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The Mortal Kombat series retains numerous undisclosed elements and the capacity to surprise, more than 30 years after its initial debut in arcades. A new collection covering the franchise's earliest days, comprising four original arcade titles, several home system versions, and related titles, transcends only a accurately simulated series of classics and not-so-classics — it functions as a detailed chronicle about the creation of the iconic franchise.

As a dedicated devotee of the franchise who has paid close attention its origins and transformation, there was numerous fresh aspects for me to understand and value about the series.

What Constitutes the Legacy Kollection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like previous classic compilations from the creators at Digital Eclipse, part documentary, portion interactive museum. This compilation features simulated releases of the first arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, plus console and handheld ports of several of these titles. This compilation also features the series' ventures at spin-off titles, like action games Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — among the series' least successful installments.

The Legacy Kollection consequently doesn't represent a highlight reel anthology, but an exploration into Mortal Kombat's early days, when the development team Midway and franchise originators Ed Boon and John Tobias were determining how to develop a battle series, produced using film material of real actors, as they went along. Watching the documentary — which includes vintage recordings, recent conversations, and digital copies of vintage posters, illustrated stories, and including internal communications — it's incredible to witness how Mortal Kombat went from simple starts to a international craze. It's genuinely amazing to observe several young game developers, operating with virtually no plan or guidance, channel their pop-culture interests into creating a legendary video game series.

Documentary Portion

The documentary portion of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection traces the growth of Mortal Kombat and its creators' careers at the now-defunct Midway. It further illustrates how these identical developers contended with how to regularly outdo their previous work, experiencing considerable demand to replicate their triumphs. It's a fascinating time capsule constructed using analog films and analog photographs and manual drawings, which showcase the DIY nature of the series' creation process and how word of mouth helped spread its rumors and secrets of MK in its golden era in coin-op establishments. Presented in manageable segments, it's thoroughly enjoyable set of brief historical films that includes titles, illustrated stories, cinematic adaptations and including the humorous real-world tour. It also includes some unreleased actions and game character images among its archived development assets.

Playable Component

Distributed throughout the five-part documentary's timeline are invitations to experience the games themselves. At certain intervals, viewers can hop into a game of Mortal Kombat or a home system version to rediscover its combat system and graphics, recreated with impressive accuracy on contemporary systems.

I spent the bulk of my time engaging with the vintage coin-op games, particularly Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Several releases here hold up, notably with direct competitive sessions. However, facing the artificial intelligence fighters in these releases 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 another person to compete with — online play is available in the majority of included games, but somewhat limited in options — you'll be missing out.

Visual Options

The two dozen available combat games in the compilation, a mix of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are precisely simulated, though I detected a couple minor issues — mostly input lag and the occasional bug, particularly in Mortal Kombat 4. And while the games are mostly shown in their original form, the creators has added several intelligent user experience improvements and display customization choices. For instance, users can elect to display fighter-specific techniques during gameplay and opt to have endless periods to perform a Fatality. Additionally available are settings for unlocking secret characters, without having to perform complicated methods to unlock them.

Artistically, the releases can be experienced with numerous filters and visual treatments. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection offers very realistic options that simulate the CRT monitors of arcades or home televisions, or the greenscale screen of a Game Boy. An especially welcome feature is the setting to activate arcade-like bezels framing the gameplay, with the specific combat game you're playing faithfully and subtly duplicating against the simulated dark plastic edges. It's very artistically charming.

Additional Features

There are plenty of appreciated elements beyond the documentary and emulated arcade classics, including a music player that enables players to reexperience the music from multiple combat titles absent the noise of two kombatants viciously slaughtering each other. Additionally included are character profiles that contain backgrounds and numerous narrative components shown through the idle displays of gaming hall releases and final sequences.

Lost Media Recovery

A particularly notable inclusion for committed franchise followers is the opportunity to play a piece of "lost media" in the guise of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This particular edition, a somewhat revised iteration of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an initial venture by the company at head-to-head network battles in arcades. The online-enabled release of the game is virtually identical to UMK3, but included the option to battle network competitors and featured various slight error corrections and adjustments. But the Wavenet update failed to achieve popularity, in part