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This iconic fighting game continues to hold many hidden mysteries and the ability to amaze, over three decades after its original launch in arcades. A new collection covering the franchise's earliest days, which includes four arcade games, several home system versions, and related titles, is more than simply a faithfully reproduced collection of iconic titles including less celebrated releases — it additionally serves as a detailed chronicle about the development of the renowned brand.

Even as a lifelong devotee of the franchise who has paid close attention its development and progression, there was much to discover for me to understand and value about the series.

What Constitutes the Legacy Collection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection similar to other retro collections from the creators at Digital Eclipse, part documentary, part playable archive. The collection includes emulated versions of the first arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, including television and mobile versions of several of these titles. The anthology additionally contains the brand's experiments at derivative games, like action-oriented titles Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — among the series' most criticized releases.

The Legacy Kollection is therefore not a highlight reel anthology, but an exploration into Mortal Kombat's early days, when the development team Midway and brand founders the creative duo behind the series were figuring out how to develop a battle series, produced using film material of real actors, as they went along. Watching the documentary — which includes vintage recordings, new interviews, and digital copies of vintage posters, illustrated stories, and including internal communications — it's incredible to witness how the series transformed from simple starts to a global sensation. It's frankly astounding to observe several pioneering developers, developing without clear direction or oversight, focus their cultural enthusiasms into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Documentary Portion

The educational segment of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection charts the rise of Mortal Kombat and the founders' vocational paths at the currently closed Midway. It then goes on to show how these identical developers addressed how to consistently surpass their achievements, facing no small amount of demand to replicate their achievements. It serves as a compelling period piece composed of analog films and traditional photos and hand-drawn illustrations, which showcase the DIY nature of the series' creation process and how oral tradition helped circulate its mysteries and secrets of MK in its golden era in coin-op establishments. Presented in manageable segments, it's an eminently watchable set of brief historical films that covers video games, graphic novels, movies and even the silly live-action tour. It also includes some unused moves and digital fighter representations among its cutting-room-floor content.

Interactive Gaming

Interspersed along the five-part documentary's timeline are opportunities to engage with the actual titles. During specific moments, audience members can jump into a Mortal Kombat title or one of its home console ports to revisit its gameplay and artistic style, recreated with impressive accuracy on modern hardware.

I spent the bulk of my time playing the arcade classics, specifically Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Many of the games here remain enjoyable, particularly during one-on-one local play. However, facing the aforementioned game's AI-controlled opponents is a testament to how primitive and unbalanced the coding existed in the series' initial installments. AI-managed characters clearly employ dishonest tactics or are alternatively incredibly stupid. Lacking a human opponent — online play is available in numerous anthology releases, but too light on features — you'll be missing out.

Display Features

The two dozen available combat games in the collection, a blend of gaming hall, television, and mobile releases, are accurately emulated, though I detected a handful slight anomalies — mainly control latency and intermittent errors, notably within Mortal Kombat 4. And while the games are largely presented as-is, the creators has incorporated various clever convenience enhancements and graphical adjustment settings. As an illustration, users can elect to reveal combatant-unique actions on-screen and select to activate infinite time to complete lethal techniques. Also included are choices for accessing hidden fighters, eliminating the need to execute complicated methods to unlock them.

Artistically, the releases can be played with a variety of graphical effects and display options. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection includes remarkably accurate filters that mimic the cathode-ray tube displays of coin-op establishments or domestic TVs, or the limited color monitor of a portable gaming device. An especially welcome feature is the setting to activate arcade-like bezels surrounding the screen, with your selected Mortal Kombat title faithfully and subtly duplicating against the simulated dark plastic edges. It's quite aesthetically pleasing.

Extra Content

Players will discover multiple nice touches beyond the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, containing a soundtrack mode that allows users to rediscover the music from multiple fighting releases absent the noise of fighters brutally eliminating opponents. Also present are combatant descriptions that contain backgrounds and multiple story elements presented by the idle displays of gaming hall releases and endings.

Archival Discovery

Among the most significant features for dedicated series enthusiasts is the ability to access a piece of "lost media" in the form 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 one-on-one internet-based play in arcades. The online-enabled release of the game is practically indistinguishable to UMK3, but featured the capability to challenge online opponents and featured various slight bug fixes and balance. But the Wavenet update failed to achieve popularity, in part