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The Mortal Kombat series continues to hold numerous undisclosed elements and the capacity to surprise, more than 30 years after its original launch in gaming halls. This latest compilation including the brand's formative years, comprising four arcade games, several home system versions, and spinoffs, goes beyond only a accurately simulated series of classics and not-so-classics — it functions as a detailed chronicle about the development of the legendary series.

As a dedicated Mortal Kombat fan who has paid close attention its origins and transformation, there was plenty new for me to understand and value about the series.

What Constitutes the Legacy Kollection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection comparable to other retro collections from developer Digital Eclipse, part documentary, section playable historical record. The collection includes simulated releases 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 collection even includes the brand's experiments at spinoffs, like combat-focused releases Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — two of the franchise's most criticized releases.

The Legacy Kollection consequently doesn't represent a “best of” collection, but an examination of the franchise's initial era, when the creators at Midway and series co-creators the visionary developers were discovering methods to create a combat title, created from video recordings of live performers, on the fly. Watching the documentary — which includes historical videos, contemporary discussions, and digital copies of vintage posters, graphic novels, and including internal communications — it's incredible to witness how Mortal Kombat went from humble beginnings to a global sensation. It's frankly astounding to observe several early video game creators, working with minimal planning or oversight, focus their cultural enthusiasms into creating a legendary video game series.

Documentary Portion

The documentary portion of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection traces the growth of Mortal Kombat and its creators' careers at the now-defunct Midway. It further illustrates how those same creators contended with how to routinely one-up themselves, facing no small amount of stress to duplicate their achievements. It represents an intriguing historical record made from analog films and analog photographs and pencil sketches, which demonstrate the hands-on approach of the franchise's production method and how word of mouth helped spread its rumors and undisclosed elements of the series in its golden era in coin-op establishments. Told in bite-sized chunks, it's highly engaging series of documentary shorts that covers video games, graphic novels, movies and even the silly live-action tour. The collection additionally features some never-implemented techniques and character sprites among its archived development assets.

Interactive Experience

Placed within the five-segment historical film's chronology are opportunities to engage with the actual titles. At various points, viewers can hop into a Mortal Kombat title or a console adaptation to rediscover its combat system and artistic style, emulated nearly perfectly on contemporary systems.

I dedicated most of my time playing the arcade classics, especially Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Numerous titles here hold up, particularly during one-on-one local play. But playing against the artificial intelligence fighters in these releases is a reminder of how crude and unfair the coding existed in early Mortal Kombat games. Computer-directed fighters clearly employ dishonest tactics or are alternatively incredibly stupid. If you don't have someone to play against — network gaming is included in the majority of included games, but somewhat limited in options — you'll be missing out.

Visual Options

The 23 playable Mortal Kombat games in the collection, a blend of arcade, console, and handheld games, are faithfully recreated, though I detected a couple minor issues — mainly control latency and intermittent errors, notably within Mortal Kombat 4. And while the games are largely presented as-is, the development team has included some smart quality-of-life features and display customization choices. For instance, users can elect to reveal combatant-unique actions on the display and opt to have endless periods to complete lethal techniques. Additionally available are settings for accessing hidden fighters, removing the requirement to complete obscure techniques to obtain them.

Graphically, the titles can be played with a variety of visual enhancements and presentation styles. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection includes remarkably accurate effects that reproduce the cathode-ray tube displays of arcades or home televisions, or the monochrome green display of a portable gaming device. An especially welcome feature 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.

Additional Features

The collection includes numerous nice touches beyond the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, featuring an audio component that lets you revisit the tunes of various fighting releases without the din of two kombatants viciously slaughtering each other. Additionally included are combatant descriptions that feature histories and the various bits of lore presented by the demo sequences of coin-op titles and final sequences.

Historical Preservation

One of the biggest highlights for dedicated series enthusiasts is the ability to access a piece of "lost media" in the format of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This particular edition, a moderately improved edition of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an initial venture by the company at direct online competitive gaming in gaming halls. The Wavenet Edition of the game is almost exactly the same to UMK3, but provided the ability to compete against internet adversaries and featured various slight glitch repairs and refinements. But the Wavenet update failed to achieve popularity, in part