Mortal Kombat's Legacy Kollection: A Near-Flawless Victory for the Combat Series Brand

This iconic fighting game retains many hidden mysteries and the power to astonish, over three decades after its initial debut in coin-op establishments. A new collection spanning the series' initial period, which includes a quartet of arcade releases, several home system versions, and derivative games, transcends simply a faithfully reproduced series of classics including less celebrated releases — it additionally serves as a comprehensive historical account about the development of the iconic franchise.

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

What Constitutes the Historical Compilation

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like previous classic compilations from the creators at Digital Eclipse, part documentary, portion interactive museum. The anthology contains emulated versions of the original arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, plus console and handheld ports of several of these titles. This compilation also features the franchise's attempts at spin-off titles, like action games Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — among the series' least successful installments.

The Legacy Kollection consequently doesn't represent a highlight reel anthology, but an examination of the series' formative period, when the development team Midway and brand founders the visionary developers were figuring out how to make a fighting game, created from video recordings of live performers, as they went along. Viewing the historical footage — that features archival footage, recent conversations, and digital copies of vintage posters, graphic novels, and even interoffice faxes — it's incredible to witness how Mortal Kombat went from modest origins to a worldwide phenomenon. It's genuinely amazing to see a group of young game developers, working with minimal planning or supervision, focus their cultural enthusiasms into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Educational Component

The educational segment of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection charts the rise of Mortal Kombat and the developers' professional journeys at the currently closed Midway. It then goes on to show how these identical developers contended with how to regularly outdo their previous work, encountering significant demand to replicate their triumphs. It represents an intriguing historical record composed of video recordings and film-based pictures 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 hidden aspects of Mortal Kombat in its golden era in coin-op establishments. Delivered in easily digestible portions, it's an eminently watchable series of documentary shorts that covers video games, graphic novels, movies and even the silly live-action tour. It also includes some unused moves and digital fighter representations among its previously unreleased material.

Playable Component

Placed within the five-part documentary's timeline are opportunities to engage with the actual titles. At certain intervals, audience members can jump into a game of Mortal Kombat or one of its home console ports 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, especially Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Several releases here hold up, notably with direct competitive sessions. Yet competing with the artificial intelligence fighters in these releases is a reminder of how crude and unjust the programming was in the franchise's pioneering releases. Computer-directed fighters clearly employ dishonest tactics or are alternatively incredibly stupid. Lacking a human opponent — network gaming is included in most titles in the collection, but rather basic in functionality — the experience will be incomplete.

Visual Options

The 23 playable Mortal Kombat games in the collection, a blend of arcade, console, and handheld games, are precisely simulated, though I have noticed a handful slight anomalies — mostly input lag and sporadic glitches, particularly in Mortal Kombat 4. Although the titles are primarily displayed authentically, developer Digital Eclipse has included some smart quality-of-life features and graphical adjustment settings. For example, you can choose to display fighter-specific techniques on-screen and select to activate infinite time to execute finishing moves. There are also options for accessing hidden fighters, without having to perform some esoteric trick to obtain them.

Visually, the games can be experienced with numerous filters and visual treatments. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection provides highly authentic filters that mimic the traditional television screens of gaming halls or home televisions, or the monochrome green display of a Game Boy. A notably appreciated element is the setting to activate coin-op-inspired frames encircling the display, with the specific combat game you're playing faithfully and subtly duplicating against the faux black plastic borders. It's very artistically charming.

Extra Content

The collection includes numerous welcome features besides the educational material and simulated classic games, containing a soundtrack mode that enables players to reexperience the soundtracks of different fighting releases absent the noise of fighters brutally eliminating opponents. Additionally included are fighter biographies that feature histories and numerous narrative components presented by the demo sequences of coin-op titles and endings.

Lost Media Recovery

Among the most significant features for committed franchise followers is the chance to experience a example of historically missing material in the format of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This particular edition, a slightly updated version 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 practically indistinguishable to UMK3, but featured the capability to battle network competitors and featured various slight error corrections and adjustments. But the Wavenet update never gained traction, in part