Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection: An Almost Perfect Triumph for the Combat Series Franchise

This iconic fighting game still possesses numerous undisclosed elements and the ability to amaze, well past its 30th anniversary after its first appearance in arcades. This latest compilation covering the franchise's earliest days, which includes four arcade games, several home system versions, and related titles, goes beyond simply a faithfully reproduced set of legendary games and not-so-classics — it's also a comprehensive historical account about the making of the legendary series.

Being a long-time Mortal Kombat fan who has carefully followed its creation and evolution, there was plenty new for me to discover and admire about the series.

What Constitutes the Historical Compilation

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection similar to other vintage game anthologies from developer Digital Eclipse, part historical documentation, part playable archive. The collection includes digitally recreated editions of the first 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 brand's experiments at derivative games, like action games 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 highlight reel anthology, 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, produced using film material of live performers, as they went along. Observing the archival material — that features vintage recordings, contemporary discussions, and digital copies of vintage posters, graphic novels, and including internal communications — it's astonishing to observe how Mortal Kombat went from simple starts to a worldwide phenomenon. It's genuinely amazing to see a group of young game developers, operating with virtually no plan or oversight, direct their entertainment passions into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Educational Component

The educational segment of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection charts the rise of Mortal Kombat and the developers' professional journeys at the no-longer-operating Midway. It then goes on to show how these identical developers reckoned with how to consistently surpass their achievements, experiencing considerable demand to replicate their triumphs. It represents an intriguing historical record constructed using VHS tapes and analog photographs and hand-drawn illustrations, which reveal the self-made character of the franchise's production method and how personal recommendations helped spread its rumors and hidden aspects of Mortal Kombat in its peak period in gaming halls. Presented in manageable segments, it's thoroughly enjoyable collection of mini-documentaries 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.

Interactive Experience

Distributed throughout the five-segment historical film's chronology are opportunities to engage with the games themselves. At various points, viewers can hop into a combat game session or a console adaptation to rediscover its combat system and graphics, recreated with impressive accuracy on modern hardware.

I allocated the majority of my time playing the arcade classics, particularly Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Numerous titles here stand the test of time, especially in one-on-one local play. Yet competing with the computer-controlled adversaries in these titles is a reminder of how crude and unbalanced the coding existed in the franchise's pioneering releases. AI-managed characters obviously use unfair advantages or are conversely remarkably unintelligent. Lacking someone to play against — network gaming is included in the majority of included games, but rather basic in functionality — the experience will be incomplete.

Display Features

The two dozen available combat games in the compilation, a blend of arcade, console, and handheld games, are faithfully recreated, though I've observed a handful slight anomalies — mostly input lag and sporadic glitches, particularly in Mortal Kombat 4. Although the titles are mostly shown in their original form, the development team has added several intelligent quality-of-life features and graphical adjustment settings. For instance, you can choose to display fighter-specific techniques during gameplay and opt to have unlimited duration to execute finishing moves. Additionally available are settings for accessing hidden fighters, without having to perform some esoteric trick to obtain them.

Visually, the games can be experienced with numerous filters and visual treatments. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection includes remarkably accurate effects that reproduce the cathode-ray tube displays of arcades or household displays, or the greenscale screen of a Nintendo handheld. A notably appreciated element is the setting to activate arcade-like bezels surrounding the screen, with the specific combat game you're playing accurately and softly reflecting against the simulated dark plastic edges. It's remarkably visually appealing.

Bonus Elements

There are plenty of appreciated elements beyond the documentary and emulated arcade classics, containing a soundtrack mode that lets you revisit the soundtracks of different fighting releases excluding the sounds of fighters brutally eliminating opponents. Also present are fighter biographies that contain backgrounds and numerous narrative components displayed via arcade games' attract mode screens and final sequences.

Lost Media Recovery

Among the most significant features 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 specific release, a moderately improved edition of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an initial venture by the company at one-on-one internet-based play in arcades. The Wavenet Edition of the game is practically indistinguishable to UMK3, but featured the capability to battle network competitors and contained several small bug fixes and balance. Yet this online edition didn't find widespread adoption, in part