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Mortal Kombat retains numerous undisclosed elements and the power to astonish, more than 30 years after its first appearance in arcades. This latest compilation covering the series' initial period, featuring four original arcade titles, multiple console adaptations, and spinoffs, goes beyond only a accurately simulated collection of iconic titles along with lesser-known entries — it functions as a comprehensive historical account about the creation of the iconic franchise.

Even as a lifelong devotee of the franchise who has closely monitored its creation and evolution, there was plenty new for me to learn and appreciate about the series.

What Defines the Legacy Kollection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like previous classic compilations from developer Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, portion interactive museum. This compilation features 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. This compilation also features the franchise's attempts 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 consequently doesn't represent a greatest hits compilation, but an examination of the franchise's initial era, when the creators at Midway and series co-creators the creative duo behind the series were determining how to make a fighting game, created from video recordings of live performers, through experimentation. Viewing the historical footage — containing archival footage, contemporary discussions, and reproductions of classic advertisements, graphic novels, and even interoffice faxes — it's incredible to witness how the series transformed from modest origins to a worldwide phenomenon. It's genuinely amazing to observe several early video game creators, working with minimal planning or guidance, direct their entertainment passions into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Documentary Portion

The educational segment of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection charts the rise of Mortal Kombat and its creators' careers at the currently closed Midway. It subsequently demonstrates how the very same individuals addressed how to routinely one-up themselves, facing no small amount of demand to replicate their triumphs. It serves as a compelling period piece composed of VHS tapes and traditional photos and manual drawings, which reveal the self-made character of the series' creation process and how word of mouth helped disseminate its secrets and undisclosed elements of the series in its peak period in gaming halls. Presented in manageable segments, it's an eminently watchable collection of mini-documentaries that includes titles, illustrated stories, cinematic adaptations and even the comical physical events. The collection additionally features some unreleased actions and digital fighter representations among its archived development assets.

Interactive Experience

Placed within the quintet of documentary episodes' progression are opportunities to engage with the original releases. During specific moments, audience members can jump into a combat game session or one of its home console ports to rediscover its combat system and visual presentation, recreated with impressive accuracy on modern hardware.

I spent the bulk of my time experiencing the original arcade titles, especially Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Numerous titles here remain enjoyable, especially in direct competitive sessions. But playing against the artificial intelligence fighters in these releases is a demonstration of how basic and unjust the development approached in the franchise's pioneering releases. AI-managed characters obviously use unfair advantages or are otherwise dumb as rocks. Without having a human opponent — internet multiplayer exists in most titles in the collection, but somewhat limited in options — the experience will be incomplete.

Display Features

The twenty-three accessible Mortal Kombat titles in the anthology, a mix of arcade, console, and handheld games, are accurately emulated, though I detected a handful slight anomalies — primarily delayed responses and intermittent errors, notably within Mortal Kombat 4. And while the games are mostly shown in their original form, developer Digital Eclipse has incorporated various clever quality-of-life features and visual presentation options. For instance, users can elect to display fighter-specific techniques during gameplay and choose to enable infinite time to perform a Fatality. There are also options for unlocking secret characters, eliminating the need to execute some esoteric trick to unlock them.

Graphically, the titles can be enjoyed with multiple visual enhancements and presentation styles. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection provides highly authentic effects that reproduce the cathode-ray tube displays of arcades or household displays, or the greenscale screen of a portable gaming device. A notably appreciated element is the setting to activate coin-op-inspired frames framing the gameplay, with the MK game of your choice faithfully and subtly duplicating against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's remarkably visually appealing.

Extra Content

Players will discover multiple welcome features besides the documentary and emulated arcade classics, including a music player that allows users to rediscover the soundtracks of different Mortal Kombat games excluding the sounds of two kombatants viciously slaughtering each other. Additionally included are combatant descriptions that feature histories and numerous narrative components presented by the idle displays of gaming hall releases and endings.

Archival Discovery

A particularly notable inclusion for hardcore Mortal Kombat fans is the ability to access a piece of "lost media" in the format of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This version of the game, a moderately improved edition of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an initial venture by the company at direct online competitive gaming in arcades. The online-enabled release of the game is practically indistinguishable to UMK3, but featured the capability to challenge online opponents and included some minor error corrections and adjustments. However, this network version failed to achieve popularity, in part