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Mortal Kombat still possesses its share of secrets and the capacity to surprise, well past its 30th anniversary after its initial debut in coin-op establishments. This latest compilation including the franchise's earliest days, featuring four original arcade titles, various home ports, and derivative games, goes beyond just a well-emulated set of legendary games along with lesser-known entries — it additionally serves as a detailed chronicle about the making of the legendary series.

Even as a lifelong Mortal Kombat fan who has carefully followed its origins and transformation, there was much to discover for me to understand and value about the series.

What Makes the Legacy Collection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like other vintage game anthologies from developer Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, section playable historical record. The collection includes emulated versions of the original arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, along with home system and portable adaptations of some of those games. The collection even includes the series' ventures 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 is therefore not a “best of” collection, but an exploration into Mortal Kombat's early days, when developer Midway and brand founders the creative duo behind the series were determining how to make a fighting game, created from video recordings of actual people, through experimentation. Observing the archival material — which includes vintage recordings, new interviews, and digital copies of vintage posters, graphic novels, and even interoffice faxes — it's incredible to witness how the franchise evolved from humble beginnings to a international craze. It's frankly astounding to observe several pioneering developers, working with minimal planning or guidance, channel their pop-culture interests into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Documentary Portion

The historical documentation of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection charts the rise of Mortal Kombat 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 demand to replicate their success. It represents an intriguing historical record made from analog films and traditional photos and manual drawings, which showcase the DIY nature of the series' creation process and how personal recommendations helped circulate its mysteries and undisclosed elements of the series in its golden era in coin-op establishments. Told in bite-sized chunks, it's an eminently watchable series of documentary shorts that covers video games, graphic novels, movies and including the humorous real-world tour. The compilation also contains some never-implemented techniques and digital fighter representations among its previously unreleased material.

Playable Component

Distributed throughout the five-segment historical film's chronology are prompts to play the games themselves. During specific moments, viewers can hop into a game of Mortal Kombat or one of its home console ports to revisit its gameplay and visual presentation, emulated nearly perfectly on modern hardware.

I dedicated most of my time playing the arcade classics, particularly Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Several releases here remain enjoyable, especially in direct competitive sessions. Yet competing with the aforementioned game's AI-controlled opponents is a reminder of how crude and unjust the development approached in the series' initial installments. Computer-directed fighters blatantly cheat to win or are conversely remarkably unintelligent. Lacking someone to play against — network gaming is included in most titles in the collection, but somewhat limited in options — 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've observed a handful slight anomalies — mainly control latency and intermittent errors, particularly in Mortal Kombat 4. Although the titles are primarily displayed authentically, the development team has incorporated various clever quality-of-life features and visual presentation options. For instance, you can choose to display fighter-specific techniques on the display and select to activate endless periods to complete lethal techniques. Additionally available are settings for accessing hidden fighters, removing the requirement to complete complicated methods to unlock them.

Graphically, the titles can be played with a variety of visual enhancements and presentation styles. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection offers very realistic options that simulate the CRT monitors of coin-op establishments or household displays, or the greenscale screen of a portable gaming device. An especially welcome feature is the choice to enable arcade-like bezels surrounding the screen, with the specific combat game you're playing accurately and softly reflecting against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's remarkably visually appealing.

Extra Content

There are plenty of nice touches beyond the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, featuring an audio component that enables players to reexperience the music from multiple Mortal Kombat games absent the noise of fighters brutally eliminating opponents. Also present are fighter biographies that include bios and numerous narrative components displayed via the idle displays of gaming hall releases and final sequences.

Archival Discovery

A particularly notable inclusion for hardcore Mortal Kombat fans is the chance to experience a segment of previously unavailable content in the format of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This particular edition, a slightly updated version 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 challenge online opponents and included some minor glitch repairs and refinements. However, this network version failed to achieve popularity, in part