🔗 Share this article

The Mortal Kombat series retains its share of secrets and the ability to amaze, well past its 30th anniversary after its first appearance in arcades. A new collection covering the franchise's earliest days, comprising four original arcade titles, several home system versions, and related titles, transcends just a well-emulated series of classics including less celebrated releases — it additionally serves as a rich documentary about the making of the renowned brand.

As a dedicated Mortal Kombat fan who has paid close attention its creation and evolution, there was much to discover for me to understand and value about the series.

What Constitutes the Legacy Kollection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like previous classic compilations from developer Digital Eclipse, part documentary, portion interactive museum. This compilation features digitally recreated editions of the original arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, including television and mobile versions of certain releases. The collection even includes the franchise's attempts at spinoffs, like combat-focused releases Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — among the series' most criticized releases.

The Legacy Kollection is therefore not a “best of” collection, but an exploration into the series' formative period, when the development team Midway and brand founders Ed Boon and John Tobias were discovering methods to develop a battle series, created from video recordings of live performers, as they went along. Observing the archival material — containing archival footage, contemporary discussions, and reproductions of classic advertisements, illustrated stories, and including internal communications — it's remarkable to see how the franchise evolved from simple starts to a international craze. It's truly remarkable to see a group of young game developers, operating with virtually no plan or oversight, direct their entertainment passions into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Educational Component

The documentary portion of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection traces the growth of the fighting series and its creators' careers at the currently closed Midway. It then goes on to show how these identical developers addressed how to consistently surpass their achievements, encountering significant demand to replicate their triumphs. It's a fascinating time capsule composed of VHS tapes and film-based pictures and hand-drawn illustrations, which demonstrate the hands-on approach of the series' creation process and how oral tradition helped spread its rumors and secrets of MK in its peak period in gaming halls. Told in bite-sized chunks, it's thoroughly enjoyable series of documentary shorts that covers video games, graphic novels, movies and including the humorous real-world tour. The compilation also contains some never-implemented techniques and game character images 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 visual presentation, simulated with remarkable precision on modern hardware.

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 remain enjoyable, especially in one-on-one local play. Yet competing with the computer-controlled adversaries in these titles is a testament to how primitive and unfair the development approached in the series' initial installments. CPU-controlled opponents blatantly cheat to win or are otherwise dumb as rocks. Lacking another person to compete with — internet multiplayer exists in the majority of included games, but too light on features — you'll be missing out.

Visual Options

The twenty-three accessible Mortal Kombat titles in the compilation, a blend of gaming hall, television, and mobile releases, are precisely simulated, though I detected a handful slight anomalies — primarily delayed responses and the occasional bug, particularly in Mortal Kombat 4. Although the titles are largely presented as-is, the development team has included some smart convenience enhancements and visual presentation options. For example, users can elect to reveal combatant-unique actions during gameplay and opt to have infinite time to execute finishing moves. There are also options for accessing hidden fighters, without having to perform some esoteric trick to access them.

Artistically, the releases can be experienced with numerous filters and visual treatments. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection offers very realistic effects that reproduce the CRT monitors of coin-op establishments or domestic TVs, or the greenscale screen of a Game Boy. An especially welcome feature is the option to have coin-op-inspired frames encircling the display, with the MK game of your choice faithfully and subtly duplicating against the faux black plastic borders. It's quite aesthetically pleasing.

Extra Content

Players will discover multiple appreciated elements beyond the documentary and emulated arcade classics, featuring an audio component that enables players to reexperience the tunes of various Mortal Kombat games absent the noise of fighters brutally eliminating opponents. Also present are character profiles that include bios and the various bits of lore displayed via the idle displays of gaming hall releases and final sequences.

Historical Preservation

Among the most significant features for dedicated series enthusiasts is the chance to experience a segment of previously unavailable content in the format of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This specific release, a moderately improved edition of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an pioneering effort from the developer at direct online competitive gaming in arcades. This network version of the game is virtually identical to UMK3, but included the option to challenge online opponents and contained several small error corrections and adjustments. Yet this online edition failed to achieve popularity, in part