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This iconic fighting game retains its share of secrets and the power to astonish, over three decades after its initial debut in coin-op establishments. The recent anthology spanning the brand's formative years, comprising four arcade games, various home ports, and related titles, goes beyond simply a faithfully reproduced set of legendary games and not-so-classics — it additionally serves as a rich documentary about the making of the renowned brand.

Even as a lifelong Mortal Kombat fan who has paid close attention its origins and transformation, there was numerous fresh aspects for me to learn and appreciate about the series.

What Makes the Legacy Kollection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection comparable to previous classic compilations from developer Digital Eclipse, part documentary, part playable archive. The anthology contains simulated releases of the pioneering arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, including television and mobile versions of some of those games. This compilation also features the brand's experiments at spin-off titles, like action-oriented titles Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — some of the brand's worst entries.

The Legacy Kollection consequently doesn't represent a “best of” collection, but an exploration into the franchise's initial era, when the development team Midway and brand founders Ed Boon and John Tobias were discovering methods to make a fighting game, produced using film material of actual people, as they went along. Observing the archival material — that features archival footage, contemporary discussions, and reproductions of classic advertisements, graphic novels, and even interoffice faxes — it's remarkable to see how the franchise evolved from modest origins to a worldwide phenomenon. It's genuinely amazing to watch a handful of pioneering developers, developing without clear direction or guidance, direct their entertainment passions into creating a legendary video game series.

Documentary Portion

The historical documentation of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection documents the ascent of Mortal Kombat and the developers' professional journeys at the currently closed Midway. It then goes on to show how those same creators reckoned with how to regularly outdo their previous work, facing no small amount of pressure to repeat their achievements. It's a fascinating time capsule composed of analog films and film-based pictures and pencil sketches, which demonstrate the hands-on approach of the series' creation process and how oral tradition helped spread its rumors and undisclosed elements of the series in its arcade heyday. Told in bite-sized chunks, it's highly engaging collection of mini-documentaries that includes titles, illustrated stories, cinematic adaptations and including the humorous real-world tour. It also includes some unreleased actions and digital fighter representations among its archived development assets.

Playable Component

Distributed throughout the five-segment historical film's chronology are opportunities to engage with the original releases. During specific moments, users can directly access a Mortal Kombat title or a console adaptation to rediscover its combat system and visual presentation, recreated with impressive accuracy on contemporary systems.

I spent the bulk of my time experiencing the original arcade titles, particularly Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Numerous titles here hold up, notably with one-on-one local play. But playing against the aforementioned game's AI-controlled opponents is a reminder of how crude and unbalanced the development approached in early Mortal Kombat games. CPU-controlled opponents clearly employ dishonest tactics or are otherwise dumb as rocks. Lacking another person to compete with — online play is available in most titles in the collection, but too light on features — the experience will be incomplete.

Display Features

The two dozen available combat games in the compilation, a blend of arcade, console, and handheld games, are faithfully recreated, though I detected a few small quirks — primarily delayed responses and intermittent errors, especially with Mortal Kombat 4. Although the titles are primarily displayed authentically, the creators has incorporated various clever quality-of-life features and graphical adjustment settings. As an illustration, you can choose to reveal combatant-unique actions during gameplay and select to activate endless periods to perform a Fatality. Also included are choices for unlocking secret characters, without having to perform some esoteric trick to obtain them.

Graphically, the titles can be played with a variety of graphical effects and display options. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection offers very realistic options that simulate the cathode-ray tube displays of coin-op establishments or household displays, or the greenscale screen of a portable gaming device. A notably appreciated element is the choice to enable gaming hall-style borders framing the gameplay, with the specific combat game you're playing precisely and gently mirroring against the faux black plastic borders. It's remarkably visually appealing.

Extra Content

Players will discover multiple welcome features besides the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, featuring an audio component that allows users to rediscover the music from multiple fighting releases excluding the sounds of combatants violently defeating each other. Also present are combatant descriptions that feature histories and the various bits of lore presented by arcade games' attract mode screens and endings.

Archival Discovery

A particularly notable inclusion for dedicated series enthusiasts is the chance to experience a piece of "lost media" in the guise of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This version of the game, a slightly updated version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an pioneering effort from the developer at one-on-one internet-based play in arcades. This network version of the game is virtually identical to UMK3, but included the option to compete against internet adversaries and contained several small glitch repairs and refinements. However, this network version never gained traction, in part