🔗 Share this article

The Mortal Kombat series continues to hold its share of secrets and the ability to amaze, more than 30 years after its initial debut in gaming halls. A new collection including the brand's formative years, which includes a quartet of arcade releases, multiple console adaptations, and derivative games, goes beyond just a well-emulated set of legendary games including less celebrated releases — it's also a comprehensive historical account about the creation of the iconic franchise.

Being a long-time enthusiast of the series who has closely monitored its creation and evolution, there was numerous fresh aspects for me to understand and value about the series.

What Constitutes the Historical Compilation

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection similar to other retro collections from the development team Digital Eclipse, part historical documentation, part playable archive. The anthology contains digitally recreated editions of the first arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, including television and mobile versions of certain releases. The collection even includes the series' ventures at spinoffs, like action games Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — among the series' worst entries.

The Legacy Kollection thus isn't a “best of” collection, but an exploration into Mortal Kombat's early days, when the creators at Midway and series co-creators the creative duo behind the series were figuring out how to develop a battle series, digitized from footage of real actors, on the fly. Watching the documentary — which includes vintage recordings, new interviews, and reproductions of classic advertisements, comics, and including internal communications — it's astonishing to observe how the series transformed from humble beginnings to a international craze. It's truly remarkable to see a group of young game developers, operating with virtually no plan or guidance, channel their pop-culture interests into creating a legendary video game series.

Historical Section

The educational segment of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection documents the ascent of the combat franchise and its creators' careers at the currently closed Midway. It then goes on to show how the very same individuals reckoned with how to regularly outdo their previous work, encountering significant demand to replicate their success. It represents an intriguing historical record made from analog films and film-based pictures and hand-drawn illustrations, 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 an eminently watchable set of brief historical films that includes titles, illustrated stories, cinematic adaptations and even the silly live-action tour. The collection additionally features some unused moves and digital fighter representations among its archived development assets.

Interactive Experience

Interspersed along the five-part documentary's timeline are prompts to play the games themselves. At various points, audience members can jump into a Mortal Kombat title or a console adaptation to rediscover its combat system and visual presentation, recreated with impressive accuracy on modern hardware.

I dedicated most of my time experiencing the original arcade titles, especially Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Many of the games here remain enjoyable, especially in one-on-one local play. However, facing the artificial intelligence fighters in these releases is a testament to how primitive and unbalanced the programming was in the franchise's pioneering releases. CPU-controlled opponents clearly employ dishonest tactics or are alternatively incredibly stupid. Without having another person to compete with — online play is available in numerous anthology releases, but somewhat limited in options — the experience will be incomplete.

Visual Options

The two dozen available combat games in the collection, a combination of arcade, console, and handheld games, are precisely simulated, though I have noticed a couple minor issues — mostly input lag and sporadic glitches, notably within Mortal Kombat 4. Although the titles are largely presented as-is, the development team has added several intelligent user experience improvements and graphical adjustment settings. As an illustration, you can choose to display fighter-specific techniques on-screen and choose to enable infinite time to execute finishing moves. Additionally available are settings for unlocking secret characters, without having to perform some esoteric trick to obtain them.

Graphically, the titles can be experienced with numerous graphical effects and display options. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection includes remarkably accurate effects that reproduce the CRT monitors of arcades or domestic TVs, or the monochrome green display of a portable gaming device. A notably appreciated element is the choice to enable gaming hall-style borders encircling the display, with the MK game of your choice precisely and gently mirroring against the simulated dark plastic edges. It's very artistically charming.

Additional Features

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 combat titles without the din of combatants violently defeating each other. There are also combatant descriptions that include bios and the various bits of lore presented by the idle displays of gaming hall releases and final sequences.

Lost Media Recovery

Among the most significant features for dedicated series enthusiasts 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 somewhat revised iteration of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an initial venture by the company at direct online competitive gaming in gaming halls. The Wavenet Edition of the game is virtually identical to UMK3, but provided the ability to battle network competitors and contained several small error corrections and adjustments. Yet this online edition never gained traction, in part