The Legacy Kollection of Mortal Kombat: A Stunning Success for the Fighting Game Brand

Mortal Kombat retains numerous undisclosed elements and the power to astonish, more than 30 years after its original launch in arcades. The recent anthology spanning the brand's formative years, comprising four original arcade titles, various home ports, and spinoffs, transcends simply a faithfully reproduced collection of iconic titles along with lesser-known entries — it functions as a rich documentary about the development of the legendary series.

Being a long-time Mortal Kombat fan who has paid close attention its origins and transformation, there was numerous fresh aspects for me to discover and admire about the series.

What Constitutes the Historical Compilation

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection comparable to previous classic compilations from the development team Digital Eclipse, part documentary, portion interactive museum. The collection includes digitally recreated editions of the pioneering arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, plus console and handheld ports of several of these titles. This compilation also features the brand's experiments at derivative games, 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 is therefore not a greatest hits compilation, but an exploration into the series' formative period, when developer Midway and series co-creators the creative duo behind the series were determining how to create a combat title, produced using film material of actual people, through experimentation. Observing the archival material — containing vintage recordings, recent conversations, and digital copies of vintage posters, comics, and including internal communications — it's remarkable to see how Mortal Kombat went from humble beginnings to a international craze. It's genuinely amazing to see a group of early video game creators, working with minimal planning or oversight, channel their pop-culture interests into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Historical Section

The historical documentation of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection traces the growth of the combat franchise and its creators' careers at the now-defunct Midway. It then goes on to show how those same creators contended with how to consistently surpass their achievements, experiencing considerable pressure to repeat their triumphs. It represents an intriguing historical record made from video recordings and film-based pictures and pencil sketches, which demonstrate the hands-on approach of Mortal Kombat's development and how oral tradition helped circulate its mysteries and undisclosed elements of the series in its peak period in gaming halls. Delivered in easily digestible portions, it's an eminently watchable set of brief historical films that includes titles, illustrated stories, cinematic adaptations and including the humorous real-world tour. It also includes some unused moves and digital fighter representations among its cutting-room-floor content.

Playable Component

Interspersed along the five-part documentary's timeline are prompts to play the games themselves. At certain intervals, audience members can jump into a game of Mortal Kombat or a console adaptation to reexperience its mechanics and visual presentation, emulated nearly perfectly on contemporary systems.

I spent the bulk of my time playing the arcade classics, especially Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Many of the games here hold up, particularly during direct competitive sessions. But playing against the aforementioned game's AI-controlled opponents is a reminder of how crude and unfair the coding existed in the series' initial installments. Computer-directed fighters blatantly cheat to win or are conversely remarkably unintelligent. If you don't have someone to play against — online play is available in numerous anthology releases, but too light on features — you'll be missing out.

Display Features

The twenty-three accessible Mortal Kombat titles in the collection, a mix of gaming hall, television, and mobile releases, are faithfully recreated, though I've observed a few small quirks — primarily delayed responses and the occasional bug, particularly in Mortal Kombat 4. And while the games are mostly shown in their original form, the development team has incorporated various clever quality-of-life features and visual presentation options. For example, you can choose to reveal combatant-unique actions during gameplay and select to activate endless periods to execute finishing moves. There are also options for revealing concealed combatants, eliminating the need to execute some esoteric trick to access them.

Graphically, the titles can be enjoyed with multiple filters and visual treatments. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection provides highly authentic options that simulate the CRT monitors of gaming halls or household displays, or the limited color monitor of a Game Boy. A notably appreciated element is the setting to activate gaming hall-style borders encircling the display, with your selected Mortal Kombat title accurately and softly reflecting against the faux black plastic borders. It's quite aesthetically pleasing.

Bonus Elements

Players will discover multiple nice touches beyond the educational material and simulated classic games, containing a soundtrack mode that lets you revisit the soundtracks of different fighting releases without the din of two kombatants viciously slaughtering each other. Also present are combatant descriptions that contain backgrounds and multiple story elements displayed via the idle displays of gaming hall releases and conclusions.

Lost Media Recovery

A particularly notable inclusion for hardcore Mortal Kombat fans is the opportunity to play a example of historically missing material in the form of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This version of the game, a moderately improved edition of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an pioneering effort from the developer at direct online competitive gaming in coin-op establishments. The online-enabled release of the game is almost exactly the same to UMK3, but provided the ability to challenge online opponents and contained several small error corrections and adjustments. Yet this online edition didn't find widespread adoption, in part