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The Mortal Kombat series retains many hidden mysteries and the ability to amaze, more than 30 years after its initial debut in arcades. The recent anthology including the brand's formative years, which includes a quartet of arcade releases, multiple console adaptations, and related titles, is more than only a accurately simulated set of legendary games including less celebrated releases — it additionally serves as a detailed chronicle about the making of the renowned brand.

Even as a lifelong devotee of the franchise who has closely monitored its development and progression, there was plenty new for me to discover and admire about the series.

What Defines the Historical Compilation

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection similar to previous classic compilations from the development team Digital Eclipse, part documentary, portion interactive museum. The collection includes simulated releases of the original arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, plus console and handheld ports of certain releases. The anthology additionally contains 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 highlight reel anthology, but a study of the franchise's initial era, when the creators at Midway and series co-creators the visionary developers were figuring out how to develop a battle series, digitized from footage of live performers, through experimentation. Observing the archival material — containing archival footage, recent conversations, and digital copies of vintage posters, comics, and even company memos — it's astonishing to observe how Mortal Kombat went from humble beginnings to a global sensation. It's frankly astounding to watch a handful of pioneering developers, developing without clear direction or guidance, 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 Mortal Kombat and its creators' careers at the now-defunct Midway. It further illustrates how those same creators addressed how to consistently surpass their achievements, experiencing considerable stress to duplicate their achievements. It's a fascinating time capsule constructed using analog films and traditional photos and manual drawings, which showcase the DIY nature of Mortal Kombat's development and how personal recommendations helped disseminate its secrets and undisclosed elements of the series in its golden era in coin-op establishments. Delivered in easily digestible portions, it's thoroughly enjoyable set of brief historical films that covers video games, graphic novels, movies and even the silly live-action tour. The compilation also contains some unreleased actions and digital fighter representations among its cutting-room-floor content.

Interactive Gaming

Distributed throughout the five-part documentary's timeline are prompts to play the games themselves. During specific moments, audience members can jump into a combat game session or a console adaptation to reexperience its mechanics and artistic style, emulated nearly perfectly on modern hardware.

I spent the bulk of my time playing the arcade classics, specifically Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Many of the games here remain enjoyable, especially in direct competitive sessions. Yet competing with the aforementioned game's AI-controlled opponents is a demonstration of how basic and unjust the programming was in early Mortal Kombat games. CPU-controlled opponents obviously use unfair advantages or are conversely remarkably unintelligent. If you don't have a human opponent — online play is available in numerous anthology releases, but rather basic in functionality — the experience will be incomplete.

Visual Options

The 23 playable Mortal Kombat games in the anthology, a blend of gaming hall, television, and mobile releases, are precisely simulated, though I detected a few small quirks — primarily delayed responses and the occasional bug, notably within Mortal Kombat 4. Although the titles are largely presented as-is, developer Digital Eclipse has incorporated various clever user experience improvements and graphical adjustment settings. As an illustration, you can choose to reveal combatant-unique actions during gameplay and select to activate endless periods to complete lethal techniques. Also included are choices for unlocking secret characters, eliminating the need to execute obscure techniques to unlock them.

Artistically, the releases can be played with a variety of filters and visual treatments. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection offers very realistic options that simulate the traditional television screens of arcades or domestic TVs, or the limited color monitor of a portable gaming device. A notably appreciated element is the option to have coin-op-inspired frames encircling the display, with the MK game of your choice accurately and softly reflecting 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, including a music player that lets you revisit the soundtracks of different fighting releases excluding the sounds of fighters brutally eliminating opponents. Additionally included are combatant descriptions that contain backgrounds and multiple story elements presented by the demo sequences of coin-op titles and final sequences.

Historical Preservation

A particularly notable inclusion for hardcore Mortal Kombat fans is the chance to experience a example of historically missing material in the format of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This specific release, a somewhat revised iteration of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an initial venture by the company at one-on-one internet-based play in arcades. This network version of the game is practically indistinguishable to UMK3, but featured the capability to challenge online opponents and featured various slight glitch repairs and refinements. Yet this online edition failed to achieve popularity, in part