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The Mortal Kombat series continues to hold many hidden mysteries and the power to astonish, over three decades after its first appearance in coin-op establishments. This latest compilation covering the series' initial period, comprising four original arcade titles, multiple console adaptations, and related titles, goes beyond simply a faithfully reproduced series of classics and not-so-classics — it's also a comprehensive historical account about the making of the legendary series.

Being a long-time enthusiast of the series who has paid close attention its development and progression, there was plenty new for me to learn and appreciate about the series.

What Makes the Historical Compilation

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like other vintage game anthologies from the development team Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, portion interactive museum. This compilation features simulated releases of the original arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, plus console and handheld ports of certain releases. This compilation also features the brand's experiments at spinoffs, like action-oriented titles Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — among the series' most criticized releases.

The Legacy Kollection consequently doesn't represent a greatest hits compilation, but an examination of the franchise's initial era, when developer Midway and brand founders the creative duo behind the series were figuring out how to develop a battle series, digitized from footage of actual people, on the fly. Watching the documentary — that features vintage recordings, contemporary discussions, and digital copies of vintage posters, illustrated stories, and including internal communications — it's astonishing to observe how Mortal Kombat went from humble beginnings to a worldwide phenomenon. It's truly remarkable to watch a handful of pioneering developers, developing without clear direction or oversight, focus their cultural enthusiasms into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Educational Component

The educational segment of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection documents the ascent of the combat franchise and its creators' careers at the currently closed Midway. It further illustrates how those same creators contended with how to regularly outdo their previous work, facing no small amount of demand to replicate their triumphs. It serves as a compelling period piece composed of analog films and analog photographs and pencil sketches, which demonstrate the hands-on approach of the series' creation process and how oral tradition helped circulate its mysteries and undisclosed elements of the series in its peak period in gaming halls. Delivered in easily digestible portions, it's highly engaging series of documentary shorts that covers video games, graphic novels, movies and even the comical physical events. The compilation also contains some unused moves and game character images among its archived development assets.

Playable Component

Distributed throughout 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 visual presentation, emulated nearly perfectly on modern hardware.

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. Numerous titles here remain enjoyable, particularly during one-on-one local play. But playing against the computer-controlled adversaries in these titles is a demonstration of how basic and unfair the development approached in the franchise's pioneering releases. CPU-controlled opponents obviously use unfair advantages or are otherwise dumb as rocks. Lacking someone to play against — network gaming is included in numerous anthology releases, but somewhat limited in options — you'll be missing out.

Visual Options

The 23 playable Mortal Kombat games in the collection, a blend of arcade, console, and handheld games, are accurately emulated, though I have noticed a couple minor issues — primarily delayed responses and sporadic glitches, particularly in Mortal Kombat 4. Although the titles are largely presented as-is, the development team has added several intelligent quality-of-life features and graphical adjustment settings. For example, you can choose to show each character's special moves on the display and select to activate unlimited duration to perform a Fatality. There are also options for unlocking secret characters, without having to perform some esoteric trick to unlock them.

Visually, the games can be played with a variety of visual enhancements and presentation styles. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection includes remarkably accurate filters that mimic the CRT monitors of gaming halls or home televisions, or the monochrome green display of a Game Boy. A particularly nice touch is the choice to enable coin-op-inspired frames surrounding the screen, with the specific combat game you're playing faithfully and subtly duplicating against the simulated dark plastic edges. It's very artistically charming.

Bonus Elements

The collection includes numerous appreciated elements beyond the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, containing a soundtrack mode that lets you revisit the tunes of various fighting releases excluding the sounds of combatants violently defeating each other. There are also combatant descriptions that contain backgrounds and multiple story elements displayed via the idle displays of gaming hall releases and endings.

Historical Preservation

A particularly notable inclusion for committed franchise followers is the chance to experience 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 early attempt by Midway at head-to-head network battles in gaming halls. The Wavenet Edition of the game is almost exactly the same to UMK3, but included the option to compete against internet adversaries and contained several small bug fixes and balance. But the Wavenet update didn't find widespread adoption, in part