The Legacy Kollection of Mortal Kombat: An Almost Perfect Triumph for the Fighting Game Franchise

Mortal Kombat still possesses numerous undisclosed elements and the power to astonish, more than 30 years after its initial debut in gaming halls. A new collection covering the brand's formative years, featuring four arcade games, various home ports, and derivative games, transcends just a well-emulated series of classics along with lesser-known entries — it's also a rich documentary about the development of the legendary series.

As a dedicated devotee of the franchise who has closely monitored its development and progression, there was plenty new for me to learn and appreciate about the series.

What Constitutes the Legacy Collection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection similar to other retro collections from developer Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, section playable historical record. The anthology contains emulated versions of the first arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, plus console and handheld ports of some of those games. The anthology additionally contains the brand's experiments at spin-off titles, like action-oriented titles Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — two of the franchise's least successful installments.

The Legacy Kollection is therefore not a greatest hits compilation, but a study of Mortal Kombat's early days, when developer Midway and series co-creators Ed Boon and John Tobias were determining how to make a fighting game, digitized from footage of real actors, through experimentation. Observing the archival material — containing archival footage, recent conversations, and digital copies of vintage posters, comics, and including internal communications — it's incredible to witness how Mortal Kombat went from humble beginnings to a international craze. It's genuinely amazing to observe several young game developers, working with minimal planning or supervision, direct their entertainment passions 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 currently closed Midway. It then goes on to show how the very same individuals contended with how to regularly outdo their previous work, facing no small amount of demand to replicate their success. It's a fascinating time capsule made from analog films and analog photographs and pencil sketches, which demonstrate the hands-on approach of the series' creation process and how oral tradition helped circulate its mysteries and undisclosed elements of the series in its peak period in gaming halls. Delivered in easily digestible portions, it's highly engaging 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 digital fighter representations among its archived development assets.

Interactive Gaming

Placed within the five-part documentary's timeline are prompts to play the games themselves. At various points, users can directly access a game of Mortal Kombat or a home system version to reexperience its mechanics and visual presentation, simulated with remarkable precision on current technology.

I allocated the majority of my time engaging with the vintage coin-op games, especially Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Many of the games here stand the test of time, particularly during one-on-one local play. Yet competing with the artificial intelligence fighters in these releases is a demonstration of how basic and unbalanced the coding existed in early Mortal Kombat games. CPU-controlled opponents obviously use unfair advantages or are alternatively incredibly stupid. Without having another person to compete with — network gaming is included in the majority of included games, but somewhat limited in options — you'll miss the full enjoyment.

Display Features

The twenty-three accessible Mortal Kombat titles in the collection, a mix of arcade, console, and handheld games, are accurately emulated, though I have noticed a couple minor issues — mostly input lag and the occasional bug, particularly in Mortal Kombat 4. And while the games are mostly shown in their original form, developer Digital Eclipse has added several intelligent user experience improvements and display customization choices. As an illustration, users can elect to reveal combatant-unique actions on the display and opt to have endless periods to complete lethal techniques. There are also options for unlocking secret characters, removing the requirement to complete some esoteric trick to unlock them.

Visually, the games can be enjoyed with multiple graphical effects and display options. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection offers very realistic filters that mimic the CRT monitors of gaming halls or household displays, or the greenscale screen of a portable gaming device. A notably appreciated element is the choice to enable arcade-like bezels encircling the display, with the specific combat game you're playing faithfully and subtly duplicating against the faux black plastic borders. It's quite aesthetically pleasing.

Bonus Elements

The collection includes numerous appreciated elements beyond the educational material and simulated classic games, including a music player that enables players to reexperience the music from multiple combat titles without the din of two kombatants viciously slaughtering each other. There are also combatant descriptions that feature histories and the various bits of lore shown through arcade games' attract mode screens and conclusions.

Historical Preservation

One of the biggest highlights for dedicated series enthusiasts is the chance to experience a segment of previously unavailable content in the form of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This specific release, a somewhat revised iteration of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an early attempt by Midway at head-to-head network battles in arcades. This network version of the game is almost exactly the same to UMK3, but included the option to battle network competitors and included some minor bug fixes and balance. But the Wavenet update never gained traction, in part