🔗 Share this article

The Mortal Kombat series continues to hold its share of secrets and the capacity to surprise, more than 30 years after its original launch in coin-op establishments. The recent anthology spanning the series' initial period, which includes four original arcade titles, various home ports, and related titles, goes beyond only a accurately simulated collection of iconic titles including less celebrated releases — it additionally serves as a comprehensive historical account about the development of the renowned brand.

Even as a lifelong enthusiast of the series who has paid close attention its creation and evolution, there was plenty new for me to learn and appreciate about the series.

What Constitutes the Historical Compilation

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like other vintage game anthologies from the creators at Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, part playable archive. The anthology contains simulated releases of the pioneering arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, including television and mobile versions of some of those games. The anthology additionally contains the brand's experiments at derivative games, like combat-focused releases Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — among the series' least successful installments.

The Legacy Kollection consequently doesn't represent a highlight reel anthology, but an examination of the series' formative period, when the creators at Midway and franchise originators Ed Boon and John Tobias were figuring out how to make a fighting game, digitized from footage of actual people, as they went along. Observing the archival material — containing historical videos, recent conversations, and digital copies of vintage posters, comics, and even company memos — it's incredible to witness how the series transformed from modest origins to a worldwide phenomenon. It's frankly astounding to see a group of young game developers, operating with virtually no plan or oversight, focus their cultural enthusiasms into establishing an enduring gaming brand.

Educational Component

The documentary portion of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection charts the rise of Mortal Kombat and the developers' professional journeys at the no-longer-operating Midway. It further illustrates how these identical developers reckoned with how to routinely one-up themselves, encountering significant demand to replicate their success. It serves as a compelling period piece composed of VHS tapes and film-based pictures and hand-drawn illustrations, which showcase the DIY nature of the franchise's production method and how personal recommendations helped disseminate its secrets and undisclosed elements of the series in its peak period in gaming halls. Delivered in easily digestible portions, it's an eminently watchable series of documentary shorts that includes titles, illustrated stories, cinematic adaptations and including the humorous real-world tour. It also includes some unused moves and character sprites among its previously unreleased material.

Interactive Gaming

Placed within the five-segment historical film's chronology are invitations to experience the actual titles. During specific moments, users can directly access a Mortal Kombat title or a console adaptation to reexperience its mechanics and visual presentation, recreated with impressive accuracy on contemporary systems.

I spent the bulk of my time playing the arcade classics, especially Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Several releases here stand the test of time, especially in local multiplayer matches. However, facing the computer-controlled adversaries in these titles is a reminder of how crude and unbalanced the coding existed in early Mortal Kombat games. AI-managed characters obviously use unfair advantages or are otherwise dumb as rocks. Lacking someone to play against — internet multiplayer exists in the majority of included games, but somewhat limited in options — you'll be missing out.

Display Features

The twenty-three accessible Mortal Kombat titles in the compilation, a mix of arcade, console, and handheld games, are precisely simulated, though I detected a few small quirks — primarily delayed responses and the occasional bug, particularly in Mortal Kombat 4. Even though the releases are largely presented as-is, developer Digital Eclipse has included some smart quality-of-life features and visual presentation options. For instance, users can elect to show each character's special moves on-screen and select to activate infinite time to perform a Fatality. There are also options for revealing concealed combatants, without having to perform complicated methods to unlock them.

Visually, the games can be enjoyed with multiple 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 portable gaming device. A particularly nice touch is the setting to activate coin-op-inspired frames framing the gameplay, with the specific combat game you're playing faithfully and subtly duplicating against the faux black plastic borders. It's very artistically charming.

Additional Features

There are plenty of welcome features besides the educational material and simulated classic games, featuring an audio component that lets you revisit the soundtracks of different Mortal Kombat games without the din of fighters brutally eliminating opponents. There are also combatant descriptions that include bios and multiple story elements shown through arcade games' attract mode screens and endings.

Lost Media Recovery

One of the biggest highlights for committed franchise followers is the ability to access a piece of "lost media" in the form of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This particular edition, a slightly updated version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an initial venture by the company at head-to-head network battles in gaming halls. The online-enabled release of the game is almost exactly the same to UMK3, but featured the capability to challenge online opponents and contained several small bug fixes and balance. But the Wavenet update never gained traction, in part