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Mortal Kombat continues to hold its share of secrets and the ability to amaze, more than 30 years after its first appearance in gaming halls. A new collection including the series' initial period, featuring four original arcade titles, several home system versions, and derivative games, goes beyond simply a faithfully reproduced series of classics and not-so-classics — it's also a detailed chronicle about the making of the iconic franchise.

Even as a lifelong Mortal Kombat fan who has paid close attention its development and progression, there was much to discover for me to learn and appreciate about the series.

What Constitutes the Legacy Kollection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like previous classic compilations from the development team Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, part playable archive. This compilation features simulated releases of the original arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, along with home system and portable adaptations of several of these titles. The anthology additionally contains the brand's experiments at spinoffs, like combat-focused releases Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — some of the brand's most criticized releases.

The Legacy Kollection consequently doesn't represent a greatest hits compilation, but an examination of the series' formative period, when the creators at Midway and brand founders the visionary developers were discovering methods to create a combat title, produced using film material of real actors, through experimentation. Observing the archival material — containing historical videos, new interviews, and scans of old flyers, graphic novels, and even interoffice faxes — it's astonishing to observe how Mortal Kombat went from simple starts to a global sensation. It's frankly astounding to observe several early video game creators, developing without clear direction or guidance, direct their entertainment passions into creating a legendary video game series.

Educational Component

The historical documentation of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection documents the ascent of the combat franchise and the founders' vocational paths at the no-longer-operating Midway. It then goes on to show how those same creators addressed how to routinely one-up themselves, encountering significant pressure to repeat their achievements. It represents an intriguing historical record composed of analog films and film-based pictures and pencil sketches, which showcase the DIY nature of Mortal Kombat's development and how oral tradition helped circulate its mysteries and hidden aspects of Mortal Kombat in its arcade heyday. Told in bite-sized chunks, it's an eminently watchable series of documentary shorts that spans games, comics, films and including the humorous real-world tour. The collection additionally features some unused moves and game character images among its cutting-room-floor content.

Interactive Gaming

Distributed throughout the five-part documentary's timeline are opportunities to engage with the actual titles. At various points, viewers can hop into a combat game session or one of its home console ports 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, specifically Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Many of the games here stand the test of time, particularly during direct competitive sessions. But playing against the aforementioned game's AI-controlled opponents is a reminder of how crude and unjust the programming was in the franchise's pioneering releases. CPU-controlled opponents clearly employ dishonest tactics or are otherwise dumb as rocks. Without having a human opponent — online play is available in most titles in the collection, but rather basic in functionality — you'll miss the full enjoyment.

Technical Presentation

The twenty-three accessible Mortal Kombat titles in the compilation, a combination of gaming hall, television, and mobile releases, are precisely simulated, 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 largely presented as-is, developer Digital Eclipse has included some smart convenience enhancements and graphical adjustment settings. For instance, you can choose to show each character's special moves on the display and choose to enable infinite time to execute finishing moves. There are also options for revealing concealed combatants, eliminating the need to execute obscure techniques to obtain them.

Visually, the games can be played with a variety of filters and visual treatments. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection provides highly authentic effects that reproduce the traditional television screens of gaming halls or domestic TVs, or the limited color monitor of a Game Boy. An especially welcome feature is the choice to enable gaming hall-style borders surrounding the screen, with the specific combat game you're playing accurately and softly reflecting against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's remarkably visually appealing.

Extra Content

The collection includes numerous nice touches beyond the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, featuring an audio component that lets you revisit the soundtracks of different combat titles without the din of combatants violently defeating each other. Also present are character profiles that include bios and the various bits of lore presented by the demo sequences of coin-op titles and conclusions.

Lost Media Recovery

A particularly notable inclusion for committed franchise followers is the chance to experience a segment of previously unavailable content 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. This network version of the game is almost exactly the same to UMK3, but provided the ability to compete against internet adversaries and contained several small error corrections and adjustments. But the Wavenet update never gained traction, in part