Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection: An Almost Perfect Triumph for the Fighting Game Series

Mortal Kombat continues to hold its share of secrets and the ability to amaze, more than 30 years after its first appearance in coin-op establishments. This latest compilation including the brand's formative years, which includes a quartet of arcade releases, various home ports, and related titles, goes beyond simply a faithfully reproduced collection of iconic titles including less celebrated releases — it functions as a detailed chronicle about the making of the renowned brand.

Even as a lifelong devotee of the franchise who has carefully followed its origins and transformation, there was plenty new for me to understand and value about the series.

What Makes the Legacy Collection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection similar to other retro collections from the development team Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, section playable historical record. The anthology contains simulated releases of the original arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, along with home system and portable adaptations of certain releases. The anthology additionally contains the brand's experiments at derivative games, like action-oriented titles Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — some of the brand's least successful installments.

The Legacy Kollection thus isn't a highlight reel anthology, but an examination of Mortal Kombat's early days, when the creators at Midway and franchise originators the creative duo behind the series were determining how to make a fighting game, digitized from footage of real actors, on the fly. Observing the archival material — that features archival footage, new interviews, and digital copies of vintage posters, comics, and even interoffice faxes — it's remarkable to see how the series transformed from simple starts to a international craze. It's genuinely amazing to watch a handful of pioneering developers, operating with virtually no plan or guidance, channel their pop-culture interests into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Documentary Portion

The documentary portion of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection charts the rise of the fighting series and the developers' professional journeys at the now-defunct Midway. It subsequently demonstrates how those same creators addressed how to routinely one-up themselves, facing no small amount of stress to duplicate their success. It represents an intriguing historical record constructed using video recordings and analog photographs and manual drawings, which showcase the DIY nature of Mortal Kombat's development and how personal recommendations helped disseminate its secrets and hidden aspects of Mortal Kombat in its golden era in coin-op establishments. Presented in manageable segments, it's thoroughly enjoyable series of documentary shorts that covers video games, graphic novels, movies and even the silly live-action tour. It also includes some never-implemented techniques and character sprites among its cutting-room-floor content.

Interactive Gaming

Distributed throughout the five-part documentary's timeline are invitations to experience the games themselves. At certain intervals, viewers can hop into a game of Mortal Kombat or one of its home console ports to reexperience its mechanics and artistic style, recreated with impressive accuracy on modern hardware.

I spent the bulk of my time engaging with the vintage coin-op games, specifically Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Numerous titles here remain enjoyable, especially in local multiplayer matches. Yet competing with the artificial intelligence fighters in these releases is a testament to how primitive and unjust the programming was in the franchise's pioneering releases. AI-managed characters blatantly cheat to win or are conversely remarkably unintelligent. Lacking a human opponent — online play is available in numerous anthology releases, but rather basic in functionality — you'll miss the full enjoyment.

Display Features

The two dozen available combat games in the compilation, a blend of gaming hall, television, and mobile releases, are faithfully recreated, though I've observed a handful slight anomalies — primarily delayed responses and the occasional bug, notably within Mortal Kombat 4. Even though the releases are largely presented as-is, the development team has included some smart quality-of-life features and graphical adjustment settings. For example, users can elect to show each character's special moves on the display and select to activate unlimited duration to execute finishing moves. Also included are choices for accessing hidden fighters, eliminating the need to execute obscure techniques to obtain them.

Artistically, the releases can be enjoyed with multiple graphical effects and display options. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection includes remarkably accurate options that simulate the traditional television screens of gaming halls or home televisions, or the limited color monitor of a Game Boy. An especially welcome feature is the setting to activate coin-op-inspired frames encircling the display, with your selected Mortal Kombat title precisely and gently mirroring against the faux black plastic borders. It's remarkably visually appealing.

Extra Content

Players will discover multiple appreciated elements beyond the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, containing a soundtrack mode that lets you revisit the music from multiple combat titles excluding the sounds of two kombatants viciously slaughtering each other. Also present are character profiles that include bios and multiple story elements shown through the idle displays of gaming hall releases and endings.

Archival Discovery

One of the biggest highlights for committed franchise followers is the chance to experience a piece of "lost media" in the form of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This particular edition, a somewhat revised iteration of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an early attempt by Midway at one-on-one internet-based play in coin-op establishments. The Wavenet Edition of the game is almost exactly the same to UMK3, but provided the ability to challenge online opponents and included some minor bug fixes and balance. Yet this online edition didn't find widespread adoption, in part