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Mortal Kombat still possesses its share of secrets and the capacity to surprise, well past its 30th anniversary after its first appearance in arcades. This latest compilation including the series' initial period, featuring four original arcade titles, multiple console adaptations, and spinoffs, goes beyond simply a faithfully reproduced set of legendary games and not-so-classics — it functions as a comprehensive historical account about the making of the iconic franchise.

As a dedicated enthusiast of the series who has carefully followed its development and progression, there was much to discover for me to discover and admire about the series.

What Makes the Legacy Kollection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like previous classic compilations from the creators at Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, section playable historical record. 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 brand's experiments at spin-off titles, like action games Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — among the series' least successful installments.

The Legacy Kollection consequently doesn't represent a greatest hits compilation, but a study of the series' formative period, when the creators at Midway and franchise originators the visionary developers were determining how to make a fighting game, digitized from footage of live performers, through experimentation. Watching the documentary — which includes vintage recordings, contemporary discussions, and digital copies of vintage posters, graphic novels, and even interoffice faxes — it's remarkable to see how the series transformed from modest origins to a international craze. It's frankly astounding to see a group of pioneering developers, developing without clear direction or guidance, focus their cultural enthusiasms into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Historical Section

The educational segment of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection documents the ascent of Mortal Kombat and the developers' professional journeys at the currently closed Midway. It further illustrates how those same creators reckoned with how to routinely one-up themselves, facing no small amount of demand to replicate their achievements. It's a fascinating time capsule constructed using video recordings and film-based pictures and manual drawings, which reveal the self-made character of the series' creation process and how oral tradition helped disseminate its secrets and undisclosed elements of the series in its arcade heyday. Presented in manageable segments, it's thoroughly enjoyable series of documentary shorts that includes titles, illustrated stories, cinematic adaptations and even the comical physical events. The compilation also contains some unused moves and character sprites among its cutting-room-floor content.

Interactive Experience

Distributed throughout the five-part documentary's timeline are prompts to play the games themselves. At certain intervals, users can directly access a Mortal Kombat title or a console adaptation to revisit its gameplay and artistic style, simulated with remarkable precision on current technology.

I spent the bulk of my time playing the arcade classics, specifically Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Several releases here hold up, particularly during one-on-one local play. But playing against the aforementioned game's AI-controlled opponents is a reminder of how crude and unbalanced the coding existed in the franchise's pioneering releases. AI-managed characters clearly employ dishonest tactics or are otherwise dumb as rocks. If you don't have a human opponent — network gaming is included in numerous anthology releases, but somewhat limited in options — you'll be missing out.

Visual Options

The twenty-three accessible Mortal Kombat titles in the compilation, a blend of arcade, console, and handheld games, are accurately emulated, though I've observed a handful slight anomalies — mainly control latency and the occasional bug, particularly in Mortal Kombat 4. And while the games are mostly shown in their original form, the development team has included some smart quality-of-life features and display customization choices. For instance, you can choose to display fighter-specific techniques on the display and choose to enable infinite time to complete lethal techniques. Also included are choices for revealing concealed combatants, without having to perform complicated methods to obtain them.

Graphically, the titles can be experienced with numerous visual enhancements and presentation styles. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection includes remarkably accurate options that simulate the traditional television screens of coin-op establishments or home televisions, or the limited color monitor of a Game Boy. A notably appreciated element is the option to have coin-op-inspired frames surrounding the screen, with your selected Mortal Kombat title precisely and gently mirroring against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's quite aesthetically pleasing.

Bonus Elements

Players will discover multiple nice touches beyond the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, featuring an audio component that lets you revisit the tunes of various fighting releases absent the noise of combatants violently defeating each other. Additionally included are character profiles that include bios and numerous narrative components displayed via arcade games' attract mode screens and conclusions.

Archival Discovery

Among the most significant features for dedicated series enthusiasts is the chance to experience a piece of "lost media" in the form of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This version of the game, a somewhat revised iteration of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an initial venture by the company at one-on-one internet-based play in gaming halls. The Wavenet Edition of the game is practically indistinguishable to UMK3, but featured the capability to compete against internet adversaries and contained several small bug fixes and balance. But the Wavenet update didn't find widespread adoption, in part