🔗 Share this article

Mortal Kombat still possesses its share of secrets and the power to astonish, well past its 30th anniversary after its original launch in gaming halls. This latest compilation covering the franchise's earliest days, featuring four arcade games, various home ports, and derivative games, goes beyond just a well-emulated series of classics along with lesser-known entries — it additionally serves as a comprehensive historical account about the creation of the legendary series.

Even as a lifelong devotee of the franchise who has closely monitored its development and progression, there was numerous fresh aspects for me to understand and value about the series.

What Constitutes the Historical Compilation

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection comparable to other retro collections from the creators at Digital Eclipse, part documentary, section playable historical record. The collection includes emulated versions of the original arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, plus console and handheld ports of several of these titles. The collection even includes 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 consequently doesn't represent a highlight reel anthology, but a study of the series' formative period, when the creators at Midway and brand founders the creative duo behind the series were discovering methods to create a combat title, produced using film material of live performers, on the fly. 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 Mortal Kombat went from humble beginnings to a international craze. It's frankly astounding to observe several pioneering developers, working with minimal planning or supervision, channel their pop-culture interests into establishing an enduring gaming brand.

Educational Component

The historical documentation of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection charts the rise of Mortal Kombat and the founders' vocational paths at the no-longer-operating Midway. It subsequently demonstrates how these identical developers reckoned with how to routinely one-up themselves, facing no small amount of demand to replicate their triumphs. It's a fascinating time capsule composed of analog films and analog photographs and manual drawings, which showcase the DIY nature of the franchise's production method and how personal recommendations helped disseminate its secrets and hidden aspects of Mortal Kombat in its arcade heyday. Told in bite-sized chunks, it's an eminently watchable collection of mini-documentaries that includes titles, illustrated stories, cinematic adaptations and including the humorous real-world tour. The compilation also contains some unused moves and character sprites among its archived development assets.

Interactive Gaming

Distributed throughout the five-part documentary's timeline are invitations to experience the original releases. At certain intervals, audience members can jump into a Mortal Kombat title or a console adaptation to reexperience its mechanics and artistic style, emulated nearly perfectly on current technology.

I allocated the majority of my time playing the arcade classics, especially Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Numerous titles here hold up, notably with one-on-one local play. However, facing the computer-controlled adversaries in these titles is a testament to how primitive and unjust the coding existed in the franchise's pioneering releases. Computer-directed fighters blatantly cheat to win or are conversely remarkably unintelligent. Lacking another person to compete with — internet multiplayer exists in the majority of included games, but rather basic in functionality — you'll be missing out.

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 have noticed a few small quirks — primarily delayed responses and the occasional bug, notably within Mortal Kombat 4. Although the titles are mostly shown in their original form, developer Digital Eclipse has included some smart user experience improvements and graphical adjustment settings. For example, users can elect to display fighter-specific techniques on-screen and select to activate infinite time to perform a Fatality. Also included are choices for revealing concealed combatants, without having to perform some esoteric trick to access them.

Artistically, the releases can be experienced with numerous graphical effects and display options. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection includes remarkably accurate filters that mimic the traditional television screens of arcades or home televisions, or the monochrome green display of a Game Boy. A particularly nice touch is the choice to enable coin-op-inspired frames framing the gameplay, with the MK game of your choice precisely and gently mirroring against the simulated dark plastic edges. It's quite aesthetically pleasing.

Extra Content

The collection includes numerous appreciated elements beyond the documentary and emulated arcade classics, containing a soundtrack mode that lets you revisit the tunes of various fighting releases excluding the sounds of combatants violently defeating each other. There are also combatant descriptions that include bios and the various bits of lore shown through arcade games' attract mode screens and final sequences.

Historical Preservation

A particularly notable inclusion for dedicated series enthusiasts is the ability to access a segment of previously unavailable content in the guise of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This particular edition, a slightly updated version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an pioneering effort from the developer at one-on-one internet-based play in coin-op establishments. The online-enabled release of the game is practically indistinguishable to UMK3, but featured the capability to battle network competitors and contained several small glitch repairs and refinements. Yet this online edition failed to achieve popularity, in part