The Legacy Kollection of Mortal Kombat: A Near-Flawless Victory for the Fighting Game Series

The Mortal Kombat series retains its share of secrets and the capacity to surprise, more than 30 years after its initial debut in coin-op establishments. A new collection including the franchise's earliest days, featuring four original arcade titles, multiple console adaptations, and related titles, is more than only a accurately simulated set of legendary games including less celebrated releases — it additionally serves as a comprehensive historical account about the development of the iconic franchise.

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

What Defines the Legacy Collection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection comparable to other vintage game anthologies from the development team Digital Eclipse, part historical documentation, portion interactive museum. The collection includes digitally recreated editions of the original arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, along with home system and portable adaptations of several of these titles. The anthology additionally contains the series' ventures at spin-off titles, like action games 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 greatest hits compilation, but a study of Mortal Kombat's early days, when the creators at Midway and series co-creators the creative duo behind the series were figuring out how to create a combat title, created from video recordings of real actors, through experimentation. Viewing the historical footage — which includes vintage recordings, contemporary discussions, and digital copies of vintage posters, graphic novels, and even company memos — it's remarkable to see how Mortal Kombat went from simple starts to a international craze. It's frankly astounding to observe several early video game creators, developing without clear direction or supervision, direct their entertainment passions into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Documentary Portion

The educational segment of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection charts the rise of Mortal Kombat and the developers' professional journeys at the now-defunct Midway. It then goes on to show how the very same individuals addressed how to routinely one-up themselves, experiencing considerable stress to duplicate their success. It serves as a compelling period piece composed of VHS tapes and traditional photos and pencil sketches, which showcase the DIY nature of the series' creation process and how word of mouth helped spread its rumors and hidden aspects of Mortal Kombat in its golden era in coin-op establishments. Told in bite-sized chunks, it's an eminently watchable set of brief historical films that includes titles, illustrated stories, cinematic adaptations and including the humorous real-world tour. The compilation also contains some unused moves and digital fighter representations among its archived development assets.

Interactive Experience

Interspersed along the five-segment historical film's chronology are prompts to play the original releases. At certain intervals, audience members can jump into a game of Mortal Kombat or one of its home console ports to rediscover its combat system and artistic style, recreated with impressive accuracy on current technology.

I spent the bulk of my time playing the arcade classics, especially Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Numerous titles here remain enjoyable, particularly during direct competitive sessions. But playing against the aforementioned game's AI-controlled opponents is a testament to how primitive and unfair the development approached in early Mortal Kombat games. CPU-controlled opponents clearly employ dishonest tactics or are alternatively incredibly stupid. Without having a human opponent — network gaming is included in most titles in the collection, but somewhat limited in options — the experience will be incomplete.

Visual Options

The two dozen available combat games in the anthology, a blend of gaming hall, television, and mobile releases, are faithfully recreated, though I've observed a handful slight anomalies — mostly input lag and intermittent errors, particularly in Mortal Kombat 4. Although the titles are largely presented as-is, developer Digital Eclipse has added several intelligent quality-of-life features and graphical adjustment settings. As an illustration, you can choose to show each character's special moves on the display and choose to enable infinite time to complete lethal techniques. Also included are choices for accessing hidden fighters, eliminating the need to execute complicated methods to obtain them.

Graphically, the titles can be experienced with numerous filters and visual treatments. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection includes remarkably accurate options that simulate the cathode-ray tube displays of gaming halls or home televisions, or the greenscale screen of a portable gaming device. A notably appreciated element is the option to have gaming hall-style borders surrounding the screen, with the MK game of your choice accurately and softly reflecting against the faux black plastic borders. It's quite aesthetically pleasing.

Extra Content

There are plenty of nice touches beyond the documentary and emulated arcade classics, containing a soundtrack mode that lets you revisit the music from multiple fighting releases absent the noise of combatants violently defeating each other. There are also character profiles that contain backgrounds and multiple story elements presented by arcade games' attract mode screens and final sequences.

Lost Media Recovery

Among the most significant features for hardcore Mortal Kombat fans is the opportunity to play a example of historically missing material in the guise of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This version of the game, a slightly updated version 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 practically indistinguishable to UMK3, but featured the capability to challenge online opponents and included some minor bug fixes and balance. Yet this online edition never gained traction, in part