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The Mortal Kombat series retains many hidden mysteries and the power to astonish, more than 30 years after its original launch in gaming halls. A new collection covering the franchise's earliest days, comprising a quartet of arcade releases, several home system versions, and related titles, transcends simply a faithfully reproduced collection of iconic titles including less celebrated releases — it's also a rich documentary about the development of the legendary series.

Even as a lifelong devotee of the franchise who has closely monitored its development and progression, there was much to discover for me to understand and value about the series.

What Defines the Legacy Kollection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like other vintage game anthologies from the creators at Digital Eclipse, part documentary, section playable historical record. The collection includes digitally recreated editions of the pioneering arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, including television and mobile versions of several of these titles. This compilation also features the brand's experiments at spinoffs, like action-oriented titles Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — two of the franchise's worst entries.

The Legacy Kollection is therefore not a greatest hits compilation, but an examination of the franchise's initial era, when developer Midway and franchise originators the creative duo behind the series were figuring out how to create a combat title, created from video recordings of live performers, through experimentation. Viewing the historical footage — which includes historical videos, recent conversations, and digital copies of vintage posters, comics, and even interoffice faxes — it's remarkable to see how the series transformed from modest origins to a international craze. It's truly remarkable to see a group of young game developers, working with minimal planning or oversight, channel their pop-culture interests into creating a legendary video game series.

Educational Component

The educational segment of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection documents the ascent of the combat franchise and the developers' professional journeys at the no-longer-operating Midway. It further illustrates how these identical developers addressed how to routinely one-up themselves, encountering significant demand to replicate their triumphs. It serves as a compelling period piece made from video recordings and traditional photos and pencil sketches, which showcase the DIY nature of Mortal Kombat's development and how personal recommendations helped disseminate its secrets and undisclosed elements of the series in its golden era in coin-op establishments. Told in bite-sized chunks, it's an eminently watchable series of documentary shorts that includes titles, illustrated stories, cinematic adaptations and even the silly live-action tour. The compilation also contains some unreleased actions and digital fighter representations among its previously unreleased material.

Playable Component

Placed within the five-segment historical film's chronology are invitations to experience the games themselves. At various points, audience members can jump into a game of Mortal Kombat or a home system version to rediscover its combat system and graphics, emulated nearly perfectly on modern hardware.

I dedicated most of my time experiencing the original arcade titles, specifically Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Several releases here hold up, notably with one-on-one local play. However, facing the artificial intelligence fighters in these releases is a demonstration of how basic and unbalanced the development approached in early Mortal Kombat games. AI-managed characters clearly employ dishonest tactics or are conversely remarkably unintelligent. If you don't have someone to play against — network gaming is included in the majority of included games, but somewhat limited in options — the experience will be incomplete.

Technical Presentation

The two dozen available combat games in the anthology, a combination of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are faithfully recreated, though I have noticed a few small quirks — mostly input lag and sporadic glitches, notably within Mortal Kombat 4. And while the games are largely presented as-is, the creators has added several intelligent user experience improvements and graphical adjustment settings. For instance, you can choose to show each character's special moves on the display and opt to have endless periods to execute finishing moves. There are also options for unlocking secret characters, without having to perform some esoteric trick to unlock them.

Artistically, the releases can be played with a variety of visual enhancements and presentation styles. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection provides highly authentic filters that mimic the cathode-ray tube displays of gaming halls or home televisions, or the greenscale screen of a Nintendo handheld. An especially welcome feature is the setting to activate arcade-like bezels surrounding the screen, with the specific combat game you're playing faithfully and subtly duplicating against the simulated dark plastic edges. It's remarkably visually appealing.

Extra Content

Players will discover multiple appreciated elements beyond the educational material and simulated classic games, featuring an audio component that enables players to reexperience the soundtracks of different fighting releases absent the noise of fighters brutally eliminating opponents. Also present are combatant descriptions that contain backgrounds and numerous narrative components displayed via arcade games' attract mode screens and endings.

Lost Media Recovery

One of the biggest highlights for dedicated series enthusiasts is the chance to experience a example of historically missing material in the form of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This particular edition, a moderately improved edition of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an early attempt by Midway at one-on-one internet-based play in gaming halls. The Wavenet Edition of the game is almost exactly the same to UMK3, but provided the ability to compete against internet adversaries and included some minor glitch repairs and refinements. But the Wavenet update never gained traction, in part