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Mortal Kombat continues to hold many hidden mysteries and the power to astonish, more than 30 years after its original launch in coin-op establishments. A new collection spanning the brand's formative years, which includes a quartet of arcade releases, various home ports, and related titles, is more than only a accurately simulated series of classics along with lesser-known entries — it's also a comprehensive historical account about the development of the iconic franchise.

Even as a lifelong devotee of the franchise who has closely monitored its creation and evolution, there was numerous fresh aspects for me to discover and admire about the series.

What Constitutes the Historical Compilation

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection comparable to previous classic compilations from the creators at Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, part playable archive. The anthology contains simulated releases of the first arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, plus console and handheld ports of certain releases. The collection even includes the franchise's attempts at spin-off titles, like combat-focused releases Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — two of the franchise's least successful installments.

The Legacy Kollection is therefore not a highlight reel anthology, but a study of the series' formative period, when the development team Midway and brand founders the visionary developers were discovering methods to develop a battle series, digitized from footage of actual people, as they went along. Watching the documentary — that features historical videos, contemporary discussions, and digital copies of vintage posters, graphic novels, and even company memos — it's astonishing to observe how the franchise evolved from modest origins to a worldwide phenomenon. It's frankly astounding to watch a handful of pioneering developers, developing without clear direction or oversight, channel their pop-culture interests into creating a legendary video game series.

Educational Component

The documentary portion of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection documents the ascent of the combat franchise and the developers' professional journeys at the currently closed Midway. It further illustrates how the very same individuals reckoned with how to consistently surpass their achievements, encountering significant pressure to repeat their triumphs. It represents an intriguing historical record constructed using video recordings and film-based pictures and hand-drawn illustrations, which showcase the DIY nature of the series' creation process and how oral tradition helped disseminate its secrets and hidden aspects of Mortal Kombat in its arcade heyday. Delivered in easily digestible portions, it's thoroughly enjoyable set of brief historical films that spans games, comics, films and even the comical physical events. The collection additionally features some never-implemented techniques and character sprites among its cutting-room-floor content.

Interactive Gaming

Interspersed along the five-segment historical film's chronology are opportunities to engage with the original releases. During specific moments, viewers can hop into a combat game session or a home system version to reexperience its mechanics 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. Several releases here stand the test of time, notably with local multiplayer matches. However, facing the computer-controlled adversaries in these titles is a demonstration of how basic and unfair the coding existed in the franchise's pioneering releases. Computer-directed fighters clearly employ dishonest tactics or are otherwise dumb as rocks. Lacking a human opponent — internet multiplayer exists in numerous anthology releases, but too light on features — the experience will be incomplete.

Visual Options

The 23 playable Mortal Kombat games in the collection, a mix of gaming hall, television, and mobile releases, are faithfully recreated, though I've observed a couple minor issues — mostly input lag and intermittent errors, particularly in Mortal Kombat 4. Even though the releases are mostly shown in their original form, developer Digital Eclipse has included some smart user experience improvements and graphical adjustment settings. For example, players have the option to reveal combatant-unique actions on-screen and choose to enable endless periods to complete lethal techniques. There are also options for accessing hidden fighters, eliminating the need to execute some esoteric trick to unlock them.

Graphically, the titles can be played with a variety of graphical effects and display options. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection includes remarkably accurate filters that mimic the CRT monitors of arcades or domestic TVs, or the greenscale screen of a Game Boy. An especially welcome feature is the setting to activate coin-op-inspired frames surrounding the screen, with the MK game of your choice accurately and softly reflecting against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's quite aesthetically pleasing.

Extra Content

There are plenty of welcome features besides the educational material and simulated classic games, containing a soundtrack mode that enables players to reexperience the music from multiple fighting releases absent the noise of fighters brutally eliminating opponents. Also present are character profiles that include bios and numerous narrative components shown through the demo sequences of coin-op titles and conclusions.

Lost Media Recovery

One of the biggest highlights for hardcore Mortal Kombat fans is the opportunity to play a piece of "lost media" in the format of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This particular edition, a slightly updated version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an early attempt by Midway at one-on-one internet-based play in gaming halls. The Wavenet Edition of the game is practically indistinguishable to UMK3, but included the option to challenge online opponents and contained several small glitch repairs and refinements. But the Wavenet update failed to achieve popularity, in part