🔗 Share this article

The Mortal Kombat series still possesses its share of secrets and the power to astonish, more than 30 years after its first appearance in coin-op establishments. A new collection including the series' initial period, featuring a quartet of arcade releases, several home system versions, and related titles, is more than simply a faithfully reproduced collection of iconic titles and not-so-classics — it additionally serves as a detailed chronicle about the making of the legendary series.

Being a long-time Mortal Kombat fan who has closely monitored its creation and evolution, there was plenty new for me to discover and admire about the series.

What Constitutes the Legacy Collection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection comparable to other vintage game anthologies from developer Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, portion interactive museum. This compilation features digitally recreated editions of the original arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, along with home system and portable adaptations of several of these titles. The anthology additionally contains the series' ventures at spin-off titles, like action-oriented titles 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 exploration into the franchise's initial era, when developer Midway and brand founders the visionary developers were determining how to make a fighting game, produced using film material of real actors, on the fly. Observing the archival material — which includes historical videos, new interviews, and scans of old flyers, comics, and even company memos — it's remarkable to see how the franchise evolved from humble beginnings to a worldwide phenomenon. It's frankly astounding to observe several early video game creators, developing without clear direction or guidance, channel their pop-culture interests into establishing an enduring gaming brand.

Historical Section

The historical documentation of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection traces the growth of the combat franchise and its creators' careers at the now-defunct Midway. It further illustrates how these identical developers contended with how to regularly outdo their previous work, facing no small amount of demand to replicate their triumphs. It represents an intriguing historical record constructed using VHS tapes and analog photographs and manual drawings, which showcase the DIY nature of the series' creation process and how oral tradition 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 collection of mini-documentaries that spans games, comics, films and including the humorous real-world tour. The compilation also contains some never-implemented techniques and game character images among its archived development assets.

Interactive Gaming

Distributed throughout the five-segment historical film's chronology are invitations to experience the original releases. During specific moments, audience members can jump into a Mortal Kombat title or a console adaptation to rediscover its combat system and artistic style, emulated nearly perfectly on contemporary systems.

I dedicated most of my time playing the arcade classics, especially Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Many of the games here stand the test of time, particularly during direct competitive sessions. However, facing the artificial intelligence fighters in these releases is a demonstration of how basic and unbalanced the programming was in early Mortal Kombat games. CPU-controlled opponents obviously use unfair advantages or are conversely remarkably unintelligent. If you don't have another person to compete with — network gaming is included in most titles in the collection, but too light on features — you'll miss the full enjoyment.

Visual Options

The 23 playable Mortal Kombat games in the anthology, a mix of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are precisely simulated, though I detected a couple minor issues — primarily delayed responses and sporadic glitches, especially with Mortal Kombat 4. Although the titles are largely presented as-is, developer Digital Eclipse has incorporated various clever user experience improvements and graphical adjustment settings. For example, users can elect to display fighter-specific techniques on the display and select to activate endless periods to perform a Fatality. There are also options for unlocking secret characters, eliminating the need to execute complicated methods to obtain them.

Visually, the games can be played with a variety of graphical effects and display options. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection offers very realistic filters that mimic the traditional television screens of arcades or home televisions, or the monochrome green display of a Game Boy. A particularly nice touch is the choice to enable gaming hall-style borders framing the gameplay, with the specific combat game you're playing accurately and softly reflecting against the faux black plastic borders. It's quite aesthetically pleasing.

Additional Features

Players will discover multiple welcome features besides the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, containing a soundtrack mode that allows users to rediscover the soundtracks of different fighting releases without the din of combatants violently defeating each other. Also present are combatant descriptions that contain backgrounds and multiple story elements shown through arcade games' attract mode screens and endings.

Archival Discovery

One of the biggest highlights 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 pioneering effort from the developer at head-to-head network battles in arcades. The Wavenet Edition of the game is virtually identical to UMK3, but provided the ability to compete against internet adversaries and included some minor error corrections and adjustments. However, this network version failed to achieve popularity, in part