Mortal Kombat's Legacy Kollection: A Near-Flawless Victory for the Combat Series Brand

Mortal Kombat retains many hidden mysteries and the power to astonish, more than 30 years after its first appearance in arcades. A new collection including the series' initial period, featuring four arcade games, several home system versions, and related titles, goes beyond just a well-emulated series of classics along with lesser-known entries — it functions as a comprehensive historical account about the development of the iconic franchise.

Even as a lifelong Mortal Kombat fan who has paid close attention its creation and evolution, there was plenty new for me to learn and appreciate about the series.

What Defines the Legacy Kollection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection similar to other retro collections from developer Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, section playable historical record. The anthology contains simulated releases of the pioneering arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, plus console and handheld ports of certain releases. The anthology additionally contains the franchise's attempts at spinoffs, like combat-focused releases Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — some of the brand's worst entries.

The Legacy Kollection consequently doesn't represent a highlight reel anthology, but an exploration into the franchise's initial era, when the development team Midway and brand founders the visionary developers were discovering methods to create a combat title, produced using film material of actual people, through experimentation. Watching the documentary — which includes historical videos, contemporary discussions, and reproductions of classic advertisements, graphic novels, and even interoffice faxes — it's remarkable to see how the series transformed from humble beginnings to a worldwide phenomenon. It's genuinely amazing to watch a handful of early video game creators, developing without clear direction or guidance, channel their pop-culture interests into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Historical Section

The documentary portion of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection charts the rise of the fighting series and its creators' careers at the now-defunct Midway. It then goes on to show how these identical developers addressed how to consistently surpass their achievements, facing no small amount of demand to replicate their achievements. It's a fascinating time capsule composed of analog films and film-based pictures and manual drawings, which showcase the DIY nature of the series' creation process and how oral tradition helped spread its rumors and secrets of MK in its arcade heyday. Told in bite-sized chunks, it's highly engaging set of brief historical films that covers video games, graphic novels, movies and even the comical physical events. It also includes some never-implemented techniques and digital fighter representations among its archived development assets.

Interactive Experience

Distributed throughout the quintet of documentary episodes' progression are opportunities to engage with the original releases. At certain intervals, viewers can hop into a game of Mortal Kombat or a console adaptation to reexperience its mechanics and artistic style, simulated with remarkable precision on contemporary systems.

I allocated the majority of my time playing the arcade classics, especially Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Several releases here hold up, particularly during one-on-one local play. Yet competing with the computer-controlled adversaries in these titles is a testament to how primitive and unjust the development approached in the series' initial installments. AI-managed characters obviously use unfair advantages or are otherwise dumb as rocks. Without having someone to play against — online play is available in numerous anthology releases, but somewhat limited in options — you'll be missing out.

Display Features

The 23 playable Mortal Kombat games in the collection, a blend of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are faithfully recreated, though I have noticed a handful slight anomalies — mostly input lag and sporadic glitches, particularly in Mortal Kombat 4. Even though the releases are mostly shown in their original form, developer Digital Eclipse has added several intelligent user experience improvements and display customization choices. For example, players have the option to display fighter-specific techniques during gameplay and choose to enable endless periods to execute finishing moves. There are also options for unlocking secret characters, eliminating the need to execute obscure techniques to obtain them.

Graphically, the titles can be enjoyed with multiple filters and visual treatments. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection includes remarkably accurate filters that mimic the CRT monitors of coin-op establishments or household displays, or the limited color monitor of a portable gaming device. An especially welcome feature is the option to have coin-op-inspired frames surrounding the screen, with the MK game of your choice accurately and softly reflecting against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's quite aesthetically pleasing.

Additional Features

There are plenty of nice touches beyond the educational material and simulated classic games, featuring an audio component that enables players to reexperience the soundtracks of different Mortal Kombat games excluding the sounds of two kombatants viciously slaughtering each other. Additionally included are combatant descriptions that contain backgrounds and multiple story elements shown through the demo sequences of coin-op titles and final sequences.

Archival Discovery

One of the biggest highlights for committed franchise followers is the opportunity to play a example of historically missing material in the form of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This particular edition, a somewhat revised iteration of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an pioneering effort from the developer at head-to-head network battles in coin-op establishments. This network version of the game is practically indistinguishable to UMK3, but featured the capability to battle network competitors and featured various slight error corrections and adjustments. But the Wavenet update never gained traction, in part