🔗 Share this article

Mortal Kombat continues to hold many hidden mysteries and the ability to amaze, well past its 30th anniversary after its initial debut in coin-op establishments. A new collection including the franchise's earliest days, comprising a quartet of arcade releases, several home system versions, and related titles, goes beyond simply a faithfully reproduced set of legendary games and not-so-classics — it additionally serves as a comprehensive historical account about the making of the renowned brand.

Even as a lifelong enthusiast of the series who has closely monitored its creation and evolution, there was much to discover for me to learn and appreciate about the series.

What Defines the Legacy Collection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection similar to other retro collections from the development team Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, portion interactive museum. The collection includes digitally recreated editions of the original arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, including television and mobile versions of certain releases. This compilation also features the series' ventures at derivative games, like action games Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — among the series' least successful installments.

The Legacy Kollection thus isn't a greatest hits compilation, but an exploration into Mortal Kombat's early days, when the creators at Midway and series co-creators Ed Boon and John Tobias were determining how to make a fighting game, produced using film material of real actors, through experimentation. Viewing the historical footage — containing archival footage, contemporary discussions, and scans of old flyers, illustrated stories, and even company memos — it's incredible to witness how the franchise evolved from simple starts to a international craze. It's frankly astounding to watch a handful of pioneering developers, developing without clear direction or supervision, 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 the fighting series and the founders' vocational paths at the no-longer-operating Midway. It subsequently demonstrates how the very same individuals contended with how to regularly outdo their previous work, experiencing considerable stress to duplicate their triumphs. It serves as a compelling period piece constructed using video recordings and film-based pictures and pencil sketches, which demonstrate the hands-on approach of the series' creation process and how word of mouth helped spread its rumors and undisclosed elements of the series in its peak period in gaming halls. Delivered in easily digestible portions, it's highly engaging series of documentary shorts that spans games, comics, films and even the silly live-action tour. It also includes some unreleased actions 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 games themselves. At certain intervals, viewers can hop into a game of Mortal Kombat or one of its home console ports to revisit its gameplay and graphics, recreated with impressive accuracy on modern hardware.

I dedicated most of my time engaging with the vintage coin-op games, particularly Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Numerous titles here stand the test of time, notably with local multiplayer matches. Yet competing with the computer-controlled adversaries in these titles is a reminder of how crude and unjust the programming was in the franchise's pioneering releases. CPU-controlled opponents clearly employ dishonest tactics or are conversely remarkably unintelligent. Without having someone to play against — network gaming is included in numerous anthology releases, but somewhat limited in options — you'll miss the full enjoyment.

Visual Options

The 23 playable Mortal Kombat games in the collection, a combination of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are precisely simulated, though I detected a couple minor issues — mainly control latency and sporadic glitches, especially with Mortal Kombat 4. Although the titles are largely presented as-is, developer Digital Eclipse has added several intelligent convenience enhancements and graphical adjustment settings. For example, users can elect to show each character's special moves on-screen and choose to enable unlimited duration to perform a Fatality. Also included are choices for revealing concealed combatants, removing the requirement to complete some esoteric trick to obtain them.

Artistically, the releases can be played with a variety of graphical effects and display options. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection includes remarkably accurate filters that mimic the CRT monitors of gaming halls or domestic TVs, or the monochrome green display of a Nintendo handheld. A particularly nice touch is the setting to activate coin-op-inspired frames framing the gameplay, with the specific combat game you're playing accurately and softly reflecting against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's very artistically charming.

Bonus Elements

Players will discover multiple appreciated elements beyond the documentary and emulated arcade classics, including a music player that lets you revisit the soundtracks of different fighting releases excluding the sounds of combatants violently defeating each other. Also present are character profiles that feature histories and numerous narrative components shown through the idle displays of gaming hall releases and conclusions.

Archival Discovery

A particularly notable inclusion 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 slightly updated version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an early attempt by Midway at one-on-one internet-based play in arcades. The Wavenet Edition of the game is virtually identical to UMK3, but featured the capability to challenge online opponents and contained several small glitch repairs and refinements. Yet this online edition didn't find widespread adoption, in part