The Legacy Kollection of Mortal Kombat: A Near-Flawless Victory for the Fighting Game Series

The Mortal Kombat series retains many hidden mysteries and the ability to amaze, over three decades after its first appearance in arcades. The recent anthology spanning the brand's formative years, comprising a quartet of arcade releases, various home ports, and spinoffs, is more than only a accurately simulated set of legendary games along with lesser-known entries — it functions as a rich documentary about the making of the legendary series.

As a dedicated Mortal Kombat fan 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 other vintage game anthologies from developer Digital Eclipse, part documentary, portion interactive museum. The collection includes 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 certain releases. The collection even includes the brand's experiments at spinoffs, like combat-focused releases Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — some of the brand's worst entries.

The Legacy Kollection thus isn't a “best of” collection, but an exploration into Mortal Kombat's early days, when the development team Midway and franchise originators Ed Boon and John Tobias were determining how to make a fighting game, produced using film material of live performers, on the fly. Observing the archival material — which includes historical videos, new interviews, and reproductions of classic advertisements, illustrated stories, and even company memos — it's incredible to witness how Mortal Kombat went from simple starts to a global sensation. It's truly remarkable to watch a handful of young game developers, working with minimal planning or oversight, channel their pop-culture interests into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Educational Component

The educational segment of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection documents the ascent of Mortal Kombat and the founders' vocational paths at the now-defunct Midway. It then goes on to show how these identical developers addressed how to routinely one-up themselves, facing no small amount of demand to replicate their success. It serves as a compelling period piece composed of analog films and film-based pictures and hand-drawn illustrations, which demonstrate the hands-on approach of the franchise's production method and how word of mouth helped circulate its mysteries and undisclosed elements of the series in its arcade heyday. Presented in manageable segments, it's highly engaging set of brief historical films that covers video games, graphic novels, movies and even the silly live-action tour. The compilation also contains some unused moves and digital fighter representations among its cutting-room-floor content.

Interactive Gaming

Placed within the five-part documentary's timeline are prompts to play the actual titles. At various points, viewers can hop into a game of Mortal Kombat or one of its home console ports to rediscover its combat system and artistic style, recreated with impressive accuracy on modern hardware.

I allocated the majority of my time playing the arcade classics, particularly Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Numerous titles here stand the test of time, particularly during one-on-one local play. But playing against the artificial intelligence fighters in these releases is a reminder of how crude and unfair the programming was in the series' initial installments. CPU-controlled opponents blatantly cheat to win or are alternatively incredibly stupid. Lacking a human opponent — online play is available in most titles in the collection, but rather basic in functionality — you'll be missing out.

Display Features

The 23 playable Mortal Kombat games in the compilation, a mix of arcade, console, and handheld games, are precisely simulated, though I have noticed a couple minor issues — primarily delayed responses and intermittent errors, notably within Mortal Kombat 4. And while the games are primarily displayed authentically, the creators has incorporated various clever convenience enhancements and display customization choices. As an illustration, players have the option to show each character's special moves during gameplay and choose to enable endless periods to complete lethal techniques. There are also options for unlocking secret characters, removing the requirement to complete complicated methods to access them.

Graphically, the titles can be played with a variety of visual enhancements and presentation styles. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection offers very realistic options that simulate the traditional television screens of arcades or household displays, or the greenscale screen of a Game Boy. A particularly nice touch is the setting to activate gaming hall-style borders encircling the display, with the specific combat game you're playing accurately and softly reflecting against the simulated dark plastic edges. It's quite aesthetically pleasing.

Extra Content

Players will discover multiple appreciated elements beyond the educational material and simulated classic games, featuring an audio component that lets you revisit the music from multiple fighting releases absent the noise of combatants violently defeating each other. Additionally included are combatant descriptions that contain backgrounds and multiple story elements presented by the idle displays of gaming hall releases and endings.

Archival Discovery

A particularly notable inclusion for dedicated series enthusiasts is the ability to access a segment of previously unavailable content in the guise of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This particular edition, a moderately improved edition of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an pioneering effort from the developer at one-on-one internet-based play in gaming halls. The Wavenet Edition of the game is virtually identical to UMK3, but included the option to battle network competitors and featured various slight bug fixes and balance. Yet this online edition failed to achieve popularity, in part