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This iconic fighting game still possesses its share of secrets and the power to astonish, over three decades after its first appearance in coin-op establishments. The recent anthology covering the brand's formative years, which includes four arcade games, multiple console adaptations, and derivative games, is more than simply a faithfully reproduced set of legendary games including less celebrated releases — it additionally serves as a detailed chronicle about the creation of the iconic franchise.

Being a long-time Mortal Kombat fan who has paid close attention its origins and transformation, there was plenty new for me to understand and value about the series.

What Defines the Historical Compilation

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like other retro collections from the creators at Digital Eclipse, part historical documentation, part playable archive. The collection includes 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. The collection even includes the franchise's attempts at derivative games, like action games 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 highlight reel anthology, but an examination of Mortal Kombat's early days, when the creators at Midway and series co-creators Ed Boon and John Tobias were determining how to develop a battle series, created from video recordings of live performers, as they went along. Watching the documentary — that features archival footage, contemporary discussions, and reproductions of classic advertisements, comics, and including internal communications — it's astonishing to observe how Mortal Kombat went from simple starts to a international craze. It's frankly astounding to see a group of early video game creators, operating with virtually no plan or supervision, channel their pop-culture interests into creating a legendary video game series.

Educational Component

The educational segment of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection documents the ascent of the combat franchise and the founders' vocational paths at the currently closed Midway. It further illustrates how those same creators addressed how to regularly outdo their previous work, facing no small amount of pressure to repeat their success. It represents an intriguing historical record made from video recordings and film-based pictures and manual drawings, which reveal the self-made character of Mortal Kombat's development and how personal recommendations helped spread its rumors and secrets of MK in its arcade heyday. Told in bite-sized chunks, it's thoroughly enjoyable collection of mini-documentaries that includes titles, illustrated stories, cinematic adaptations and including the humorous real-world tour. The compilation also contains some never-implemented techniques and game character images among its previously unreleased material.

Interactive Experience

Distributed throughout the five-part documentary's timeline are invitations to experience the games themselves. During specific moments, viewers can hop into a game of Mortal Kombat or a console adaptation to revisit its gameplay and visual presentation, recreated with impressive accuracy on contemporary systems.

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, especially in direct competitive sessions. Yet competing with the computer-controlled adversaries in these titles is a demonstration of how basic and unfair the coding existed in early Mortal Kombat games. CPU-controlled opponents blatantly cheat to win or are otherwise dumb as rocks. Without having someone to play against — online play is available in the majority of included games, but too light on features — the experience will be incomplete.

Display Features

The 23 playable Mortal Kombat games in the collection, a blend of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are precisely simulated, though I have noticed a couple minor issues — mainly control latency and sporadic glitches, particularly in Mortal Kombat 4. And while the games are largely presented as-is, developer Digital Eclipse has incorporated various clever quality-of-life features and graphical adjustment settings. For instance, players have the option to reveal combatant-unique actions during gameplay and opt to have infinite time to complete lethal techniques. Additionally available are settings for accessing hidden fighters, without having to perform obscure techniques to obtain them.

Graphically, the titles can be experienced with numerous graphical effects and display options. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection provides highly authentic filters that mimic the traditional television screens of coin-op establishments or home televisions, or the monochrome green display of a portable gaming device. An especially welcome feature 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 simulated dark plastic edges. It's quite aesthetically pleasing.

Extra Content

The collection includes numerous appreciated elements beyond the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, containing a soundtrack mode that allows users to rediscover the soundtracks of different fighting releases without the din of fighters brutally eliminating opponents. Additionally included are fighter biographies that contain backgrounds and multiple story elements presented by the idle displays of gaming hall releases and final sequences.

Historical Preservation

One of the biggest highlights for hardcore Mortal Kombat fans is the chance to experience a piece of "lost media" in the guise of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This particular edition, a somewhat revised iteration of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an initial venture by the company at head-to-head network battles in coin-op establishments. The online-enabled release of the game is virtually identical to UMK3, but featured the capability to challenge online opponents and contained several small error corrections and adjustments. But the Wavenet update didn't find widespread adoption, in part