Mortal Kombat's Legacy Kollection: A Near-Flawless Victory for the Fighting Game Series

Mortal Kombat retains its share of secrets and the ability to amaze, well past its 30th anniversary after its original launch in gaming halls. This latest compilation covering the brand's formative years, comprising four arcade games, multiple console adaptations, and spinoffs, goes beyond just a well-emulated collection of iconic titles including less celebrated releases — it's also a rich documentary about the making of the iconic franchise.

Being a long-time Mortal Kombat fan who has paid close attention its origins and transformation, there was numerous fresh aspects for me to learn and appreciate about the series.

What Defines the Legacy Collection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like other vintage game anthologies from the creators at Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, portion interactive museum. The anthology contains simulated releases of the first 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. This compilation also features the brand's experiments at derivative games, like combat-focused releases Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — some of the brand's worst entries.

The Legacy Kollection thus isn't a highlight reel anthology, but an exploration into the series' formative period, when the creators at Midway and series co-creators the visionary developers were figuring out how to create a combat title, produced using film material of actual people, through experimentation. Watching the documentary — containing historical videos, recent conversations, and scans of old flyers, illustrated stories, and even company memos — it's remarkable to see how the franchise evolved from modest origins to a worldwide phenomenon. It's frankly astounding to observe several pioneering developers, working with minimal planning or guidance, direct their entertainment passions into creating a legendary video game series.

Documentary Portion

The historical documentation of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection documents the ascent of the combat franchise and the developers' professional journeys at the no-longer-operating Midway. It further illustrates how these identical developers contended with how to consistently surpass their achievements, experiencing considerable pressure to repeat their success. It represents an intriguing historical record constructed using VHS tapes and analog photographs and manual drawings, which showcase the DIY nature of the franchise's production method and how word of mouth helped circulate its mysteries and hidden aspects of Mortal Kombat in its golden era in coin-op establishments. Presented in manageable segments, it's thoroughly enjoyable set of brief historical films that spans games, comics, films and even the silly live-action tour. It also includes some unreleased actions and digital fighter representations among its cutting-room-floor content.

Playable Component

Placed within the quintet of documentary episodes' progression are opportunities to engage with the original releases. At certain intervals, audience members can jump into a Mortal Kombat title or a home system version to reexperience its mechanics and artistic style, emulated nearly perfectly on modern hardware.

I allocated the majority of my time engaging with the vintage coin-op games, especially Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Numerous titles here stand the test of time, particularly during local multiplayer matches. Yet competing with the computer-controlled adversaries in these titles is a demonstration of how basic and unjust the programming was in the franchise's pioneering releases. Computer-directed fighters blatantly cheat to win or are alternatively incredibly stupid. Lacking a human opponent — internet multiplayer exists in the majority of included games, but somewhat limited in options — the experience will be incomplete.

Visual Options

The two dozen available combat games in the anthology, a combination of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are accurately emulated, though I have noticed a few small quirks — primarily delayed responses and intermittent errors, notably within Mortal Kombat 4. Even though the releases are mostly shown in their original form, the development team has incorporated various clever convenience enhancements and display customization choices. For example, you can choose to reveal combatant-unique actions on-screen and opt to have endless periods to perform a Fatality. There are also options for unlocking secret characters, without having to perform some esoteric trick to access them.

Artistically, the releases can be experienced with numerous filters and visual treatments. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection offers very realistic effects that reproduce the cathode-ray tube displays of arcades or household displays, or the limited color monitor of a Game Boy. An especially welcome feature is the setting to activate coin-op-inspired frames framing the gameplay, with the MK game of your choice accurately and softly reflecting against the faux black plastic borders. It's quite aesthetically pleasing.

Extra Content

There are plenty of welcome features besides the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, containing a soundtrack mode that allows users to rediscover the tunes of various fighting releases without the din of two kombatants viciously slaughtering each other. There are also fighter biographies that include bios and numerous narrative components shown through arcade games' attract mode screens and conclusions.

Archival Discovery

Among the most significant features for hardcore Mortal Kombat fans is the chance to experience a example of historically missing material in the format of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This particular edition, a moderately improved edition of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an early attempt by Midway 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 featured various slight glitch repairs and refinements. Yet this online edition failed to achieve popularity, in part