🔗 Share this article

The Mortal Kombat series retains numerous undisclosed elements and the power to astonish, well past its 30th anniversary after its original launch in arcades. A new collection covering the franchise's earliest days, comprising four original arcade titles, multiple console adaptations, and spinoffs, goes beyond just a well-emulated series of classics along with lesser-known entries — it's also a comprehensive historical account about the making of the legendary series.

Even as a lifelong Mortal Kombat fan who has carefully followed its origins and transformation, there was numerous fresh aspects for me to understand and value about the series.

What Makes the Historical Compilation

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection comparable to other retro collections from the development team Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, portion interactive museum. The collection includes emulated versions of the original 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 spinoffs, like action games Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — some of the brand's least successful installments.

The Legacy Kollection is therefore not a greatest hits compilation, but an exploration into the series' formative period, when the creators at Midway and brand founders the creative duo behind the series were determining how to create a combat title, produced using film material of actual people, through experimentation. Watching the documentary — containing archival footage, recent conversations, and scans of old flyers, graphic novels, and including internal communications — it's incredible to witness how the series transformed from simple starts to a international craze. It's truly remarkable to observe several early video game creators, developing without clear direction or supervision, focus their cultural enthusiasms into creating a legendary video game series.

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 the very same individuals addressed how to consistently surpass their achievements, experiencing considerable pressure to repeat their triumphs. It serves as a compelling period piece composed of VHS tapes and analog photographs and hand-drawn illustrations, which demonstrate the hands-on approach of Mortal Kombat's development and how word of mouth helped circulate its mysteries and secrets of MK in its peak period in gaming halls. Told in bite-sized chunks, it's an eminently watchable collection of mini-documentaries that spans games, comics, films and even the silly live-action tour. It also includes some unused moves and digital fighter representations among its previously unreleased material.

Interactive Experience

Interspersed along the five-part documentary's timeline are opportunities to engage with the actual titles. At various points, viewers can hop into a combat game session or a home system version to revisit its gameplay and visual presentation, recreated with impressive accuracy on contemporary systems.

I dedicated most of my time engaging with the vintage coin-op games, especially Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Several releases here stand the test of time, notably with local multiplayer matches. However, facing the computer-controlled adversaries in these titles is a reminder of how crude and unjust the coding existed in the series' initial installments. CPU-controlled opponents blatantly cheat to win or are otherwise dumb as rocks. If you don't have a human opponent — online play is available in most titles in the collection, but too light on features — you'll miss the full enjoyment.

Display Features

The 23 playable Mortal Kombat games in the anthology, a combination of gaming hall, television, and mobile releases, are faithfully recreated, though I detected a handful slight anomalies — primarily delayed responses and sporadic glitches, especially with Mortal Kombat 4. Although the titles are mostly shown in their original form, the creators has added several intelligent user experience improvements and graphical adjustment settings. As an illustration, you can choose to reveal combatant-unique actions on-screen and select to activate unlimited duration to perform a Fatality. Also included are choices for revealing concealed combatants, removing the requirement to complete obscure techniques to access them.

Graphically, the titles can be played with a variety of filters and visual treatments. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection includes remarkably accurate options that simulate the cathode-ray tube displays of gaming halls or domestic TVs, or the monochrome green display of a portable gaming device. A notably appreciated element is the option to have coin-op-inspired frames encircling the display, with the MK game of your choice precisely and gently mirroring against the simulated dark plastic edges. It's remarkably visually appealing.

Bonus Elements

The collection includes numerous appreciated elements beyond the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, featuring an audio component that enables players to reexperience the music from multiple Mortal Kombat games excluding the sounds of fighters brutally eliminating opponents. Additionally included are fighter biographies that feature histories and multiple story elements displayed via the idle displays of gaming hall releases and final sequences.

Historical Preservation

One of the biggest highlights for committed franchise followers is the chance to experience a segment of previously unavailable content in the guise 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 one-on-one internet-based play in coin-op establishments. This network version of the game is almost exactly the same to UMK3, but provided the ability to battle network competitors and contained several small glitch repairs and refinements. But the Wavenet update failed to achieve popularity, in part