The Legacy Kollection of Mortal Kombat: A Stunning Success for the Combat Series Series

This iconic fighting game continues to hold numerous undisclosed elements and the ability to amaze, more than 30 years after its original launch in gaming halls. The recent anthology including the brand's formative years, which includes a quartet of arcade releases, various home ports, and derivative games, transcends simply a faithfully reproduced set of legendary games including less celebrated releases — it additionally serves as a comprehensive historical account about the development of the legendary series.

Being a long-time enthusiast of the series who has carefully followed its origins and transformation, there was much to discover for me to learn and appreciate about the series.

What Constitutes the Legacy Collection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like other vintage game anthologies from developer Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, portion interactive museum. This compilation features digitally recreated editions of the first 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. The collection even includes the brand's experiments 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 “best of” collection, but a study of the series' formative period, when the creators at Midway and brand founders the creative duo behind the series were discovering methods to make a fighting game, created from video recordings of actual people, through experimentation. Observing the archival material — which includes archival footage, new interviews, and scans of old flyers, graphic novels, and even company memos — it's incredible to witness how Mortal Kombat went from modest origins to a global sensation. It's frankly astounding to see a group of young game developers, working with minimal planning or oversight, 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 subsequently demonstrates how these identical developers reckoned with how to consistently surpass their achievements, encountering significant stress to duplicate their triumphs. It serves as a compelling period piece constructed using video recordings and analog photographs and pencil sketches, which demonstrate the hands-on approach of the franchise's production method and how personal recommendations helped circulate its mysteries and hidden aspects of Mortal Kombat in its arcade heyday. Told in bite-sized chunks, it's highly engaging collection of mini-documentaries that includes titles, illustrated stories, cinematic adaptations and even the comical physical events. The collection additionally features some never-implemented techniques and game character images among its cutting-room-floor content.

Playable Component

Placed within the five-segment historical film's chronology are prompts to play the games themselves. At various points, viewers can hop into a Mortal Kombat title or one of its home console ports to revisit its gameplay and artistic style, emulated nearly perfectly on modern hardware.

I allocated the majority of my time playing the arcade classics, especially Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Numerous titles here remain enjoyable, especially in direct competitive sessions. However, facing the aforementioned game's AI-controlled opponents is a demonstration of how basic and unjust the programming was in the series' initial installments. CPU-controlled opponents blatantly cheat to win or are alternatively incredibly stupid. If you don't have a human opponent — network gaming is included in the majority of included games, but rather basic in functionality — you'll miss the full enjoyment.

Visual Options

The two dozen available combat games in the anthology, a combination of arcade, console, and handheld games, are faithfully recreated, though I have noticed a couple minor issues — mostly input lag and sporadic glitches, especially with Mortal Kombat 4. And while the games are primarily displayed authentically, the creators has added several intelligent quality-of-life features and visual presentation options. For instance, users can elect to show each character's special moves on-screen and select to activate endless periods to execute finishing moves. Additionally available are settings for accessing hidden fighters, without having to perform some esoteric trick to unlock them.

Visually, the games can be played with a variety of visual enhancements and presentation styles. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection includes remarkably accurate options that simulate the traditional television screens of coin-op establishments or home televisions, or the monochrome green display of a Nintendo handheld. A notably appreciated element is the choice to enable arcade-like bezels encircling the display, with your selected Mortal Kombat title precisely and gently mirroring against the simulated dark plastic edges. It's remarkably visually appealing.

Extra Content

There are plenty of welcome features besides the educational material and simulated classic games, containing a soundtrack mode that enables players to reexperience the tunes of various fighting releases absent the noise of two kombatants viciously slaughtering each other. Additionally included are combatant descriptions that include bios and the various bits of lore shown through the demo sequences of coin-op titles and endings.

Lost Media Recovery

Among the most significant features for hardcore Mortal Kombat fans is the ability to access a segment of previously unavailable content in the form of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This version of the game, a moderately improved edition of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an pioneering effort from the developer at one-on-one internet-based play in coin-op establishments. This network version of the game is virtually identical to UMK3, but featured the capability to compete against internet adversaries and featured various slight error corrections and adjustments. Yet this online edition never gained traction, in part