Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection: A Stunning Success for the Combat Series Franchise

The Mortal Kombat series continues to hold numerous undisclosed elements and the ability to amaze, more than 30 years after its original launch in arcades. This latest compilation covering the brand's formative years, featuring four arcade games, multiple console adaptations, and derivative games, goes beyond just a well-emulated series of classics and not-so-classics — it functions as a detailed chronicle about the creation of the legendary series.

Being a long-time Mortal Kombat fan who has paid close attention its development and progression, there was much to discover for me to discover and admire about the series.

What Makes the Legacy Collection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection comparable to other vintage game anthologies from the creators at Digital Eclipse, part documentary, part playable archive. The anthology contains digitally recreated editions of the pioneering arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, including television and mobile versions of several of these titles. The collection even includes the series' ventures at spin-off titles, like action-oriented titles 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 “best of” collection, but a study of the series' formative period, when developer Midway and series co-creators the creative duo behind the series were determining how to create a combat title, digitized from footage of live performers, as they went along. Observing the archival material — containing historical videos, contemporary discussions, and scans of old flyers, illustrated stories, and even interoffice faxes — it's astonishing to observe how Mortal Kombat went from humble beginnings to a international craze. It's truly remarkable to see a group of young game developers, working with minimal planning or supervision, channel their pop-culture interests into establishing an enduring gaming brand.

Educational Component

The historical documentation of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection documents the ascent of the combat franchise and the developers' professional journeys at the now-defunct Midway. It further illustrates how these identical developers reckoned with how to routinely one-up themselves, facing no small amount of stress to duplicate their achievements. It represents an intriguing historical record constructed using analog films and traditional photos and hand-drawn illustrations, which showcase the DIY nature of the series' creation process and how personal recommendations helped spread its rumors and secrets of MK in its golden era in coin-op establishments. Delivered in easily digestible portions, it's thoroughly enjoyable collection of mini-documentaries that includes titles, illustrated stories, cinematic adaptations and including the humorous real-world tour. It also includes some unused moves and digital fighter representations among its previously unreleased material.

Interactive Experience

Interspersed along the five-segment historical film's chronology are opportunities to engage with the actual titles. During specific moments, audience members can jump into a Mortal Kombat title or one of its home console ports to reexperience its mechanics and visual presentation, simulated with remarkable precision on modern hardware.

I spent the bulk of my time playing the arcade classics, especially Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Numerous titles here stand the test of time, especially in direct competitive sessions. Yet competing with the aforementioned game's AI-controlled opponents is a testament to how primitive and unbalanced the development approached in the series' initial installments. CPU-controlled opponents clearly employ dishonest tactics or are otherwise dumb as rocks. If you don't have a human opponent — network gaming is included in most titles in the collection, but too light on features — you'll miss the full enjoyment.

Display Features

The two dozen available combat games in the collection, a blend of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are faithfully recreated, though I've observed a handful slight anomalies — mostly input lag and the occasional bug, notably within Mortal Kombat 4. And while the games are largely presented as-is, the creators has incorporated various clever quality-of-life features and visual presentation options. For instance, users can elect to show each character's special moves during gameplay and choose to enable endless periods to perform a Fatality. Also included are choices for accessing hidden fighters, eliminating the need to execute some esoteric trick to obtain them.

Artistically, the releases can be enjoyed with multiple filters and visual treatments. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection includes remarkably accurate effects that reproduce the CRT monitors of arcades or domestic TVs, or the greenscale screen of a Nintendo handheld. A notably appreciated element is the setting to activate coin-op-inspired frames framing the gameplay, with the MK game of your choice faithfully and subtly duplicating against the simulated dark plastic edges. It's very artistically charming.

Additional Features

The collection includes numerous appreciated elements beyond the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, including a music player that allows users to rediscover the soundtracks of different combat titles absent the noise of two kombatants viciously slaughtering each other. There are also character profiles that contain backgrounds and multiple story elements shown through the idle displays of gaming hall releases and conclusions.

Lost Media Recovery

Among the most significant features for dedicated series enthusiasts is the chance to experience a example of historically missing material in the form of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This specific release, a slightly updated version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an pioneering effort from the developer at head-to-head network battles in coin-op establishments. The online-enabled release of the game is virtually identical to UMK3, but featured the capability to compete against internet adversaries and contained several small glitch repairs and refinements. But the Wavenet update failed to achieve popularity, in part