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Mortal Kombat continues to hold its share of secrets and the power to astonish, more than 30 years after its original launch in coin-op establishments. A new collection including the brand's formative years, featuring four original arcade titles, various home ports, and spinoffs, is more than only a accurately simulated collection of iconic titles including less celebrated releases — it additionally serves as a comprehensive historical account about the development of the renowned brand.

As a dedicated Mortal Kombat fan who has carefully followed its creation and evolution, there was plenty new for me to learn and appreciate about the series.

What Defines the Historical Compilation

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like previous classic compilations from the creators at Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, portion interactive museum. The collection includes emulated versions of the original arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, plus console and handheld ports of certain releases. The anthology additionally contains the brand's experiments at spinoffs, like action-oriented titles Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — among the series' least successful installments.

The Legacy Kollection is therefore not a “best of” collection, but an exploration into the franchise's initial era, when the creators at Midway and series co-creators Ed Boon and John Tobias were determining how to make a fighting game, created from video recordings of real actors, through experimentation. Viewing the historical footage — containing archival footage, new interviews, and scans of old flyers, comics, and including internal communications — it's astonishing to observe how the franchise evolved from humble beginnings to a global sensation. It's genuinely amazing to watch a handful of pioneering developers, working with minimal planning or guidance, focus their cultural enthusiasms into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Documentary Portion

The educational segment of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection traces the growth of the combat franchise and the founders' vocational paths at the now-defunct Midway. It further illustrates how the very same individuals addressed how to regularly outdo their previous work, experiencing considerable demand to replicate their success. It represents an intriguing historical record composed of analog films and film-based pictures and hand-drawn illustrations, which reveal the self-made character of the franchise's production method and how personal recommendations helped disseminate its secrets and undisclosed elements of the series in its peak period in gaming halls. Presented in manageable segments, it's an eminently watchable series of documentary shorts that spans games, comics, films and even the silly live-action tour. The compilation also contains some never-implemented techniques and character sprites among its cutting-room-floor content.

Playable Component

Distributed throughout the five-part documentary's timeline are opportunities to engage with the actual titles. During specific moments, audience members can jump into a Mortal Kombat title 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 engaging with the vintage coin-op games, especially Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Several releases here remain enjoyable, notably with direct competitive sessions. However, facing the computer-controlled adversaries in these titles is a testament to how primitive and unjust the programming was in early Mortal Kombat games. Computer-directed fighters clearly employ dishonest tactics or are otherwise dumb as rocks. Without having someone to play against — online play is available in the majority of included games, but somewhat limited in options — you'll miss the full enjoyment.

Technical Presentation

The 23 playable Mortal Kombat games in the anthology, a mix of gaming hall, television, and mobile releases, are accurately emulated, though I detected a couple minor issues — primarily delayed responses and intermittent errors, particularly in Mortal Kombat 4. And while the games are primarily displayed authentically, developer Digital Eclipse has added several intelligent convenience enhancements and display customization choices. For instance, players have the option to reveal combatant-unique actions on the display and select to activate infinite time to complete lethal techniques. Also included are choices for accessing hidden fighters, without having to perform obscure techniques to unlock them.

Artistically, the releases can be enjoyed with multiple filters and visual treatments. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection provides highly authentic filters that mimic the traditional television screens of coin-op establishments or domestic TVs, or the greenscale screen of a portable gaming device. A particularly nice touch is the choice to enable arcade-like bezels framing the gameplay, with the specific combat game you're playing faithfully and subtly duplicating against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's remarkably visually appealing.

Extra Content

The collection includes numerous nice touches beyond the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, containing a soundtrack mode that allows users to rediscover the tunes of various combat titles absent the noise of combatants violently defeating each other. There are also combatant descriptions that include bios and numerous narrative components presented by the demo sequences of coin-op titles and endings.

Historical Preservation

One of the biggest highlights for committed franchise followers is the chance to experience a segment of previously unavailable content in the guise of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This version of the game, a slightly updated version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an pioneering effort from the developer at head-to-head network battles in gaming halls. This network version of the game is almost exactly the same to UMK3, but provided the ability to compete against internet adversaries and included some minor glitch repairs and refinements. But the Wavenet update didn't find widespread adoption, in part