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Mortal Kombat retains numerous undisclosed elements and the capacity to surprise, over three decades after its initial debut in arcades. The recent anthology including the brand's formative years, featuring a quartet of arcade releases, various home ports, and derivative games, is more than just a well-emulated series of classics along with lesser-known entries — it's also a detailed chronicle about the creation of the iconic franchise.

As a dedicated devotee of the franchise who has closely monitored its development and progression, there was plenty new for me to discover and admire about the series.

What Constitutes the Historical Compilation

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection similar to other vintage game anthologies from developer Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, section playable historical record. The collection includes simulated releases of the pioneering arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, along with home system and portable adaptations of several of these titles. This compilation also features the brand's experiments at spinoffs, like combat-focused releases Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — two of the franchise's worst entries.

The Legacy Kollection consequently doesn't represent a “best of” collection, but a study of Mortal Kombat's early days, when the development team Midway and franchise originators the visionary developers were figuring out how to develop a battle series, created from video recordings of actual people, on the fly. Observing the archival material — which includes vintage recordings, new interviews, and reproductions of classic advertisements, comics, and including internal communications — it's remarkable to see how the franchise evolved from modest origins to a worldwide phenomenon. It's frankly astounding to observe several early video game creators, working with minimal planning or oversight, channel their pop-culture interests into establishing an enduring gaming brand.

Historical Section

The educational segment of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection charts the rise of the fighting series and its creators' careers at the no-longer-operating Midway. It then goes on to show how those same creators reckoned with how to regularly outdo their previous work, experiencing considerable pressure to repeat their achievements. It serves as a compelling period piece composed of VHS tapes and traditional photos and hand-drawn illustrations, which reveal the self-made character of Mortal Kombat's development and how word of mouth helped spread its rumors and secrets of MK in its arcade heyday. Delivered in easily digestible portions, it's highly engaging collection of mini-documentaries that includes titles, illustrated stories, cinematic adaptations and including the humorous real-world tour. The compilation also contains some unused moves and character sprites among its archived development assets.

Interactive Experience

Interspersed along the five-segment historical film's chronology are opportunities to engage with the games themselves. At certain intervals, audience members can jump into a Mortal Kombat title or a home system version to rediscover its combat system and visual presentation, recreated with impressive accuracy on contemporary systems.

I spent the bulk of my time engaging with the vintage coin-op games, especially Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Numerous titles here remain enjoyable, notably with local multiplayer matches. But playing against the computer-controlled adversaries in these titles is a testament to how primitive and unbalanced the programming was in early Mortal Kombat games. Computer-directed fighters obviously use unfair advantages or are alternatively incredibly stupid. Lacking someone to play against — online play is available in the majority of included games, but somewhat limited in options — you'll be missing out.

Visual Options

The two dozen available combat games in the anthology, a combination of arcade, console, and handheld games, are accurately emulated, though I have noticed a couple minor issues — mostly input lag and sporadic glitches, particularly in Mortal Kombat 4. And while the games are largely presented as-is, the creators has incorporated various clever quality-of-life features and visual presentation options. For instance, you can choose to show each character's special moves on-screen and select to activate endless periods to execute finishing moves. There are also options for revealing concealed combatants, eliminating the need to execute obscure techniques to obtain them.

Visually, the games can be experienced with numerous filters and visual treatments. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection offers very realistic effects that reproduce the cathode-ray tube displays of arcades or household displays, or the greenscale screen of a Game Boy. A notably appreciated element is the setting to activate gaming hall-style borders framing the gameplay, with your selected Mortal Kombat title precisely and gently mirroring against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's very artistically charming.

Bonus Elements

Players will discover multiple appreciated elements beyond the documentary and emulated arcade classics, including a music player that lets you revisit the music from multiple combat titles absent the noise of combatants violently defeating each other. Also present are character profiles that include bios and the various bits of lore shown through the demo sequences of coin-op titles and endings.

Historical Preservation

One of the biggest highlights for committed franchise followers is the ability to access a piece of "lost media" in the guise of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This version of the game, a slightly updated version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an initial venture by the company at direct online competitive gaming in arcades. 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 didn't find widespread adoption, in part