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The Mortal Kombat series continues to hold its share of secrets and the ability to amaze, more than 30 years after its initial debut in gaming halls. A new collection including the brand's formative years, comprising a quartet of arcade releases, various home ports, and derivative games, goes beyond only a accurately simulated series of classics and not-so-classics — it additionally serves as a comprehensive historical account about the making of the iconic franchise.

Being a long-time enthusiast of the series who has carefully followed its creation and evolution, there was plenty new for me to discover and admire about the series.

What Makes the Historical Compilation

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection similar to other retro collections from developer Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, part playable archive. This compilation features simulated releases 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 series' ventures at spin-off titles, like action games Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — some of the brand's most criticized releases.

The Legacy Kollection thus isn't a greatest hits compilation, but an examination of the series' formative period, when developer Midway and brand founders Ed Boon and John Tobias were discovering methods to develop a battle series, created from video recordings of live performers, on the fly. Viewing the historical footage — containing historical videos, contemporary discussions, and scans of old flyers, graphic novels, and even company memos — it's remarkable to see how Mortal Kombat went from humble beginnings to a worldwide phenomenon. It's genuinely amazing to see a group of pioneering developers, operating with virtually no plan or supervision, focus their cultural enthusiasms into creating a legendary video game series.

Educational Component

The historical documentation of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection charts the rise of the fighting series and the developers' professional journeys at the now-defunct Midway. It then goes on to show how the very same individuals contended with how to consistently surpass their achievements, experiencing considerable pressure to repeat their achievements. It serves as a compelling period piece constructed using VHS tapes and analog photographs and pencil sketches, which showcase the DIY nature of the franchise's production method and how personal recommendations helped circulate its mysteries and hidden aspects of Mortal Kombat in its peak period in gaming halls. Presented in manageable segments, it's highly engaging series of documentary shorts that covers video games, graphic novels, movies and even the comical physical events. The collection additionally features some unreleased actions and character sprites among its cutting-room-floor content.

Interactive Experience

Placed within the quintet of documentary episodes' progression are invitations to experience the games themselves. At various points, users can directly access a combat game session or a console adaptation to rediscover its combat system and artistic style, simulated with remarkable precision on modern hardware.

I dedicated most of my time engaging with the vintage coin-op games, especially Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Numerous titles here hold up, especially in local multiplayer matches. Yet competing with the aforementioned game's AI-controlled opponents is a reminder of how crude and unjust the coding existed in early Mortal Kombat games. AI-managed characters clearly employ dishonest tactics or are otherwise dumb as rocks. Lacking another person to compete with — online play is available in the majority of included games, but too light on features — the experience will be incomplete.

Visual Options

The twenty-three accessible Mortal Kombat titles in the compilation, a combination 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, especially with Mortal Kombat 4. Although the titles are largely presented as-is, the development team has incorporated various clever quality-of-life features and visual presentation options. For instance, you can choose to reveal combatant-unique actions on the display and opt to have endless periods to execute finishing moves. Additionally available are settings for accessing hidden fighters, eliminating the need to execute some esoteric trick to access them.

Artistically, the releases can be experienced with numerous visual enhancements and presentation styles. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection includes remarkably accurate effects that reproduce the CRT monitors of gaming halls or domestic TVs, or the monochrome green display of a Nintendo handheld. An especially welcome feature is the choice to enable arcade-like bezels surrounding the screen, with the MK game of your choice accurately and softly reflecting against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's very artistically charming.

Extra Content

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 absent the noise of combatants violently defeating each other. There are also character profiles that contain backgrounds and the various bits of lore shown through arcade games' attract mode screens and final sequences.

Archival Discovery

Among the most significant features for committed franchise followers is the ability to access a segment of previously unavailable content in the format of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This particular edition, a moderately improved edition of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an initial venture by the company at head-to-head network battles in gaming halls. The Wavenet Edition of the game is practically indistinguishable to UMK3, but provided the ability to challenge online opponents and featured various slight error corrections and adjustments. But the Wavenet update didn't find widespread adoption, in part