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This iconic fighting game still possesses its share of secrets and the capacity to surprise, over three decades after its first appearance in coin-op establishments. The recent anthology covering the brand's formative years, comprising four original arcade titles, multiple console adaptations, and related titles, is more than just a well-emulated collection of iconic titles along with lesser-known entries — it's also a rich documentary about the creation of the iconic franchise.

Even as a lifelong enthusiast of the series who has carefully followed its creation and evolution, there was much to discover for me to learn and appreciate about the series.

What Constitutes the Historical Compilation

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection similar to other retro collections from the development team Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, portion interactive museum. The collection includes emulated versions 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 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 thus isn't a “best of” collection, but an exploration into the series' formative period, when the creators at Midway and brand founders the creative duo behind the series were determining how to create a combat title, digitized from footage of real actors, on the fly. Viewing the historical footage — that features archival footage, contemporary discussions, and reproductions of classic advertisements, comics, and even interoffice faxes — it's remarkable to see how the series transformed from humble beginnings to a global sensation. It's genuinely amazing to see a group of early video game creators, working with minimal planning or guidance, channel their pop-culture interests into creating a legendary video game series.

Educational Component

The educational segment of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection traces the growth of the combat franchise and the founders' vocational paths at the now-defunct Midway. It then goes on to show how these identical developers contended with how to routinely one-up themselves, encountering significant demand to replicate their triumphs. It's a fascinating time capsule constructed using video recordings and traditional photos and hand-drawn illustrations, which reveal the self-made character of the franchise's production method and how word of mouth helped disseminate its secrets and secrets of MK in its arcade heyday. Presented in manageable segments, it's an eminently watchable collection of mini-documentaries that includes titles, illustrated stories, cinematic adaptations and even the silly live-action tour. It also includes some unused moves and character sprites among its previously unreleased material.

Interactive Experience

Distributed throughout the five-part documentary's timeline are opportunities to engage with the actual titles. At various points, audience members can jump into a combat game session or a console adaptation to revisit its gameplay and graphics, emulated nearly perfectly on modern hardware.

I dedicated most of my time experiencing the original arcade titles, specifically Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Several releases here remain enjoyable, particularly during one-on-one local play. However, facing the computer-controlled adversaries in these titles is a demonstration of how basic and unfair the programming was in the franchise's pioneering releases. Computer-directed fighters blatantly cheat to win or are alternatively incredibly stupid. Lacking a human opponent — internet multiplayer exists in most titles in the collection, but rather basic in functionality — you'll be missing out.

Display Features

The twenty-three accessible Mortal Kombat titles in the anthology, a combination of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are faithfully recreated, though I've observed a few small quirks — mainly control latency and sporadic glitches, especially with Mortal Kombat 4. Even though the releases are primarily displayed authentically, the creators has incorporated various clever user experience improvements and display customization choices. For instance, you can choose to show each character's special moves on-screen and choose to enable unlimited duration to perform a Fatality. Additionally available are settings for revealing concealed combatants, without having to perform some esoteric trick to obtain them.

Graphically, the titles can be experienced with numerous visual enhancements and presentation styles. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection provides highly authentic effects that reproduce the traditional television screens of arcades or home televisions, or the monochrome green display of a portable gaming device. An especially welcome feature is the option to have gaming hall-style borders 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.

Extra Content

There are plenty of nice touches beyond the educational material and simulated classic games, featuring an audio component that lets you revisit the music from multiple fighting releases excluding the sounds of combatants violently defeating each other. Additionally included are fighter biographies that contain backgrounds and the various bits of lore shown through the demo sequences of coin-op titles and final sequences.

Archival Discovery

One of the biggest highlights for dedicated series enthusiasts is the opportunity to play a segment of previously unavailable content in the format of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This particular edition, a slightly updated version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an pioneering effort from the developer at direct online competitive gaming in arcades. This network version of the game is almost exactly the same to UMK3, but provided the ability to challenge online opponents and included some minor error corrections and adjustments. However, this network version didn't find widespread adoption, in part