🔗 Share this article

The Mortal Kombat series retains numerous undisclosed elements and the ability to amaze, well past its 30th anniversary after its initial debut in arcades. This latest compilation including the series' initial period, featuring four original arcade titles, various home ports, and spinoffs, transcends just a well-emulated set of legendary games along with lesser-known entries — it's also a rich documentary about the making of the iconic franchise.

Being a long-time devotee of the franchise who has paid close attention its origins and transformation, there was plenty new for me to learn and appreciate about the series.

What Makes the Historical Compilation

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like other vintage game anthologies from the creators at Digital Eclipse, part documentary, section playable historical record. 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 several of these titles. The collection even includes the brand's experiments at derivative games, like action games Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — some of the brand's worst entries.

The Legacy Kollection thus isn't a highlight reel anthology, but a study of the series' formative period, when developer Midway and franchise originators the visionary developers were determining how to develop a battle series, created from video recordings of live performers, as they went along. Viewing the historical footage — which includes archival footage, contemporary discussions, and reproductions of classic advertisements, graphic novels, and even company memos — it's incredible to witness how the franchise evolved from humble beginnings to a international craze. It's frankly astounding to see a group of early video game creators, developing without clear direction or supervision, focus their cultural enthusiasms into creating a legendary video game series.

Documentary Portion

The educational segment of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection charts the rise of the fighting series and the founders' vocational paths at the no-longer-operating Midway. It subsequently demonstrates how these identical developers contended with how to routinely one-up themselves, facing no small amount of stress to duplicate their success. It represents an intriguing historical record composed of VHS tapes and traditional photos and manual drawings, which demonstrate the hands-on approach of the series' creation process and how word of mouth helped circulate its mysteries and undisclosed elements of the series in its golden era in coin-op establishments. Presented in manageable segments, it's highly engaging collection of mini-documentaries that includes titles, illustrated stories, cinematic adaptations and even the silly live-action tour. It also includes some unreleased actions and game character images among its previously unreleased material.

Interactive Gaming

Interspersed along the five-part documentary's timeline are invitations to experience the original releases. At various points, 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 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, especially in one-on-one local play. But playing against the computer-controlled adversaries in these titles is a testament to how primitive and unbalanced the coding existed in early Mortal Kombat games. Computer-directed fighters obviously use unfair advantages or are conversely remarkably unintelligent. Lacking a human opponent — online play is available in numerous anthology releases, but rather basic in functionality — you'll miss the full enjoyment.

Technical Presentation

The 23 playable Mortal Kombat games in the compilation, a blend of gaming hall, television, and mobile releases, are faithfully recreated, though I've observed a handful slight anomalies — mainly control latency and the occasional bug, notably within Mortal Kombat 4. And while the games are largely presented as-is, the development team has included some smart user experience improvements and display customization choices. For example, players have the option to display fighter-specific techniques during gameplay and opt to have unlimited duration to execute finishing moves. Also included are choices for unlocking secret characters, without having to perform some esoteric trick to obtain them.

Visually, the games can be experienced with numerous graphical effects and display options. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection offers very realistic options that simulate the CRT monitors of gaming halls or home televisions, or the limited color monitor of a Nintendo handheld. A particularly nice touch is the option to have arcade-like bezels surrounding the screen, with the MK game of your choice faithfully and subtly duplicating against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's quite aesthetically pleasing.

Bonus Elements

Players will discover multiple welcome features besides the documentary and emulated arcade classics, featuring an audio component that enables players to reexperience the music from multiple combat titles absent the noise of two kombatants viciously slaughtering each other. Additionally included are fighter biographies that contain backgrounds and the various bits of lore presented by the idle displays of gaming hall releases and endings.

Archival Discovery

One of the biggest highlights for dedicated series enthusiasts is the chance to experience a segment of previously unavailable content in the format of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This version of the game, a somewhat revised iteration 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 featured the capability to compete against internet adversaries and included some minor bug fixes and balance. Yet this online edition didn't find widespread adoption, in part