Mortal Kombat's Legacy Kollection: An Almost Perfect Triumph for the Fighting Game Brand

The Mortal Kombat series retains many hidden mysteries and the capacity to surprise, more than 30 years after its first appearance in gaming halls. A new collection spanning the franchise's earliest days, which includes a quartet of arcade releases, various home ports, and spinoffs, is more than simply a faithfully reproduced collection of iconic titles including less celebrated releases — it functions as a detailed chronicle about the creation of the iconic franchise.

As a dedicated devotee of the franchise who has closely monitored its development and progression, there was numerous fresh aspects for me to discover and admire about the series.

What Constitutes the Historical Compilation

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection similar to previous classic compilations from the development team Digital Eclipse, part documentary, section playable historical record. The collection includes emulated versions of the first arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, plus console and handheld ports of some of those games. The collection even includes the series' ventures at spin-off titles, like action games Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — two of the franchise's least successful installments.

The Legacy Kollection consequently doesn't represent a highlight reel anthology, but an exploration into the series' formative period, when developer Midway and series co-creators Ed Boon and John Tobias were determining how to make a fighting game, digitized from footage of live performers, as they went along. Watching the documentary — containing archival footage, contemporary discussions, and digital copies of vintage posters, illustrated stories, and even interoffice faxes — it's incredible to witness how the series transformed from humble beginnings to a global sensation. It's frankly astounding to observe several early video game creators, developing without clear direction or supervision, channel their pop-culture interests into establishing an enduring gaming brand.

Documentary Portion

The documentary portion of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection traces the growth of the fighting series and the founders' vocational paths at the currently closed Midway. It further illustrates how the very same individuals contended with how to consistently surpass their achievements, facing no small amount of pressure to repeat their achievements. It's a fascinating time capsule composed of video recordings and analog photographs and pencil sketches, which showcase the DIY nature of Mortal Kombat's development and how word of mouth helped spread its rumors and undisclosed elements of the series in its arcade heyday. Presented in manageable segments, it's an eminently watchable series of documentary shorts that covers video games, graphic novels, movies and even the comical physical events. It also includes some never-implemented techniques and digital fighter representations among its cutting-room-floor content.

Interactive Experience

Interspersed along the five-segment historical film's chronology are opportunities to engage with the actual titles. At various points, users can directly access a Mortal Kombat title or a console adaptation to revisit its gameplay and visual presentation, emulated nearly perfectly on contemporary systems.

I dedicated most of my time engaging with the vintage coin-op games, particularly Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Many of the games here remain enjoyable, particularly during local multiplayer matches. Yet competing with the aforementioned game's AI-controlled opponents is a demonstration of how basic and unbalanced the development approached in the series' initial installments. AI-managed characters blatantly cheat to win or are alternatively incredibly stupid. If you don't have a human opponent — online play is available in the majority of included games, but rather basic in functionality — you'll be missing out.

Technical Presentation

The twenty-three accessible Mortal Kombat titles in the collection, a combination of arcade, console, and handheld games, are faithfully recreated, though I detected a few small quirks — primarily delayed responses and the occasional bug, notably within Mortal Kombat 4. And while the games are mostly shown in their original form, developer Digital Eclipse has added several intelligent convenience enhancements and display customization choices. For example, users can elect to reveal combatant-unique actions during gameplay and choose to enable unlimited duration to complete lethal techniques. Additionally available are settings for accessing hidden fighters, eliminating the need to execute some esoteric trick to obtain them.

Graphically, the titles can be played with a variety of graphical effects and display options. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection provides highly authentic filters that mimic the traditional television screens of gaming halls or domestic TVs, or the monochrome green display of a Game Boy. A notably appreciated element is the setting to activate coin-op-inspired frames surrounding the screen, with your selected Mortal Kombat title accurately and softly reflecting against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's very artistically charming.

Bonus Elements

Players will discover multiple welcome features besides the educational material and simulated classic games, including a music player that allows users to rediscover the music from multiple combat titles without the din of combatants violently defeating each other. Also present are character profiles that contain backgrounds and the various bits of lore shown through the demo sequences of coin-op titles and final sequences.

Archival Discovery

A particularly notable inclusion for dedicated series enthusiasts is the ability to access a segment of previously unavailable content in the format of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This version of the game, a slightly updated version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an early attempt by Midway at direct online competitive gaming in coin-op establishments. This network version of the game is virtually identical to UMK3, but included the option to challenge online opponents and featured various slight glitch repairs and refinements. Yet this online edition failed to achieve popularity, in part