The Legacy Kollection of Mortal Kombat: A Near-Flawless Victory for the Fighting Game Brand

The Mortal Kombat series continues to hold many hidden mysteries and the power to astonish, more than 30 years after its initial debut in arcades. This latest compilation including the brand's formative years, featuring four original arcade titles, various home ports, and spinoffs, transcends simply a faithfully reproduced collection of iconic titles and not-so-classics — it's also a detailed chronicle about the making of the iconic franchise.

Even as a lifelong devotee of the franchise who has carefully followed its development and progression, there was plenty new for me to discover and admire about the series.

What Defines the Legacy Kollection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection comparable to previous classic compilations from the creators at Digital Eclipse, part documentary, section playable historical record. The anthology contains simulated releases of the pioneering arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, including television and mobile versions of certain releases. The collection even includes the brand's experiments at spin-off titles, like action-oriented titles Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — among the series' worst entries.

The Legacy Kollection is therefore not a “best of” collection, but a study of the series' formative period, when the creators at Midway and series co-creators the creative duo behind the series were determining how to create a combat title, digitized from footage of real actors, through experimentation. Observing the archival material — which includes archival footage, recent conversations, and digital copies of vintage posters, graphic novels, and including internal communications — it's incredible to witness how Mortal Kombat went from humble beginnings to a international craze. It's truly remarkable to observe several young game developers, operating with virtually no plan or supervision, direct their entertainment passions into creating a legendary video game series.

Historical Section

The educational segment of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection traces the growth of the combat franchise and the founders' vocational paths at the now-defunct Midway. It further illustrates how those same creators reckoned with how to regularly outdo their previous work, experiencing considerable demand to replicate their achievements. It's a fascinating time capsule constructed using video recordings and traditional photos and pencil sketches, which showcase the DIY nature of Mortal Kombat's development and how word of mouth helped circulate its mysteries and secrets of MK in its golden era in coin-op establishments. Presented in manageable segments, it's highly engaging set of brief historical films that includes titles, illustrated stories, cinematic adaptations and even the comical physical events. It also includes some unreleased actions and game character images among its archived development assets.

Playable Component

Interspersed along the quintet of documentary episodes' progression are opportunities to engage with the original releases. At certain intervals, audience members can jump into a Mortal Kombat title or one of its home console ports to reexperience its mechanics and artistic style, recreated with impressive accuracy on contemporary systems.

I allocated the majority of my time playing the arcade classics, specifically Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Numerous titles here remain enjoyable, particularly during direct competitive sessions. But playing against the computer-controlled adversaries in these titles is a testament to how primitive and unjust the development approached in the series' initial installments. Computer-directed fighters clearly employ dishonest tactics or are conversely remarkably unintelligent. If you don't have someone to play against — online play is available in the majority of included games, but too light on features — the experience will be incomplete.

Visual Options

The two dozen available combat games in the compilation, a blend of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are precisely simulated, though I detected a couple minor issues — mostly input lag and intermittent errors, especially with Mortal Kombat 4. Even though the releases are mostly shown in their original form, the development team has incorporated various clever quality-of-life features and graphical adjustment settings. For example, you can choose to display fighter-specific techniques on-screen and opt to have endless periods to execute finishing moves. Also included are choices for revealing concealed combatants, without having to perform obscure techniques to obtain them.

Graphically, the titles can be played with a variety of filters and visual treatments. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection provides highly authentic filters that mimic the CRT monitors of gaming halls or home televisions, or the limited color monitor of a Game Boy. A notably appreciated element is the option to have arcade-like bezels encircling the display, with the specific combat game you're playing faithfully and subtly duplicating against the simulated dark plastic edges. It's very artistically charming.

Additional Features

There are plenty of nice touches beyond the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, containing a soundtrack mode that allows users to rediscover the tunes of various Mortal Kombat games absent the noise of combatants violently defeating each other. Additionally included are combatant descriptions that contain backgrounds and multiple story elements shown through arcade games' attract mode screens and conclusions.

Archival Discovery

One of the biggest highlights for committed franchise followers is the ability to access a segment of previously unavailable content in the guise of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This specific release, a slightly updated version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an early attempt by Midway at head-to-head network battles in gaming halls. This network version of the game is practically indistinguishable to UMK3, but included the option to battle network competitors and featured various slight bug fixes and balance. But the Wavenet update never gained traction, in part