Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection: A Near-Flawless Victory for the Fighting Game Brand

This iconic fighting game continues to hold numerous undisclosed elements and the ability to amaze, more than 30 years after its first appearance in arcades. The recent anthology covering the brand's formative years, comprising four original arcade titles, several home system versions, and spinoffs, goes beyond simply a faithfully reproduced collection of iconic titles and not-so-classics — it functions as a comprehensive historical account about the making of the renowned brand.

As a dedicated enthusiast of the series who has paid close attention its development and progression, there was numerous fresh aspects for me to discover and admire about the series.

What Constitutes the Legacy Collection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like previous classic compilations from the development team Digital Eclipse, part documentary, part playable archive. The anthology contains simulated releases of the first arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, including television and mobile versions of several of these titles. The collection even includes the brand's experiments at spinoffs, 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 consequently doesn't represent a highlight reel anthology, but an examination of the franchise's initial era, when the creators at Midway and brand founders the visionary developers were discovering methods to create a combat title, produced using film material of real actors, through experimentation. Viewing the historical footage — that features archival footage, recent conversations, and digital copies of vintage posters, comics, and even interoffice faxes — it's astonishing to observe how Mortal Kombat went from modest origins to a worldwide phenomenon. It's genuinely amazing to see a group of pioneering developers, developing without clear direction or oversight, direct their entertainment passions into creating a legendary video game series.

Documentary Portion

The documentary portion of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection charts the rise of Mortal Kombat and its creators' careers at the no-longer-operating Midway. It subsequently demonstrates how these identical developers reckoned with how to regularly outdo their previous work, facing no small amount of pressure to repeat their achievements. It serves as a compelling period piece made from analog films and analog photographs and pencil sketches, which reveal the self-made character of the series' creation process and how word of mouth helped spread its rumors and secrets of MK in its peak period in gaming halls. Delivered in easily digestible portions, it's highly engaging collection of mini-documentaries that spans games, comics, films and including the humorous real-world tour. The compilation also contains some never-implemented techniques and digital fighter representations among its archived development assets.

Interactive Gaming

Distributed throughout the five-part documentary's timeline are opportunities to engage with the original releases. At various points, viewers can hop into a game of Mortal Kombat or a home system version to reexperience its mechanics and visual presentation, recreated with impressive accuracy on current technology.

I allocated the majority 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. But playing against the computer-controlled adversaries in these titles is a testament to how primitive and unbalanced the coding existed in the franchise's pioneering releases. AI-managed characters blatantly cheat to win or are otherwise dumb as rocks. Lacking a human opponent — online play is available in the majority of included games, but rather basic in functionality — you'll miss the full enjoyment.

Technical Presentation

The twenty-three accessible Mortal Kombat titles in the compilation, a combination of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are accurately emulated, though I've observed a few small quirks — mainly control latency and intermittent errors, notably within Mortal Kombat 4. Although the titles are primarily displayed authentically, the creators has added several intelligent quality-of-life features and visual presentation options. For instance, players have the option to show each character's special moves during gameplay and opt to have endless periods to execute finishing moves. Additionally available are settings for accessing hidden fighters, without having to perform complicated methods to unlock them.

Artistically, the releases can be played with a variety of visual enhancements and presentation styles. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection provides highly authentic filters that mimic the cathode-ray tube displays of arcades or domestic TVs, or the greenscale screen of a portable gaming device. A particularly nice touch is the choice to enable arcade-like bezels surrounding the screen, with the MK game of your choice accurately and softly reflecting against the simulated dark plastic edges. It's quite aesthetically pleasing.

Extra Content

There are plenty of welcome features besides the educational material and simulated classic games, including a music player that enables players to reexperience the soundtracks of different fighting releases absent the noise of fighters brutally eliminating opponents. Additionally included are combatant descriptions that feature histories and the various bits of lore presented by the idle displays of gaming hall releases and endings.

Lost Media Recovery

One of the biggest highlights for dedicated series enthusiasts is the opportunity to play a piece of "lost media" in the guise of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This particular edition, a slightly updated version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an initial venture by the company at direct online competitive gaming in coin-op establishments. The online-enabled release of the game is almost exactly the same to UMK3, but provided the ability to challenge online opponents and featured various slight glitch repairs and refinements. Yet this online edition didn't find widespread adoption, in part