🔗 Share this article

Mortal Kombat continues to hold its share of secrets and the ability to amaze, over three decades after its first appearance in gaming halls. This latest compilation spanning the series' initial period, featuring four arcade games, multiple console adaptations, and derivative games, transcends only a accurately simulated series of classics and not-so-classics — it's also a rich documentary about the making of the renowned brand.

As a dedicated enthusiast of the series who has closely monitored its development and progression, there was numerous fresh aspects for me to understand and value about the series.

What Constitutes the Legacy Kollection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like other retro collections from developer Digital Eclipse, part historical documentation, portion interactive museum. The collection includes emulated versions of the first arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, including television and mobile versions of several of these titles. The collection even includes the brand's experiments at spin-off titles, like combat-focused releases Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — some of the brand's most criticized releases.

The Legacy Kollection is therefore not a “best of” collection, but an examination of the franchise's initial era, when the development team Midway and series co-creators the creative duo behind the series were discovering methods to make a fighting game, created from video recordings of live performers, as they went along. Observing the archival material — which includes historical videos, new interviews, and digital copies of vintage posters, graphic novels, and even company memos — it's remarkable to see how the franchise evolved from modest origins to a international craze. It's frankly astounding to observe several pioneering developers, developing without clear direction or supervision, channel their pop-culture interests into establishing an enduring gaming brand.

Educational Component

The educational segment of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection charts the rise of Mortal Kombat and the founders' vocational paths at the now-defunct Midway. It then goes on to show how those same creators addressed how to routinely one-up themselves, facing no small amount of demand to replicate their achievements. It serves as a compelling period piece made from analog films and traditional photos and manual drawings, which reveal the self-made character of the series' creation process and how personal recommendations helped circulate its mysteries and hidden aspects of Mortal Kombat in its arcade heyday. Presented in manageable segments, it's an eminently watchable collection of mini-documentaries that includes titles, illustrated stories, cinematic adaptations and even the comical physical events. The compilation also contains some unreleased actions and game character images among its archived development assets.

Playable Component

Interspersed along the five-segment historical film's chronology are invitations to experience the original releases. At various points, users can directly access a Mortal Kombat title or a console adaptation to rediscover its combat system and graphics, simulated with remarkable precision on modern hardware.

I spent the bulk of my time engaging with the vintage coin-op games, specifically Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Many of the games here stand the test of time, especially in one-on-one local play. But playing against the artificial intelligence fighters in these releases is a demonstration of how basic and unjust the coding existed in the series' initial installments. AI-managed characters obviously use unfair advantages or are conversely remarkably unintelligent. If you don't have another person to compete with — network gaming is included in numerous anthology releases, but somewhat limited in options — you'll be missing out.

Display Features

The 23 playable Mortal Kombat games in the anthology, a mix of arcade, console, and handheld games, are faithfully recreated, though I detected a few small quirks — mostly input lag and the occasional bug, notably within Mortal Kombat 4. And while the games are largely presented as-is, the creators has incorporated various clever quality-of-life features and display customization choices. As an illustration, players have the option to reveal combatant-unique actions during gameplay and choose to enable infinite time to execute finishing moves. There are also options for accessing hidden fighters, eliminating the need to execute some esoteric trick to unlock them.

Artistically, the releases can be experienced with numerous visual enhancements and presentation styles. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection provides highly authentic filters that mimic the cathode-ray tube displays of coin-op establishments or home televisions, or the monochrome green display of a Game Boy. A notably appreciated element is the choice to enable coin-op-inspired frames encircling the display, with your selected Mortal Kombat title accurately and softly reflecting against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's remarkably visually appealing.

Bonus Elements

The collection includes numerous nice touches beyond the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, including a music player that allows users to rediscover the music from multiple fighting releases without the din of two kombatants viciously slaughtering each other. Also present are combatant descriptions that include bios and numerous narrative components presented by arcade games' attract mode screens and final sequences.

Historical Preservation

One of the biggest highlights for committed franchise followers is the opportunity to play a piece of "lost media" 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 initial venture by the company at one-on-one internet-based play in coin-op establishments. The online-enabled release of the game is virtually identical to UMK3, but featured the capability to challenge online opponents and included some minor glitch repairs and refinements. However, this network version failed to achieve popularity, in part