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Mortal Kombat continues to hold many hidden mysteries and the capacity to surprise, over three decades after its original launch in arcades. A new collection including the brand's formative years, which includes a quartet of arcade releases, multiple console adaptations, and spinoffs, goes beyond just a well-emulated set of legendary games including less celebrated releases — it functions as a rich documentary about the making of the renowned brand.

As a dedicated devotee of the franchise who has closely monitored its creation and evolution, there was plenty new for me to learn and appreciate about the series.

What Constitutes the Legacy Collection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection comparable to other vintage game anthologies from the development team Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, part playable archive. The anthology contains digitally recreated editions of the first arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, plus console and handheld ports of some of those games. This compilation also features the franchise's attempts at derivative games, like combat-focused releases Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — some of the brand's least successful installments.

The Legacy Kollection thus isn't a greatest hits compilation, but an exploration into the series' formative period, when the creators at Midway and series co-creators Ed Boon and John Tobias were discovering methods to make a fighting game, produced using film material of live performers, through experimentation. Watching the documentary — which includes historical videos, new interviews, and scans of old flyers, illustrated stories, and including internal communications — it's astonishing to observe how Mortal Kombat went from modest origins to a global sensation. It's genuinely amazing to see a group of pioneering developers, working with minimal planning or supervision, focus their cultural enthusiasms into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Historical Section

The documentary portion of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection charts the rise of Mortal Kombat and its creators' careers at the currently closed Midway. It then goes on to show how those same creators contended with how to routinely one-up themselves, facing no small amount of pressure to repeat their achievements. It's a fascinating time capsule made from VHS tapes and film-based pictures and manual drawings, which demonstrate the hands-on approach of the series' creation process and how personal recommendations helped circulate its mysteries and secrets of MK in its peak period in gaming halls. Delivered in easily digestible portions, it's thoroughly enjoyable collection of mini-documentaries that spans games, comics, films and including the humorous real-world tour. It also includes some unreleased actions and game character images among its archived development assets.

Interactive Experience

Distributed throughout the quintet of documentary episodes' progression are prompts to play the original releases. At various points, users can directly access a game of Mortal Kombat or one of its home console ports to reexperience its mechanics and visual presentation, simulated with remarkable precision on contemporary systems.

I dedicated most 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. But playing against the computer-controlled adversaries in these titles is a reminder of how crude and unfair the development approached in the series' initial installments. CPU-controlled opponents obviously use unfair advantages or are alternatively incredibly stupid. If you don't have another person to compete with — internet multiplayer exists in the majority of included games, but too light on features — you'll miss the full enjoyment.

Display Features

The 23 playable Mortal Kombat games in the collection, a blend of arcade, console, and handheld games, are precisely simulated, though I have noticed a handful slight anomalies — mostly input lag and sporadic glitches, especially with Mortal Kombat 4. And while the games are mostly shown in their original form, developer Digital Eclipse has included some smart quality-of-life features and display customization choices. For example, users can elect to show each character's special moves on-screen and select to activate infinite time to perform a Fatality. Also included are choices for unlocking secret characters, without having to perform some esoteric trick to access them.

Graphically, the titles can be enjoyed with multiple visual enhancements and presentation styles. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection offers very realistic options that simulate the traditional television screens of gaming halls or home televisions, or the limited color monitor of a Nintendo handheld. A notably appreciated element is the option to have arcade-like bezels encircling the display, with the specific combat game you're playing faithfully and subtly duplicating against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's remarkably visually appealing.

Bonus Elements

The collection includes numerous welcome features besides the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, containing a soundtrack mode that enables players to reexperience the music from multiple fighting releases absent the noise of fighters brutally eliminating opponents. There are also combatant descriptions that include bios and multiple story elements shown through the demo sequences of coin-op titles and final sequences.

Archival Discovery

One of the biggest highlights for hardcore Mortal Kombat fans is the chance to experience a example of historically missing material in the guise 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 one-on-one internet-based play in gaming halls. The online-enabled release of the game is almost exactly the same to UMK3, but featured the capability to compete against internet adversaries and included some minor glitch repairs and refinements. Yet this online edition never gained traction, in part