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Mortal Kombat retains its share of secrets and the power to astonish, more than 30 years after its initial debut in gaming halls. This latest compilation covering the brand's formative years, which includes four original arcade titles, multiple console adaptations, and related titles, is more than just a well-emulated collection of iconic titles along with lesser-known entries — it functions as a rich documentary about the creation of the legendary series.

As a dedicated Mortal Kombat fan who has closely monitored its origins and transformation, there was plenty new for me to learn and appreciate about the series.

What Constitutes the Legacy Collection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection comparable to other vintage game anthologies from the creators at Digital Eclipse, part historical documentation, section playable historical record. The collection includes digitally recreated editions of the pioneering 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 series' ventures at spin-off titles, 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 is therefore not a “best of” collection, but a study of the franchise's initial era, when developer Midway and brand founders Ed Boon and John Tobias were figuring out how to make a fighting game, produced using film material of actual people, on the fly. Observing the archival material — which includes historical videos, recent conversations, and scans of old flyers, illustrated stories, and even interoffice faxes — it's astonishing to observe how Mortal Kombat went from simple starts to a worldwide phenomenon. It's genuinely amazing to see a group of young game developers, working with minimal planning or guidance, channel their pop-culture interests into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Documentary Portion

The documentary portion of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection traces the growth of the combat franchise and its creators' careers at the now-defunct Midway. It subsequently demonstrates how these identical developers reckoned with how to regularly outdo their previous work, encountering significant stress to duplicate their success. It serves as a compelling period piece composed of VHS tapes and film-based pictures and manual drawings, which showcase the DIY nature of Mortal Kombat's development and how personal recommendations helped circulate its mysteries and hidden aspects of Mortal Kombat in its peak period in gaming halls. Presented in manageable segments, it's highly engaging collection of mini-documentaries that includes titles, illustrated stories, cinematic adaptations and even the comical physical events. The compilation also contains some never-implemented techniques and character sprites among its previously unreleased material.

Playable Component

Interspersed along the five-segment historical film's chronology are prompts to play the original releases. During specific moments, users can directly access a game of Mortal Kombat or one of its home console ports to reexperience its mechanics and artistic style, emulated nearly perfectly on current technology.

I dedicated most of my time playing the arcade classics, particularly Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Numerous titles here remain enjoyable, particularly during one-on-one local play. Yet competing with the artificial intelligence fighters in these releases is a testament to how primitive and unbalanced the coding existed in early Mortal Kombat games. Computer-directed fighters clearly employ dishonest tactics or are conversely remarkably unintelligent. Lacking another person to compete with — internet multiplayer exists in most titles in the collection, but somewhat limited in options — you'll miss the full enjoyment.

Visual Options

The 23 playable Mortal Kombat games in the anthology, a blend of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are faithfully recreated, though I detected a handful slight anomalies — primarily delayed responses and intermittent errors, especially with Mortal Kombat 4. And while the games are mostly shown in their original form, developer Digital Eclipse has included some smart quality-of-life features and visual presentation options. As an illustration, players have the option to display fighter-specific techniques on the display and choose to enable endless periods to execute finishing moves. Also included are choices for unlocking secret characters, eliminating the need to execute some esoteric trick to access them.

Visually, the games can be experienced with numerous graphical effects and display options. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection includes remarkably accurate filters that mimic the cathode-ray tube displays of arcades or domestic TVs, or the greenscale screen of a Game Boy. An especially welcome feature is the choice to enable coin-op-inspired frames encircling the display, with your selected Mortal Kombat title accurately and softly reflecting 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, including a music player that enables players to reexperience the tunes of various fighting releases absent the noise of two kombatants viciously slaughtering each other. There are also fighter biographies that contain backgrounds and the various bits of lore displayed via the idle displays of gaming hall releases and endings.

Lost Media Recovery

A particularly notable inclusion for hardcore Mortal Kombat fans is the chance to experience a segment of previously unavailable content in the guise of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This particular edition, a slightly updated version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an initial venture by the company at head-to-head network battles in arcades. The Wavenet Edition of the game is almost exactly the same to UMK3, but provided the ability to battle network competitors and contained several small error corrections and adjustments. However, this network version never gained traction, in part