into Mortal Kombat's early days, when the development team Midway and brand founders the visionary developers were determining how to develop a battle series, produced using film material of real actors, on the fly. Viewing the historical footage — containing archival footage, recent conversations, and digital copies of vintage posters, graphic novels, and even interoffice faxes — it's remarkable to see how Mortal Kombat went from humble beginnings to a global sensation. It's genuinely amazing to see a group of young game developers, developing without clear direction or supervision, focus their cultural enthusiasms into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Educational Component

The educational segment of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection charts the rise of the fighting series and its creators' careers at the now-defunct Midway. It further illustrates how these identical developers addressed how to routinely one-up themselves, encountering significant pressure to repeat their achievements. It represents an intriguing historical record made from analog films and analog photographs and manual drawings, which showcase the DIY nature of Mortal Kombat's development and how personal recommendations helped circulate its mysteries and secrets of MK in its peak period in gaming halls. Delivered in easily digestible portions, it's an eminently watchable set of brief historical films that covers video games, graphic novels, movies and even the comical physical events. The collection additionally features some unused moves and game character images among its archived development assets.

Interactive Experience

Placed within the quintet of documentary episodes' progression are invitations to experience the actual titles. At certain intervals, users can directly access a Mortal Kombat title or a console adaptation to rediscover its combat system and graphics, emulated nearly perfectly 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 remain enjoyable, especially in one-on-one local play. However, facing the artificial intelligence fighters in these releases is a demonstration of how basic and unfair the programming was in early Mortal Kombat games. CPU-controlled opponents obviously use unfair advantages or are otherwise dumb as rocks. If you don't have a human opponent — network gaming is included in numerous anthology releases, but too light on features — the experience will be incomplete.

Technical Presentation

The twenty-three accessible Mortal Kombat titles in the anthology, a blend of arcade, console, and handheld games, are faithfully recreated, though I detected a few small quirks — primarily delayed responses and the occasional bug, notably within Mortal Kombat 4. Although the titles are primarily displayed authentically, the development team has incorporated various clever user experience improvements and graphical adjustment settings. For example, users can elect to display fighter-specific techniques during gameplay and opt to have endless periods to perform a Fatality. Also included are choices for revealing concealed combatants, without having to perform obscure techniques to unlock them.

Graphically, the titles can be experienced with numerous visual enhancements and presentation styles. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection provides highly authentic filters that mimic the cathode-ray tube displays of coin-op establishments or household displays, or the monochrome green display of a portable gaming device. A notably appreciated element is the choice to enable gaming hall-style borders encircling the display, with the specific combat game you're playing faithfully and subtly duplicating against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's very artistically charming.

Extra Content

The collection includes numerous welcome features besides the educational material and simulated classic games, containing a soundtrack mode that lets you revisit the soundtracks of different combat titles absent the noise of combatants violently defeating each other. There are also character profiles that contain backgrounds and numerous narrative components shown through arcade games' attract mode screens and final sequences.

Lost Media Recovery

One of the biggest highlights for dedicated series enthusiasts is the opportunity to play 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 early attempt by Midway at head-to-head network battles in coin-op establishments. The online-enabled release of the game is virtually identical to UMK3, but provided the ability to battle network competitors and featured various slight glitch repairs and refinements. Yet this online edition never gained traction, in part