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

The Mortal Kombat series continues to hold many hidden mysteries and the capacity to surprise, more than 30 years after its initial debut in arcades. This latest compilation including the series' initial period, featuring a quartet of arcade releases, several home system versions, and derivative games, transcends only a accurately simulated collection of iconic titles including less celebrated releases — it's also a detailed chronicle about the development of the iconic franchise.

Being a long-time devotee of the franchise who has paid close attention its creation and evolution, there was plenty new for me to learn and appreciate about the series.

What Defines the Legacy Kollection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like other retro collections from the development team Digital Eclipse, part historical documentation, part playable archive. This compilation features emulated versions of the pioneering arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, plus console and handheld ports of several of these titles. This compilation also features the franchise's attempts at spinoffs, 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 “best of” collection, but an examination of the series' formative period, when developer Midway and franchise originators the visionary developers were discovering methods to develop a battle series, digitized from footage of live performers, as they went along. Watching the documentary — that features vintage recordings, recent conversations, and scans of old flyers, illustrated stories, and even interoffice faxes — it's incredible to witness how the series transformed from modest origins to a worldwide phenomenon. It's frankly astounding to watch a handful of young game developers, working with minimal planning or guidance, direct their entertainment passions into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Documentary Portion

The documentary portion of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection documents the ascent of the fighting series and its creators' careers at the no-longer-operating Midway. It then goes on to show how those same creators addressed how to routinely one-up themselves, experiencing considerable stress to duplicate their success. It's a fascinating time capsule made from video recordings and traditional photos and hand-drawn illustrations, which reveal the self-made character of Mortal Kombat's development and how word of mouth helped spread its rumors and hidden aspects of Mortal Kombat in its arcade heyday. Told in bite-sized chunks, it's an eminently watchable set of brief historical films that includes titles, illustrated stories, cinematic adaptations and even the silly live-action tour. It also includes some never-implemented techniques and character sprites among its archived development assets.

Playable Component

Placed within the five-segment historical film's chronology are prompts to play the actual titles. At various points, users can directly access a game of Mortal Kombat or one of its home console ports to rediscover its combat system and artistic style, recreated with impressive accuracy on current technology.

I allocated the majority of my time playing the arcade classics, especially Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Many of the games here hold up, especially in one-on-one local play. But playing against the aforementioned game's AI-controlled opponents is a reminder of how crude and unfair the development approached in the franchise's pioneering releases. Computer-directed fighters blatantly cheat to win or are alternatively incredibly stupid. If you don't have another person to compete with — internet multiplayer exists in most titles in the collection, but somewhat limited in options — you'll miss the full enjoyment.

Display Features

The two dozen available combat games in the collection, a combination of gaming hall, television, and mobile releases, are accurately emulated, though I detected a few small quirks — mainly control latency and sporadic glitches, particularly in Mortal Kombat 4. Even though the releases are largely presented as-is, the development team has incorporated various clever convenience enhancements and graphical adjustment settings. As an illustration, players have the option to show each character's special moves during gameplay and opt to have infinite time to perform a Fatality. Also included are choices for accessing hidden fighters, without having to perform obscure techniques to obtain them.

Graphically, the titles can be experienced with numerous graphical effects and display options. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection offers very realistic filters that mimic the cathode-ray tube displays of arcades or home televisions, or the limited color monitor of a Nintendo handheld. A particularly nice touch is the choice to enable coin-op-inspired frames encircling the display, with your selected Mortal Kombat title precisely and gently mirroring against the faux black plastic borders. It's quite aesthetically pleasing.

Additional Features

There are plenty of welcome features besides the educational material and simulated classic games, including a music player that lets you revisit the tunes of various combat titles without the din of two kombatants viciously slaughtering each other. There are also character profiles that feature histories and numerous narrative components presented by the idle displays of gaming hall releases and endings.

Historical Preservation

A particularly notable inclusion for hardcore Mortal Kombat fans is the opportunity to play a segment of previously unavailable content in the form of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This particular edition, a moderately improved edition of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an pioneering effort from the developer at head-to-head network battles in gaming halls. The online-enabled release of the game is practically indistinguishable to UMK3, but provided the ability to challenge online opponents and included some minor bug fixes and balance. Yet this online edition never gained traction, in part