The Legacy Kollection of Mortal Kombat: A Stunning Success for the Fighting Game Franchise

The Mortal Kombat series continues to hold numerous undisclosed elements and the ability to amaze, more than 30 years after its initial debut in arcades. A new collection covering the brand's formative years, featuring four original arcade titles, multiple console adaptations, and spinoffs, transcends only a accurately simulated collection of iconic titles and not-so-classics — it additionally serves as a comprehensive historical account about the making of the renowned brand.

Even as a lifelong Mortal Kombat fan who has closely monitored its origins and transformation, there was much to discover for me to learn and appreciate about the series.

What Defines the Legacy Kollection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like previous classic compilations from developer Digital Eclipse, part documentary, part playable archive. The collection includes emulated versions of the pioneering arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, along with home system and portable adaptations of certain releases. The collection even includes the brand's experiments at derivative games, like combat-focused releases Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — two of the franchise's worst entries.

The Legacy Kollection thus isn't a highlight reel anthology, but an exploration into the series' formative period, when developer Midway and series co-creators the creative duo behind the series were figuring out how to create a combat title, digitized from footage of real actors, as they went along. Viewing the historical footage — which includes historical videos, recent conversations, and digital copies of vintage posters, comics, and even company memos — it's remarkable to see how the series transformed from simple starts to a worldwide phenomenon. It's truly remarkable to observe several young game developers, operating with virtually no plan or supervision, focus their cultural enthusiasms into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Historical Section

The documentary portion of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection documents the ascent of the combat franchise and the founders' vocational paths at the no-longer-operating Midway. It then goes on to show how those same creators contended with how to routinely one-up themselves, facing no small amount of demand to replicate their achievements. It serves as a compelling period piece constructed using analog films and film-based pictures and manual drawings, which showcase the DIY nature of the franchise's production method and how personal recommendations helped disseminate its secrets and undisclosed elements of the series in its golden era in coin-op establishments. Presented in manageable segments, it's an eminently watchable set of brief historical films that covers video games, graphic novels, movies and even the comical physical events. It also includes some unreleased actions and character sprites among its previously unreleased material.

Playable Component

Interspersed along the five-segment historical film's chronology are opportunities to engage with the original releases. During specific moments, viewers can hop into a Mortal Kombat title or one of its home console ports to reexperience its mechanics and visual presentation, recreated with impressive accuracy on modern hardware.

I dedicated most of my time experiencing the original arcade titles, particularly Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Numerous titles here stand the test of time, especially in local multiplayer matches. However, facing the artificial intelligence fighters in these releases is a reminder of how crude and unbalanced the coding existed in the franchise's pioneering releases. 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 most titles in the collection, but rather basic in functionality — you'll be missing out.

Display Features

The twenty-three accessible Mortal Kombat titles in the anthology, a mix of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are faithfully recreated, though I detected a few small quirks — mostly input lag and the occasional bug, particularly in Mortal Kombat 4. And while the games are mostly shown in their original form, the development team has incorporated various clever quality-of-life features and visual presentation options. As an illustration, players have the option to reveal combatant-unique actions on the display and choose to enable endless periods to perform a Fatality. Additionally available are settings for unlocking secret characters, without having to perform obscure techniques to obtain them.

Visually, the games can be played with a variety of visual enhancements and presentation styles. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection includes remarkably accurate effects that reproduce the cathode-ray tube displays of arcades or home televisions, or the monochrome green display of a Game Boy. A particularly nice touch is the option to have coin-op-inspired frames encircling the display, with your selected Mortal Kombat title faithfully and subtly duplicating against the faux black plastic borders. It's very artistically charming.

Extra Content

The collection includes numerous nice touches beyond the documentary and emulated arcade classics, including a music player that lets you revisit the tunes of various fighting releases absent the noise of combatants violently defeating each other. There are also character profiles that include bios and the various bits of lore displayed via the idle displays of gaming hall releases and conclusions.

Archival Discovery

Among the most significant features for hardcore Mortal Kombat fans is the ability to access a example of historically missing material in the format of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This specific release, a slightly updated version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an early attempt by Midway at one-on-one internet-based play in arcades. The Wavenet Edition of the game is almost exactly the same to UMK3, but included the option to battle network competitors and featured various slight bug fixes and balance. But the Wavenet update never gained traction, in part