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This iconic fighting game retains many hidden mysteries and the ability to amaze, well past its 30th anniversary after its first appearance in gaming halls. The recent anthology spanning the brand's formative years, which includes a quartet of arcade releases, various home ports, and derivative games, transcends just a well-emulated set of legendary games and not-so-classics — it functions as a rich documentary about the making of the renowned brand.

As a dedicated enthusiast of the series who has paid close attention its development and progression, there was much to discover for me to learn and appreciate about the series.

What Makes the Legacy Collection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like previous classic compilations from the development team Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, part playable archive. The collection includes digitally recreated editions of the pioneering arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, along with home system and portable adaptations of some of those games. 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 most criticized releases.

The Legacy Kollection thus isn't a “best of” collection, but an examination of the franchise's initial era, when the creators at Midway and brand founders Ed Boon and John Tobias were discovering methods to develop a battle series, produced using film material of real actors, on the fly. Watching the documentary — that features vintage recordings, contemporary discussions, and reproductions of classic advertisements, graphic novels, and even company memos — it's incredible to witness how Mortal Kombat went from modest origins to a international craze. It's truly remarkable to observe several early video game creators, working with minimal planning or supervision, direct their entertainment passions into establishing an enduring gaming brand.

Historical Section

The documentary portion of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection charts the rise of the combat franchise and its creators' careers at the now-defunct Midway. It further illustrates how those same creators contended with how to regularly outdo their previous work, experiencing considerable pressure to repeat their success. It represents an intriguing historical record constructed using VHS tapes and film-based pictures and pencil sketches, which showcase the DIY nature of Mortal Kombat's development and how personal recommendations helped circulate its mysteries and undisclosed elements of the series in its arcade heyday. Delivered in easily digestible portions, it's an eminently watchable collection of mini-documentaries that includes titles, illustrated stories, cinematic adaptations and including the humorous real-world tour. The compilation also contains some never-implemented techniques and digital fighter representations among its archived development assets.

Interactive Experience

Placed within the quintet of documentary episodes' progression are invitations to experience the games themselves. During specific moments, audience members can jump into a combat game session or a console adaptation to revisit its gameplay and graphics, simulated with remarkable precision on modern hardware.

I spent the bulk of my time playing the arcade classics, particularly Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Numerous titles here stand the test of time, particularly during local multiplayer matches. Yet competing with the computer-controlled adversaries in these titles is a reminder of how crude and unbalanced the development approached in early Mortal Kombat games. CPU-controlled opponents obviously use unfair advantages or are otherwise dumb as rocks. Lacking someone to play against — online play is available in most titles in the collection, but too light on features — you'll miss the full enjoyment.

Visual Options

The two dozen available combat games in the collection, a combination of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are faithfully recreated, though I detected a few small quirks — primarily delayed responses and intermittent errors, especially with Mortal Kombat 4. Even though the releases are largely presented as-is, the development team has incorporated various clever convenience enhancements and display customization choices. As an illustration, users can elect to reveal combatant-unique actions on the display and select to activate endless periods to complete lethal techniques. There are also options for accessing hidden fighters, without having to perform obscure techniques 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 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 framing the gameplay, with your selected Mortal Kombat title precisely and gently mirroring against the faux black plastic borders. It's quite aesthetically pleasing.

Additional Features

Players will discover multiple nice touches beyond the educational material and simulated classic games, containing a soundtrack mode that lets you revisit the music from multiple Mortal Kombat games without the din of combatants violently defeating each other. There are also combatant descriptions that contain backgrounds and the various bits of lore displayed via arcade games' attract mode screens and endings.

Lost Media Recovery

A particularly notable inclusion for hardcore Mortal Kombat fans is the opportunity to play a piece of "lost media" in the guise 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 direct online competitive gaming in coin-op establishments. The online-enabled release of the game is practically indistinguishable to UMK3, but provided the ability to challenge online opponents and featured various slight error corrections and adjustments. Yet this online edition failed to achieve popularity, in part