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This iconic fighting game retains many hidden mysteries and the ability to amaze, over three decades after its first appearance in coin-op establishments. This latest compilation covering the brand's formative years, featuring four arcade games, several home system versions, and related titles, is more than just a well-emulated collection of iconic titles along with lesser-known entries — it additionally serves as a comprehensive historical account about the creation of the iconic franchise.

As a dedicated devotee of the franchise who has closely monitored its creation and evolution, there was much to discover for me to discover and admire about the series.

What Defines the Legacy Kollection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like previous classic compilations from the creators at Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, part playable archive. 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 — some of the brand's least successful installments.

The Legacy Kollection thus isn't a highlight reel anthology, but an examination of the franchise's initial era, when developer Midway and series co-creators the creative duo behind the series were figuring out how to make a fighting game, produced using film material of actual people, on the fly. Watching the documentary — which includes archival footage, recent conversations, and digital copies of vintage posters, illustrated stories, and even company memos — it's incredible to witness how the franchise evolved from humble beginnings to a global sensation. It's frankly astounding to watch a handful of young game developers, working with minimal planning or guidance, channel their pop-culture interests into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Documentary Portion

The documentary portion of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection documents the ascent of the combat franchise and the founders' vocational paths at the now-defunct Midway. It then goes on to show how the very same individuals addressed how to consistently surpass their achievements, facing no small amount of pressure to repeat their triumphs. It's a fascinating time capsule made from video recordings and film-based pictures and manual drawings, which reveal the self-made character of the series' creation process and how personal recommendations helped circulate its mysteries and secrets of MK in its golden era in coin-op establishments. Told in bite-sized chunks, it's highly engaging collection of mini-documentaries that spans games, comics, films and even the comical physical events. It also includes some unused moves and character sprites among its archived development assets.

Playable Component

Placed within the five-part documentary's timeline are prompts to play the original releases. At various points, audience members can jump into a Mortal Kombat title or one of its home console ports to reexperience its mechanics and graphics, simulated with remarkable precision on current technology.

I spent the bulk of my time engaging with the vintage coin-op games, especially Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Several releases here hold up, particularly during direct competitive sessions. However, facing the computer-controlled adversaries in these titles is a demonstration of how basic and unbalanced the programming was in the franchise's pioneering releases. AI-managed characters obviously use unfair advantages or are otherwise dumb as rocks. If you don't have a human opponent — online play is available in most titles in the collection, but somewhat limited in options — you'll be missing out.

Visual Options

The twenty-three accessible Mortal Kombat titles in the collection, a combination of arcade, console, and handheld games, are precisely simulated, though I've observed a handful slight anomalies — primarily delayed responses and the occasional bug, particularly in Mortal Kombat 4. Although the titles are largely presented as-is, the development team has incorporated various clever convenience enhancements and graphical adjustment settings. For instance, users can elect to show each character's special moves on-screen and opt to have infinite time to execute finishing moves. Additionally available are settings for revealing concealed combatants, removing the requirement to complete complicated methods to unlock them.

Graphically, the titles can be experienced with numerous visual enhancements and presentation styles. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection offers very realistic effects that reproduce the cathode-ray tube displays of arcades or home televisions, or the limited color monitor of a Nintendo handheld. An especially welcome feature is the setting to activate gaming hall-style borders encircling the display, with the specific combat game you're playing precisely and gently mirroring against the simulated dark plastic edges. It's remarkably visually appealing.

Bonus Elements

The collection includes numerous welcome features besides the documentary and emulated arcade classics, including a music player that allows users to rediscover the music from multiple combat titles without the din of combatants violently defeating each other. Additionally included are combatant descriptions that feature histories and multiple story elements shown through the demo sequences of coin-op titles and final sequences.

Historical Preservation

One of the biggest highlights for dedicated series enthusiasts is the chance to experience a segment of previously unavailable content in the format of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This specific release, a somewhat revised iteration of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an initial venture by the company at direct online competitive gaming in arcades. The online-enabled release of the game is almost exactly the same to UMK3, but included the option to challenge online opponents and contained several small error corrections and adjustments. Yet this online edition never gained traction, in part