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

This iconic fighting game retains many hidden mysteries and the capacity to surprise, more than 30 years after its original launch in arcades. The recent anthology including the franchise's earliest days, comprising a quartet of arcade releases, various home ports, and derivative games, is more than just a well-emulated collection of iconic titles and not-so-classics — it functions as a detailed chronicle about the creation of the iconic franchise.

Even as a lifelong enthusiast of the series who has paid close attention its origins and transformation, there was much to discover for me to learn and appreciate about the series.

What Makes the Legacy Kollection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like other vintage game anthologies from the creators at Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, portion interactive museum. This compilation features 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 certain releases. 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 a study of Mortal Kombat's early days, when the creators at Midway and series co-creators the visionary developers were determining how to develop a battle series, produced using film material of actual people, as they went along. Watching the documentary — that features archival footage, new interviews, and scans of old flyers, illustrated stories, and including internal communications — it's astonishing to observe how the series transformed from humble beginnings to a global sensation. It's frankly astounding to observe several young game developers, working with minimal planning or guidance, channel their pop-culture interests into establishing an enduring gaming brand.

Educational Component

The documentary portion of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection charts the rise of the combat franchise and its creators' careers at the now-defunct Midway. It further illustrates how these identical developers addressed how to regularly outdo their previous work, encountering significant demand to replicate their success. It's a fascinating time capsule constructed using analog films and analog photographs and hand-drawn illustrations, which demonstrate the hands-on approach of Mortal Kombat's development and how personal recommendations helped disseminate its secrets and undisclosed elements of the series in its arcade heyday. Presented in manageable segments, it's an eminently watchable collection of mini-documentaries that covers video games, graphic novels, movies and including the humorous real-world tour. The collection additionally features some unreleased actions and digital fighter representations among its archived development assets.

Playable Component

Interspersed along the quintet of documentary episodes' progression are opportunities to engage with the games themselves. During specific moments, viewers can hop into a Mortal Kombat title or a console adaptation to revisit its gameplay and artistic style, recreated with impressive accuracy on modern hardware.

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 hold up, particularly during one-on-one local play. But playing against the aforementioned game's AI-controlled opponents is a reminder of how crude and unbalanced the coding existed in the series' initial installments. Computer-directed fighters clearly employ dishonest tactics or are conversely remarkably unintelligent. Without having someone to play against — online play is available in numerous anthology releases, but rather basic in functionality — you'll miss the full enjoyment.

Display Features

The 23 playable Mortal Kombat games in the compilation, a mix of gaming hall, television, and mobile releases, are precisely simulated, though I detected a few small quirks — mostly input lag and the occasional bug, especially with Mortal Kombat 4. Even though the releases are largely presented as-is, developer Digital Eclipse has incorporated various clever convenience enhancements and graphical adjustment settings. For instance, players have the option to reveal combatant-unique actions during gameplay and opt to have infinite time to perform a Fatality. Also included are choices for unlocking secret characters, eliminating the need to execute obscure techniques to access them.

Artistically, the releases can be experienced with numerous graphical effects and display options. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection includes remarkably accurate filters that mimic the CRT monitors of gaming halls or home televisions, or the greenscale screen of a Nintendo handheld. A particularly nice touch is the option to have coin-op-inspired frames encircling the display, 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

The collection includes numerous nice touches beyond the educational material and simulated classic games, featuring an audio component that lets you revisit the soundtracks of different Mortal Kombat games absent the noise of two kombatants viciously slaughtering each other. There are also fighter biographies that feature histories and the various bits of lore presented by arcade games' attract mode screens and final sequences.

Archival Discovery

Among the most significant features for committed franchise followers is the ability to access 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 early attempt by Midway at direct online competitive gaming in arcades. This network version of the game is practically indistinguishable to UMK3, but provided the ability to battle network competitors and included some minor glitch repairs and refinements. However, this network version didn't find widespread adoption, in part