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The Mortal Kombat series continues to hold its share of secrets and the power to astonish, well past its 30th anniversary after its original launch in gaming halls. This latest compilation including the series' initial period, comprising a quartet of arcade releases, various home ports, and spinoffs, goes beyond simply a faithfully reproduced set of legendary games including less celebrated releases — it functions as a detailed chronicle about the making of the renowned brand.

Even as a lifelong devotee of the franchise who has carefully followed its development and progression, there was much to discover for me to learn and appreciate about the series.

What Constitutes the Legacy Collection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like previous classic compilations from the creators at Digital Eclipse, part historical documentation, part playable archive. The collection includes simulated releases of the original 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 brand's experiments at spinoffs, like action games 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 series' formative period, when the creators at Midway and brand founders the visionary developers were discovering methods to develop a battle series, created from video recordings of real actors, through experimentation. Viewing the historical footage — containing vintage recordings, contemporary discussions, and digital copies of vintage posters, comics, and even interoffice faxes — it's remarkable to see how Mortal Kombat went from modest origins to a global sensation. It's truly remarkable to watch a handful of pioneering developers, working with minimal planning or guidance, focus their cultural enthusiasms into establishing an enduring gaming brand.

Historical Section

The educational segment of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection charts the rise of the fighting series and the founders' vocational paths at the now-defunct Midway. It subsequently demonstrates how these identical developers contended with how to routinely one-up themselves, experiencing considerable stress to duplicate their success. It's a fascinating time capsule constructed using video recordings and analog photographs and hand-drawn illustrations, which reveal the self-made character of the franchise's production method 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 an eminently watchable collection of mini-documentaries that spans games, comics, films and even the comical physical events. The compilation also contains some unreleased actions and digital fighter representations among its archived development assets.

Interactive Experience

Distributed throughout the five-part documentary's timeline are prompts to play the actual titles. During specific moments, audience members can jump into a game of Mortal Kombat or a home system version to revisit its gameplay and visual presentation, emulated nearly perfectly on modern hardware.

I spent the bulk of my time engaging with the vintage coin-op games, especially Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Numerous titles here stand the test of time, especially in local multiplayer matches. Yet competing with the aforementioned game's AI-controlled opponents is a reminder of how crude and unfair the coding existed in the franchise's pioneering releases. CPU-controlled opponents clearly employ dishonest tactics or are conversely remarkably unintelligent. Without having a human opponent — network gaming is included in numerous anthology releases, but somewhat limited in options — you'll be missing out.

Visual Options

The twenty-three accessible Mortal Kombat titles in the compilation, a combination of arcade, console, and handheld games, are faithfully recreated, though I detected a few small quirks — mainly control latency and the occasional bug, notably within Mortal Kombat 4. Although the titles are primarily displayed authentically, the creators has included some smart user experience improvements and visual presentation options. As an illustration, you can choose to show each character's special moves on-screen and opt to have unlimited duration to perform a Fatality. Also included are choices for accessing hidden fighters, removing the requirement to complete some esoteric trick to unlock them.

Graphically, the titles can be experienced with numerous visual enhancements and presentation styles. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection offers very realistic filters that mimic the traditional television screens of gaming halls or domestic TVs, or the greenscale screen of a portable gaming device. An especially welcome feature is the option to have gaming hall-style borders surrounding the screen, with your selected Mortal Kombat title accurately and softly reflecting against the simulated dark plastic edges. It's quite aesthetically pleasing.

Additional Features

There are plenty of welcome features besides the educational material and simulated classic games, containing a soundtrack mode that allows users to rediscover the soundtracks of different Mortal Kombat games without the din of fighters brutally eliminating opponents. Also present are character profiles that feature histories and numerous narrative components shown through arcade games' attract mode screens and endings.

Lost Media Recovery

One of the biggest highlights 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 slightly updated version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an initial venture by the company at one-on-one internet-based play in arcades. The Wavenet Edition of the game is virtually identical to UMK3, but featured the capability to battle network competitors and included some minor error corrections and adjustments. However, this network version failed to achieve popularity, in part