🔗 Share this article

Mortal Kombat continues to hold its share of secrets and the capacity to surprise, well past its 30th anniversary after its first appearance in coin-op establishments. This latest compilation covering the series' initial period, featuring four arcade games, various home ports, and derivative games, transcends only a accurately simulated collection of iconic titles and not-so-classics — it's also a detailed chronicle about the making of the renowned brand.

Even as a lifelong enthusiast of the series who has closely monitored its creation and evolution, there was plenty new for me to discover and admire about the series.

What Makes the Historical Compilation

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection similar to other vintage game anthologies from developer Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, portion interactive museum. The collection includes simulated releases of the original arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, including television and mobile versions of certain releases. The anthology additionally contains the franchise's attempts at spinoffs, like action-oriented titles 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 an examination of the series' formative period, when the creators at Midway and franchise originators the visionary developers were discovering methods to develop a battle series, produced using film material of actual people, through experimentation. Viewing the historical footage — that features vintage recordings, new interviews, and reproductions of classic advertisements, illustrated stories, and even interoffice faxes — it's incredible to witness how the franchise evolved from modest origins to a international craze. It's genuinely amazing to watch a handful of pioneering developers, developing without clear direction or guidance, focus their cultural enthusiasms into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Historical Section

The documentary portion of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection documents the ascent of the fighting series and its creators' careers at the now-defunct Midway. It subsequently demonstrates how those same creators addressed how to regularly outdo their previous work, encountering significant stress to duplicate their success. It serves as a compelling period piece composed of analog films and traditional photos and manual drawings, which showcase the DIY nature of the series' creation process and how oral tradition helped circulate its mysteries and hidden aspects of Mortal Kombat in its arcade heyday. Delivered in easily digestible portions, it's highly engaging series of documentary shorts that spans games, comics, films and even the silly live-action tour. The compilation also contains some unused moves and digital fighter representations among its archived development assets.

Playable Component

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 one of its home console ports to rediscover its combat system and graphics, simulated with remarkable precision on current technology.

I dedicated most of my time playing the arcade classics, specifically Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Several releases here stand the test of time, particularly during direct competitive sessions. However, facing the artificial intelligence fighters in these releases is a demonstration of how basic and unfair the coding existed in the franchise's pioneering releases. CPU-controlled opponents obviously use unfair advantages or are alternatively incredibly stupid. If you don't have someone to play against — online play is available in most titles in the collection, but too light on features — you'll be missing out.

Technical Presentation

The 23 playable Mortal Kombat games in the compilation, a blend of gaming hall, television, and mobile releases, are accurately emulated, though I've observed a few small quirks — mainly control latency and sporadic glitches, particularly in Mortal Kombat 4. And while the games are primarily displayed authentically, the creators has added several intelligent quality-of-life features and visual presentation options. For example, users can elect to show each character's special moves on-screen and opt to have unlimited duration to perform a Fatality. There are also options for unlocking secret characters, eliminating the need to execute some esoteric trick to access them.

Graphically, the titles can be experienced with numerous graphical effects and display options. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection includes remarkably accurate effects that reproduce the traditional television screens of coin-op establishments or household displays, or the monochrome green display of a portable gaming device. A notably appreciated element is the option to have coin-op-inspired frames surrounding the screen, with the MK game of your choice faithfully and subtly duplicating against the simulated dark plastic edges. It's quite aesthetically pleasing.

Extra Content

There are plenty of nice touches beyond the educational material and simulated classic games, containing a soundtrack mode that allows users to rediscover the soundtracks of different Mortal Kombat games excluding the sounds of two kombatants viciously slaughtering each other. Additionally included are character profiles that contain backgrounds and numerous narrative components presented by the idle displays of gaming hall releases and conclusions.

Historical Preservation

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 slightly updated version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an pioneering effort from the developer at head-to-head network battles in gaming halls. The online-enabled release of the game is almost exactly the same to UMK3, but provided the ability to battle network competitors and featured various slight error corrections and adjustments. Yet this online edition never gained traction, in part