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This iconic fighting game continues to hold many hidden mysteries and the ability to amaze, well past its 30th anniversary after its original launch in arcades. A new collection spanning the franchise's earliest days, featuring four original arcade titles, various home ports, and related titles, goes beyond simply a faithfully reproduced collection of iconic titles including less celebrated releases — it functions as a detailed chronicle about the making of the legendary series.

Being a long-time devotee of the franchise who has closely monitored its origins and transformation, there was plenty new for me to discover and admire about the series.

What Defines the Historical Compilation

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection similar to previous classic compilations from developer Digital Eclipse, part historical documentation, 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, including television and mobile versions of some of those games. This compilation also features the franchise's attempts at spin-off titles, like action-oriented titles Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — among the series' most criticized releases.

The Legacy Kollection thus isn't a highlight reel anthology, but an exploration into Mortal Kombat's early days, when the development team Midway and series co-creators the creative duo behind the series were determining how to make a fighting game, digitized from footage of real actors, on the fly. Observing the archival material — that features historical videos, recent conversations, and reproductions of classic advertisements, comics, and even company memos — it's incredible to witness how Mortal Kombat went from modest origins to a global sensation. It's genuinely amazing to observe several pioneering developers, developing without clear direction or supervision, channel their pop-culture interests into creating a legendary video game series.

Documentary Portion

The educational segment of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection traces the growth of the combat franchise and the developers' professional journeys at the currently closed Midway. It then goes on to show how the very same individuals addressed how to routinely one-up themselves, encountering significant pressure to repeat their triumphs. It serves as a compelling period piece constructed using VHS tapes and analog photographs and manual drawings, which demonstrate the hands-on approach 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. Delivered in easily digestible portions, it's an eminently watchable set of brief historical films that covers video games, graphic novels, movies and even the comical physical events. The collection additionally features some unused moves and game character images among its archived development assets.

Interactive Experience

Distributed throughout the five-part documentary's timeline are invitations to experience the original releases. During specific moments, users can directly access a game of Mortal Kombat or a home system version to revisit its gameplay and visual presentation, emulated nearly perfectly on current technology.

I allocated the majority of my time experiencing the original arcade titles, specifically Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Many of the games here hold up, especially in direct competitive sessions. But playing against the artificial intelligence fighters in these releases is a demonstration of how basic and unbalanced the programming was in early Mortal Kombat games. AI-managed characters blatantly cheat to win or are otherwise dumb as rocks. Lacking another person to compete with — internet multiplayer exists in most titles in the collection, 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 arcade, console, and handheld games, are faithfully recreated, though I have noticed a couple minor issues — mainly control latency and the occasional bug, especially with Mortal Kombat 4. Even though the releases are mostly shown in their original form, the development team has included some smart user experience improvements and display customization choices. For instance, players have the option to show each character's special moves on the display and choose to enable infinite time to execute finishing moves. There are also options for revealing concealed combatants, removing the requirement to complete complicated methods to obtain them.

Artistically, the releases can be experienced with numerous filters and visual treatments. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection provides highly authentic effects that reproduce the CRT monitors of arcades or household displays, or the greenscale screen of a portable gaming device. A notably appreciated element is the option to have gaming hall-style borders framing the gameplay, with the MK game of your choice accurately and softly reflecting against the faux black plastic borders. It's very artistically charming.

Extra Content

Players will discover multiple welcome features besides the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, featuring an audio component that lets you revisit the music from multiple fighting releases without the din of combatants violently defeating each other. Also present are character profiles that feature histories and the various bits of lore shown through arcade games' attract mode screens and conclusions.

Historical Preservation

One of the biggest highlights for committed franchise followers is the ability to access 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 early attempt by Midway at direct online competitive gaming in arcades. 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