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Mortal Kombat continues to hold its share of secrets and the ability to amaze, well past its 30th anniversary after its initial debut in gaming halls. This latest compilation including the brand's formative years, featuring four arcade games, several home system versions, and spinoffs, goes beyond just a well-emulated collection of iconic titles and not-so-classics — it functions as a detailed chronicle about the development of the iconic franchise.

As a dedicated devotee of the franchise who has paid close attention its origins and transformation, there was much to discover for me to learn and appreciate about the series.

What Defines the Historical Compilation

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection comparable to other vintage game anthologies from developer Digital Eclipse, part documentary, portion interactive museum. This compilation features emulated versions of the first 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 series' ventures at derivative games, like action games Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — among the series' least successful installments.

The Legacy Kollection is therefore not a highlight reel anthology, but an examination of Mortal Kombat's early days, when the development team Midway and brand founders the visionary developers were figuring out how to develop a battle series, produced using film material of live performers, on the fly. Viewing the historical footage — which includes vintage recordings, contemporary discussions, and scans of old flyers, comics, and including internal communications — it's remarkable to see how the franchise evolved from modest origins to a worldwide phenomenon. It's genuinely amazing to observe several young game developers, working with minimal planning or supervision, direct their entertainment passions into creating a legendary video game series.

Educational Component

The historical documentation of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection charts the rise of the fighting series and the developers' professional journeys at the currently closed Midway. It subsequently demonstrates how those same creators contended with how to consistently surpass their achievements, experiencing considerable stress to duplicate their success. It represents an intriguing historical record composed of video recordings and film-based pictures and hand-drawn illustrations, which showcase the DIY nature of Mortal Kombat's development and how oral tradition helped circulate its mysteries and secrets of MK in its golden era in coin-op establishments. Delivered in easily digestible portions, it's an eminently watchable series of documentary shorts that covers video games, graphic novels, movies and even the comical physical events. The compilation also contains some never-implemented techniques and game character images among its cutting-room-floor content.

Interactive Gaming

Distributed throughout the quintet of documentary episodes' progression are invitations to experience the actual titles. At various points, users can directly access a combat game session or a home system version to revisit its gameplay and artistic style, emulated nearly perfectly 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 remain enjoyable, particularly during direct competitive sessions. Yet competing with the computer-controlled adversaries in these titles is a reminder of how crude and unfair the programming was in the series' initial installments. CPU-controlled opponents obviously use unfair advantages or are conversely remarkably unintelligent. Lacking another person to compete with — online play is available in most titles in the collection, but rather basic in functionality — you'll miss the full enjoyment.

Display Features

The 23 playable Mortal Kombat games in the collection, a mix of arcade, console, and handheld games, are precisely simulated, though I detected a couple minor issues — mainly control latency and intermittent errors, notably within Mortal Kombat 4. Although the titles are largely presented as-is, the development team has incorporated various clever user experience improvements and display customization choices. For instance, you can choose to display fighter-specific techniques on-screen and select to activate infinite time to complete lethal techniques. Also included are choices for unlocking secret characters, eliminating the need to execute complicated methods to access them.

Graphically, the titles can be played with a variety of visual enhancements and presentation styles. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection offers very realistic options that simulate the traditional television screens of coin-op establishments or home televisions, or the monochrome green display of a portable gaming device. An especially welcome feature is the setting to activate gaming hall-style borders encircling the display, with the specific combat game you're playing accurately and softly reflecting against the simulated dark plastic edges. It's quite aesthetically pleasing.

Additional Features

There are plenty of welcome features besides the documentary and emulated arcade classics, containing a soundtrack mode that enables players to reexperience the music from multiple combat titles absent the noise of fighters brutally eliminating opponents. There are also fighter biographies that feature histories and numerous narrative components presented by the idle displays of gaming hall releases and final sequences.

Lost Media Recovery

Among the most significant features for dedicated series enthusiasts is the ability to access a piece of "lost media" in the guise of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This version of the game, a moderately improved edition of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an initial venture by the company at one-on-one internet-based play in coin-op establishments. The online-enabled release of the game is practically indistinguishable to UMK3, but featured the capability to challenge online opponents and included some minor error corrections and adjustments. But the Wavenet update didn't find widespread adoption, in part