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The Mortal Kombat series continues to hold many hidden mysteries and the capacity to surprise, more than 30 years after its original launch in coin-op establishments. This latest compilation including the brand's formative years, which includes four original arcade titles, various home ports, and spinoffs, is more than just a well-emulated series of classics and not-so-classics — it functions as a rich documentary about the development of the iconic franchise.

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

What Constitutes the Historical Compilation

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like other vintage game anthologies from developer Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, portion interactive museum. The collection includes emulated versions of the first arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, plus console and handheld ports of some of those games. This compilation also features the franchise's attempts at spin-off titles, like action games Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — two of the franchise's most criticized releases.

The Legacy Kollection consequently doesn't represent a greatest hits compilation, but an exploration into the series' formative period, when the creators at Midway and brand founders the visionary developers were figuring out how to develop a battle series, digitized from footage of live performers, on the fly. Observing the archival material — that features historical videos, recent conversations, and scans of old flyers, comics, and including internal communications — it's incredible to witness how the franchise evolved from modest origins to a global sensation. It's truly remarkable to watch a handful of early video game creators, working with minimal planning or supervision, channel their pop-culture interests into creating a legendary video game series.

Documentary Portion

The documentary portion of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection charts the rise of the combat franchise and the developers' professional journeys at the no-longer-operating Midway. It further illustrates how the very same individuals contended with how to regularly outdo their previous work, encountering significant pressure to repeat their achievements. It serves as a compelling period piece constructed using video recordings and analog photographs and hand-drawn illustrations, which showcase the DIY nature of the franchise's production method and how oral tradition helped spread its rumors and undisclosed elements of the series in its arcade heyday. Delivered in easily digestible portions, it's an eminently watchable collection of mini-documentaries that spans games, comics, films and including the humorous real-world tour. It also includes some unreleased actions and character sprites among its previously unreleased material.

Interactive Gaming

Placed within the five-segment historical film's chronology are opportunities to engage with the games themselves. During specific moments, users can directly access a Mortal Kombat title or a console adaptation to reexperience its mechanics and visual presentation, simulated with remarkable precision on modern hardware.

I allocated the majority of my time experiencing the original arcade titles, particularly Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Several releases here hold up, especially in one-on-one local play. But playing against the artificial intelligence fighters in these releases is a reminder of how crude and unjust the coding existed in early Mortal Kombat games. CPU-controlled opponents clearly employ dishonest tactics or are otherwise dumb as rocks. If you don't have a human opponent — online play is available in the majority of included games, but rather basic in functionality — you'll miss the full enjoyment.

Visual Options

The 23 playable Mortal Kombat games in the collection, a combination of arcade, console, and handheld games, are precisely simulated, though I've observed a couple minor issues — mostly input lag and intermittent errors, especially with Mortal Kombat 4. Even though the releases are largely presented as-is, developer Digital Eclipse has incorporated various clever quality-of-life features and display customization choices. For instance, players have the option to show each character's special moves on-screen and opt to have infinite time to complete lethal techniques. Additionally available are settings for revealing concealed combatants, removing the requirement to complete obscure techniques to obtain them.

Visually, the games 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 arcades or home televisions, or the greenscale screen of a portable gaming device. A notably appreciated element is the setting to activate arcade-like bezels surrounding the screen, with the MK game of your choice faithfully and subtly duplicating against the simulated dark plastic edges. It's very artistically charming.

Additional Features

Players will discover multiple appreciated elements beyond the educational material and simulated classic games, containing a soundtrack mode that lets you revisit the tunes of various combat titles absent the noise of combatants violently defeating each other. There are also combatant descriptions that feature histories and numerous narrative components displayed via the demo sequences of coin-op titles and conclusions.

Archival Discovery

One of the biggest highlights for dedicated series enthusiasts is the chance to experience a example of historically missing material 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 initial venture by the company at one-on-one internet-based play in coin-op establishments. The online-enabled release of the game is virtually identical to UMK3, but provided the ability to compete against internet adversaries and contained several small bug fixes and balance. Yet this online edition failed to achieve popularity, in part