Mortal Kombat's Legacy Kollection: A Stunning Success for the Combat Series Franchise

This iconic fighting game continues to hold its share of secrets and the ability to amaze, more than 30 years after its first appearance in arcades. A new collection covering the series' initial period, which includes a quartet of arcade releases, various home ports, and related titles, goes beyond simply a faithfully reproduced series of classics and not-so-classics — it's also a detailed chronicle about the making of the legendary series.

Being a long-time Mortal Kombat fan who has carefully followed its creation and evolution, there was much to discover for me to discover and admire about the series.

What Makes the Historical Compilation

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection similar to other vintage game anthologies from developer Digital Eclipse, part historical documentation, 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, including television and mobile versions of several of these titles. This compilation also features the series' ventures at spinoffs, like action games Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — among the series' most criticized releases.

The Legacy Kollection thus isn't a greatest hits compilation, but an examination of the series' formative period, when developer Midway and series co-creators Ed Boon and John Tobias were discovering methods to develop a battle series, digitized from footage of real actors, through experimentation. Observing the archival material — which includes archival footage, contemporary discussions, and scans of old flyers, graphic novels, and including internal communications — it's remarkable to see how the series transformed from humble beginnings to a global sensation. It's truly remarkable to see a group of pioneering developers, operating with virtually no plan or supervision, channel their pop-culture interests into establishing an enduring gaming brand.

Historical Section

The historical documentation of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection documents the ascent of Mortal Kombat and its creators' careers at the no-longer-operating Midway. It then goes on to show how these identical developers contended with how to regularly outdo their previous work, experiencing considerable pressure to repeat their triumphs. It's a fascinating time capsule made from VHS tapes and film-based pictures and hand-drawn illustrations, which showcase the DIY nature of the series' creation process and how oral tradition helped circulate its mysteries and undisclosed elements of the series in its golden era in coin-op establishments. Delivered in easily digestible portions, it's highly engaging set of brief historical films that includes titles, illustrated stories, cinematic adaptations and even the comical physical events. It also includes some never-implemented techniques and character sprites among its previously unreleased material.

Interactive Gaming

Distributed throughout the five-part documentary's timeline are opportunities to engage with the games themselves. At certain intervals, users can directly access a game of Mortal Kombat or a console adaptation to reexperience its mechanics and graphics, recreated with impressive accuracy on current technology.

I allocated the majority of my time experiencing the original arcade titles, specifically Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Numerous titles here hold up, especially in direct competitive sessions. But playing against the computer-controlled adversaries in these titles is a testament to how primitive and unjust the programming was in the franchise's pioneering releases. AI-managed characters clearly employ dishonest tactics or are conversely remarkably unintelligent. If you don't have a human opponent — online play is available in most titles in the collection, but too light on features — the experience will be incomplete.

Visual Options

The 23 playable Mortal Kombat games in the anthology, a mix of gaming hall, television, and mobile releases, are precisely simulated, though I detected a handful slight anomalies — mainly control latency and the occasional bug, notably within Mortal Kombat 4. Even though the releases are largely presented as-is, the creators has incorporated various clever quality-of-life features and display customization choices. As an illustration, you can choose to display fighter-specific techniques on the display and opt to have endless periods to perform a Fatality. Also included are choices for accessing hidden fighters, removing the requirement to complete some esoteric trick to obtain them.

Graphically, the titles can be played with a variety of graphical effects and display options. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection offers very realistic options that simulate the cathode-ray tube displays of gaming halls or home televisions, or the greenscale screen of a portable gaming device. A particularly nice touch is the setting to activate arcade-like bezels surrounding the screen, with your selected Mortal Kombat title faithfully and subtly duplicating against the simulated dark plastic edges. It's remarkably visually appealing.

Bonus Elements

There are plenty of welcome features besides the educational material and simulated classic games, featuring an audio component that enables players to reexperience the soundtracks of different fighting releases without the din of two kombatants viciously slaughtering each other. There are also fighter biographies that feature histories and the various bits of lore displayed via the demo sequences of coin-op titles and conclusions.

Archival Discovery

One of the biggest highlights for hardcore Mortal Kombat fans is the opportunity to play a example of historically missing material in the form of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This specific release, a moderately improved edition of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an early attempt by Midway at one-on-one internet-based play in coin-op establishments. The online-enabled release of the game is almost exactly the same to UMK3, but featured the capability to challenge online opponents and included some minor bug fixes and balance. Yet this online edition never gained traction, in part