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This iconic fighting game retains many hidden mysteries and the power to astonish, more than 30 years after its first appearance in arcades. A new collection including the franchise's earliest days, comprising a quartet of arcade releases, various home ports, and derivative games, transcends just a well-emulated collection of iconic titles including less celebrated releases — it functions as a rich documentary about the development of the renowned brand.

Being a long-time enthusiast of the series who has carefully followed its development and progression, there was plenty new for me to discover and admire about the series.

What Defines the Legacy Collection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like other retro collections from the creators at Digital Eclipse, part documentary, part playable archive. This compilation features digitally recreated editions of the pioneering arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, along with home system and portable adaptations of certain releases. This compilation also features the series' ventures at derivative games, like action-oriented titles Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — two of the franchise's worst entries.

The Legacy Kollection thus isn't a “best of” collection, but a study of the franchise's initial era, when the creators at Midway and brand founders the creative duo behind the series were discovering methods to make a fighting game, created from video recordings of real actors, on the fly. Viewing the historical footage — which includes archival footage, contemporary discussions, and scans of old flyers, illustrated stories, and even company memos — it's incredible to witness how the series transformed from humble beginnings to a global sensation. It's truly remarkable to see a group of early video game creators, developing without clear direction or guidance, channel their pop-culture interests into creating a legendary video game series.

Documentary Portion

The historical documentation of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection traces the growth of the fighting series and its creators' careers at the now-defunct Midway. It further illustrates how those same creators reckoned with how to regularly outdo their previous work, facing no small amount of demand to replicate their triumphs. It serves as a compelling period piece composed of analog films and film-based pictures and manual drawings, which demonstrate the hands-on approach of Mortal Kombat's development and how oral tradition helped disseminate its secrets and undisclosed elements of the series in its golden era in coin-op establishments. Told in bite-sized chunks, it's thoroughly enjoyable collection of mini-documentaries that covers video games, graphic novels, movies and including the humorous real-world tour. The compilation also contains some unused moves and character sprites among its previously unreleased material.

Interactive Experience

Placed within the five-segment historical film's chronology are opportunities to engage with the original releases. At various points, users can directly access a combat game session or one of its home console ports to reexperience its mechanics and graphics, simulated with remarkable precision on contemporary systems.

I allocated the majority of my time playing the arcade classics, specifically Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Several releases here stand the test of time, notably with direct competitive sessions. Yet competing with the artificial intelligence fighters in these releases is a demonstration of how basic and unbalanced the programming was in the franchise's pioneering releases. CPU-controlled opponents blatantly cheat to win or are conversely remarkably unintelligent. Lacking another person to compete with — online play is available in most titles in the collection, but too light on features — you'll miss the full enjoyment.

Display Features

The two dozen available combat games in the compilation, a mix of arcade, console, and handheld games, are accurately emulated, though I have noticed a few small quirks — mainly control latency and the occasional bug, especially with Mortal Kombat 4. And while the games are primarily displayed authentically, developer Digital Eclipse has included some smart quality-of-life features and graphical adjustment settings. For example, players have the option to show each character's special moves on the display and choose to enable infinite time to execute finishing moves. Additionally available are settings for revealing concealed combatants, eliminating the need to execute some esoteric trick to obtain them.

Artistically, the releases can be played with a variety of filters and visual treatments. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection provides highly authentic effects that reproduce the CRT monitors of arcades or household displays, or the greenscale screen of a Game Boy. A notably appreciated element is the choice to enable gaming hall-style borders 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

There are plenty of appreciated elements beyond the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, featuring an audio component that lets you revisit the soundtracks of different Mortal Kombat games without the din of combatants violently defeating each other. Also present are combatant descriptions that contain backgrounds and numerous narrative components shown through arcade games' attract mode screens and endings.

Historical Preservation

One of the biggest highlights for hardcore Mortal Kombat fans is the ability to access a piece of "lost media" in the form of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This version of the game, a moderately improved edition of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an early attempt by Midway at head-to-head network battles in coin-op establishments. The online-enabled release of the game is practically indistinguishable to UMK3, but provided the ability to challenge online opponents and included some minor error corrections and adjustments. But the Wavenet update failed to achieve popularity, in part