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The Mortal Kombat series continues to hold many hidden mysteries and the capacity to surprise, well past its 30th anniversary after its original launch in gaming halls. This latest compilation spanning the series' initial period, which includes a quartet of arcade releases, various home ports, and related titles, goes beyond only a accurately simulated set of legendary games including less celebrated releases — it additionally serves as a comprehensive historical account about the making of the iconic franchise.

Even as a lifelong enthusiast of the series who has paid close attention its creation and evolution, there was numerous fresh aspects for me to discover and admire about the series.

What Constitutes the Historical Compilation

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection similar to other retro collections from developer Digital Eclipse, part historical documentation, part playable archive. The anthology contains digitally recreated editions of the original arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, along with home system and portable adaptations of certain releases. This compilation also features the brand's experiments at spin-off titles, like combat-focused releases Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — two of the franchise's worst entries.

The Legacy Kollection consequently doesn't represent a greatest hits compilation, but an exploration into Mortal Kombat's early days, when the development team Midway and series co-creators Ed Boon and John Tobias were figuring out how to develop a battle series, digitized from footage of actual people, on the fly. Watching the documentary — containing vintage recordings, contemporary discussions, and scans of old flyers, comics, and even interoffice faxes — it's astonishing to observe how the series transformed from humble beginnings to a worldwide phenomenon. It's frankly astounding to watch a handful of 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 educational segment of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection documents the ascent of Mortal Kombat and its creators' careers at the now-defunct Midway. It then goes on to show how these identical developers reckoned with how to routinely one-up themselves, facing no small amount of stress to duplicate their triumphs. It's a fascinating time capsule composed of analog films and traditional photos 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 hidden aspects of Mortal Kombat in its golden era in coin-op establishments. Delivered in easily digestible portions, it's thoroughly enjoyable set of brief historical films that includes titles, illustrated stories, cinematic adaptations and even the silly live-action tour. It also includes some unused moves and game character images among its previously unreleased material.

Playable Component

Distributed throughout the quintet of documentary episodes' progression are invitations to experience the original releases. During specific moments, audience members can jump into a combat game session or one of its home console ports to revisit its gameplay and graphics, recreated with impressive accuracy on modern hardware.

I dedicated most of my time playing the arcade classics, specifically Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Many of the games here hold up, notably with one-on-one local play. However, facing the aforementioned game's AI-controlled opponents is a demonstration of how basic and unbalanced the programming was in early Mortal Kombat games. CPU-controlled opponents blatantly cheat to win or are conversely remarkably unintelligent. Lacking someone to play against — online play is available in most titles in the collection, but rather basic in functionality — the experience will be incomplete.

Display Features

The two dozen available combat games in the collection, a blend of arcade, console, and handheld games, are accurately emulated, though I've observed a couple minor issues — mainly control latency and sporadic glitches, especially with Mortal Kombat 4. Although the titles are mostly shown in their original form, developer Digital Eclipse has included some smart quality-of-life features and display customization choices. For example, you can choose to display fighter-specific techniques on the display and opt to have unlimited duration to complete lethal techniques. Additionally available are settings for revealing concealed combatants, removing the requirement to complete complicated methods to obtain them.

Graphically, the titles can be experienced with numerous filters and visual treatments. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection includes remarkably accurate filters that mimic the traditional television screens of arcades or household displays, or the greenscale screen of a Nintendo handheld. A particularly nice touch is the setting to activate arcade-like bezels encircling the display, with the specific combat game you're playing faithfully and subtly duplicating against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's remarkably visually appealing.

Additional Features

Players will discover multiple nice touches beyond the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, containing a soundtrack mode that enables players to reexperience the music from multiple combat titles without the din of two kombatants viciously slaughtering each other. There are also character profiles that contain backgrounds and the various bits of lore displayed via the demo sequences of coin-op titles and endings.

Lost Media Recovery

A particularly notable inclusion for hardcore Mortal Kombat fans is the chance to experience a piece of "lost media" in the form of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This particular edition, a somewhat revised iteration of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an pioneering effort from the developer at one-on-one internet-based play in gaming halls. This network version of the game is virtually identical to UMK3, but included the option to compete against internet adversaries and included some minor glitch repairs and refinements. Yet this online edition didn't find widespread adoption, in part