🔗 Share this article

Mortal Kombat still possesses its share of secrets and the power to astonish, well past its 30th anniversary after its first appearance in coin-op establishments. This latest compilation spanning the brand's formative years, featuring a quartet of arcade releases, various home ports, and derivative games, transcends simply a faithfully reproduced set of legendary games including less celebrated releases — it additionally serves as a rich documentary about the development of the iconic franchise.

As a dedicated Mortal Kombat fan who has paid close attention its origins and transformation, there was much to discover for me to learn and appreciate about the series.

What Makes the Legacy Collection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like previous classic compilations from developer Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, part playable archive. The anthology contains digitally recreated editions of the first arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, along with home system and portable adaptations of some of those games. The anthology additionally contains the brand's experiments at derivative games, like action-oriented titles Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — some of the brand's least successful installments.

The Legacy Kollection is therefore not a “best of” collection, but an examination of the franchise's initial era, when the development team Midway and franchise originators the visionary developers were discovering methods to create a combat title, produced using film material of live performers, on the fly. Observing the archival material — which includes vintage recordings, contemporary discussions, and reproductions of classic advertisements, comics, and even interoffice faxes — it's incredible to witness how the franchise evolved from simple starts to a global sensation. It's frankly astounding to observe several pioneering developers, operating with virtually no plan or supervision, direct their entertainment passions into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Educational Component

The historical documentation of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection traces the growth of the combat franchise and its creators' careers at the now-defunct Midway. It further illustrates how these identical developers contended with how to regularly outdo their previous work, experiencing considerable pressure to repeat their triumphs. It's a fascinating time capsule made from analog films and film-based pictures and hand-drawn illustrations, which showcase the DIY nature of Mortal Kombat's development and how oral tradition helped disseminate its secrets and undisclosed elements of the series in its arcade heyday. Presented in manageable segments, it's an eminently watchable set of brief historical films that spans games, comics, films and even the silly live-action tour. The collection additionally features some unused moves and digital fighter representations among its archived development assets.

Interactive Gaming

Placed within the five-segment historical film's chronology are invitations to experience the games themselves. At certain intervals, audience members can jump into a game of Mortal Kombat or a home system version to rediscover its combat system and visual presentation, recreated with impressive accuracy on modern hardware.

I spent the bulk of my time engaging with the vintage coin-op games, specifically Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Several releases here stand the test of time, especially in local multiplayer matches. But playing against the aforementioned game's AI-controlled opponents is a demonstration of how basic and unfair the development approached in the franchise's pioneering releases. AI-managed characters blatantly cheat to win or are alternatively incredibly stupid. If you don't have another person to compete with — internet multiplayer exists in most titles in the collection, but too light on features — the experience will be incomplete.

Technical Presentation

The two dozen available combat games in the anthology, a combination of arcade, console, and handheld games, are precisely simulated, though I detected a handful slight anomalies — mainly control latency and intermittent errors, particularly in Mortal Kombat 4. Even though the releases are largely presented as-is, the development team has included some smart user experience improvements and graphical adjustment settings. As an illustration, you can choose to display fighter-specific techniques during gameplay and choose to enable endless periods to complete lethal techniques. There are also options for unlocking secret characters, without having to perform obscure techniques to access them.

Artistically, the releases can be played with a variety of graphical effects and display options. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection provides highly authentic effects that reproduce the CRT monitors of coin-op establishments or home televisions, or the greenscale screen of a Nintendo handheld. A particularly nice touch is the choice to enable coin-op-inspired frames framing the gameplay, with your selected Mortal Kombat title precisely and gently mirroring against the simulated dark plastic edges. It's very artistically charming.

Bonus Elements

Players will discover multiple nice touches beyond the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, containing a soundtrack mode that enables players to reexperience the tunes of various combat titles without the din of two kombatants viciously slaughtering each other. There are also fighter biographies that feature histories and multiple story elements displayed via arcade games' attract mode screens and conclusions.

Archival Discovery

One of the biggest highlights for committed franchise followers is the opportunity to play a piece of "lost media" in the guise of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This particular edition, a moderately improved edition of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an early attempt by Midway at one-on-one internet-based play in arcades. The Wavenet Edition of the game is virtually identical to UMK3, but featured the capability to battle network competitors and featured various slight error corrections and adjustments. Yet this online edition never gained traction, in part