The Legacy Kollection of Mortal Kombat: A Stunning Success for the Combat Series Series

The Mortal Kombat series continues to hold its share of secrets and the power to astonish, more than 30 years after its original launch in gaming halls. The recent anthology including the brand's formative years, featuring a quartet of arcade releases, various home ports, and derivative games, is more than only a accurately simulated set of legendary games and not-so-classics — it functions as a rich documentary about the making of the iconic franchise.

Even as a lifelong Mortal Kombat fan who has carefully followed its creation and evolution, there was much to discover for me to understand and value about the series.

What Constitutes the Legacy Kollection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection comparable to other vintage game anthologies from the creators at Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, section playable historical record. The anthology contains digitally recreated editions of the original arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, plus console and handheld ports 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 — two of the franchise's least successful installments.

The Legacy Kollection thus isn't a “best of” collection, but a study of the franchise's initial era, when the creators at Midway and brand founders the visionary developers were discovering methods to develop a battle series, digitized from footage of real actors, on the fly. Observing the archival material — containing vintage recordings, new interviews, and digital copies of vintage posters, graphic novels, and including internal communications — it's incredible to witness how Mortal Kombat went from humble beginnings to a worldwide phenomenon. It's truly remarkable to observe several young game developers, working with minimal planning or guidance, focus their cultural enthusiasms into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Documentary Portion

The historical documentation of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection traces the growth of Mortal Kombat and its creators' careers at the now-defunct Midway. It then goes on to show how the very same individuals reckoned with how to routinely one-up themselves, experiencing considerable pressure to repeat their success. It serves as a compelling period piece made from VHS tapes and film-based pictures and pencil sketches, which demonstrate the hands-on approach of the series' creation process and how personal recommendations helped circulate its mysteries and hidden aspects of Mortal Kombat in its peak period in gaming halls. Delivered in easily digestible portions, it's highly engaging collection of mini-documentaries that covers video games, graphic novels, movies and even the silly live-action tour. It also includes some never-implemented techniques and game character images among its cutting-room-floor content.

Interactive Gaming

Placed within the five-part documentary's timeline are opportunities to engage with the actual titles. At certain intervals, users can directly access a combat game session or a home system version to rediscover its combat system and graphics, recreated with impressive accuracy on contemporary systems.

I spent the bulk of my time playing the arcade classics, specifically Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Many of the games here stand the test of time, particularly during local multiplayer matches. But playing against the computer-controlled adversaries in these titles is a reminder of how crude and unfair the coding existed in early Mortal Kombat games. Computer-directed fighters blatantly cheat to win or are otherwise dumb as rocks. Lacking a human opponent — network gaming is included in numerous anthology releases, but too light on features — the experience will be incomplete.

Display Features

The 23 playable Mortal Kombat games in the compilation, a combination of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are accurately emulated, though I have noticed a couple minor issues — mostly input lag and sporadic glitches, notably within Mortal Kombat 4. Although the titles are largely presented as-is, the creators has incorporated various clever user experience improvements and visual presentation options. For example, players have the option to reveal combatant-unique actions during gameplay and select to activate unlimited duration to complete lethal techniques. Also included are choices for revealing concealed combatants, eliminating the need to execute obscure techniques to obtain them.

Graphically, the titles can be experienced with numerous graphical effects and display options. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection provides highly authentic effects that reproduce the CRT monitors of gaming halls or home televisions, or the greenscale screen of a portable gaming device. An especially welcome feature is the setting to activate arcade-like bezels framing the gameplay, with the MK game of your choice faithfully and subtly duplicating against the faux black plastic borders. It's remarkably visually appealing.

Bonus Elements

Players will discover multiple nice touches beyond the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, containing a soundtrack mode that lets you revisit the music from multiple Mortal Kombat games without the din of combatants violently defeating each other. Additionally included are fighter biographies that feature histories and numerous narrative components displayed via the demo sequences of coin-op titles and conclusions.

Lost Media Recovery

Among the most significant features for hardcore Mortal Kombat fans is the opportunity to play a segment of previously unavailable content in the form of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This specific release, a somewhat revised iteration of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an initial venture by the company at head-to-head network battles in coin-op establishments. This network version of the game is practically indistinguishable to UMK3, but included the option to battle network competitors and featured various slight glitch repairs and refinements. But the Wavenet update didn't find widespread adoption, in part