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The Mortal Kombat series retains numerous undisclosed elements and the power to astonish, well past its 30th anniversary after its initial debut in coin-op establishments. A new collection covering the series' initial period, featuring a quartet of arcade releases, several home system versions, and spinoffs, is more than just a well-emulated collection of iconic titles including less celebrated releases — it's also a rich documentary about the development of the iconic franchise.

Even as a lifelong Mortal Kombat fan who has closely monitored its creation and evolution, there was numerous fresh aspects for me to understand and value about the series.

What Makes the Historical Compilation

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection comparable to other retro collections from the creators at Digital Eclipse, part historical documentation, portion interactive museum. The collection includes emulated versions of the pioneering arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, including television and mobile versions of certain releases. The collection even includes the series' ventures at derivative games, like action-oriented titles Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — among the series' worst entries.

The Legacy Kollection consequently doesn't represent a greatest hits compilation, but a study of the series' formative period, when the creators at Midway and brand founders the creative duo behind the series were determining how to create a combat title, created from video recordings of live performers, through experimentation. Viewing the historical footage — containing archival footage, recent conversations, and reproductions of classic advertisements, graphic novels, and including internal communications — it's astonishing to observe how Mortal Kombat went from modest origins to a international craze. It's genuinely amazing to see a group of young game developers, operating with virtually no plan or supervision, focus their cultural enthusiasms into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Documentary Portion

The documentary portion of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection charts the rise of the combat franchise and its creators' careers at the no-longer-operating Midway. It further illustrates how those same creators contended with how to routinely one-up themselves, experiencing considerable pressure to repeat their achievements. It serves as a compelling period piece constructed using analog films and analog photographs and manual drawings, which showcase the DIY nature of the series' creation process and how personal recommendations helped circulate its mysteries and secrets of MK in its peak period in gaming halls. Told in bite-sized chunks, it's highly engaging set of brief historical films that covers video games, graphic novels, movies and including the humorous real-world tour. It also includes some never-implemented techniques and game character images among its archived development assets.

Interactive Experience

Distributed throughout the quintet of documentary episodes' progression are prompts to play the games themselves. During specific moments, users can directly access a combat game session or one of its home console ports to reexperience its mechanics and artistic style, simulated with remarkable precision on modern hardware.

I allocated the majority of my time engaging with the vintage coin-op games, particularly Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Many of the games here hold up, notably with direct competitive sessions. But playing against the aforementioned game's AI-controlled opponents is a reminder of how crude and unbalanced the programming was in early Mortal Kombat games. CPU-controlled opponents obviously use unfair advantages or are alternatively incredibly stupid. Without having someone to play against — internet multiplayer exists in most titles in the collection, but rather basic in functionality — the experience will be incomplete.

Technical Presentation

The twenty-three accessible Mortal Kombat titles in the collection, a blend of gaming hall, television, and mobile releases, are faithfully recreated, though I have noticed a handful slight anomalies — mainly control latency and intermittent errors, especially with Mortal Kombat 4. Although the titles are primarily displayed authentically, the creators has incorporated various clever convenience enhancements and visual presentation options. As an illustration, players have the option to display fighter-specific techniques on the display and choose to enable unlimited duration to perform a Fatality. Also included are choices for revealing concealed combatants, removing the requirement to complete obscure techniques to unlock them.

Visually, the games can be played with a variety of visual enhancements and presentation styles. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection provides highly authentic effects that reproduce the traditional television screens of arcades or domestic TVs, or the monochrome green display of a portable gaming device. A particularly nice touch is the choice to enable coin-op-inspired frames framing the gameplay, with the specific combat game you're playing faithfully and subtly duplicating against the simulated dark plastic edges. It's quite aesthetically pleasing.

Bonus Elements

There are plenty of welcome features besides the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, featuring an audio component that enables players to reexperience the tunes of various Mortal Kombat games excluding the sounds of combatants violently defeating each other. There are also character profiles that contain backgrounds and the various bits of lore presented by arcade games' attract mode screens and endings.

Archival Discovery

One of the biggest highlights 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 moderately improved edition of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an early attempt by Midway at direct online competitive gaming in coin-op establishments. The Wavenet Edition of the game is almost exactly the same to UMK3, but featured the capability to compete against internet adversaries and included some minor glitch repairs and refinements. Yet this online edition didn't find widespread adoption, in part