Mortal Kombat's Legacy Kollection: An Almost Perfect Triumph for the Fighting Game Series

This iconic fighting game still possesses its share of secrets and the capacity to surprise, well past its 30th anniversary after its initial debut in gaming halls. The recent anthology including the series' initial period, which includes four arcade games, several home system versions, and related titles, goes beyond just a well-emulated set of legendary games including less celebrated releases — it additionally serves as a rich documentary about the creation of the iconic franchise.

As a dedicated Mortal Kombat fan who has closely monitored its creation and evolution, there was numerous fresh aspects for me to understand and value about the series.

What Makes the Legacy Collection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection comparable to other retro collections from the creators at Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, part playable archive. The anthology contains 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 some of those games. The collection even includes the series' ventures at derivative games, like action games Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — some of the brand's most criticized releases.

The Legacy Kollection is therefore not a greatest hits compilation, but an exploration into the franchise's initial era, when developer Midway and brand founders the creative duo behind the series were determining how to create a combat title, created from video recordings of real actors, through experimentation. Observing the archival material — that features vintage recordings, new interviews, and scans of old flyers, graphic novels, and even interoffice faxes — it's incredible to witness how Mortal Kombat went from simple starts to a global sensation. It's frankly astounding 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.

Historical Section

The educational segment of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection traces the growth of the combat franchise and the developers' professional journeys at the no-longer-operating Midway. It subsequently demonstrates how those same creators addressed how to regularly outdo their previous work, facing no small amount of stress to duplicate their achievements. It serves as a compelling period piece made from analog films and analog photographs and pencil sketches, which showcase the DIY nature of the series' creation process and how oral tradition helped circulate its mysteries and hidden aspects of Mortal Kombat in its arcade heyday. Delivered in easily digestible portions, it's an eminently watchable series of documentary shorts that covers video games, graphic novels, movies and including the humorous real-world tour. It also includes some unreleased actions and character sprites among its previously unreleased material.

Interactive Experience

Placed within the quintet of documentary episodes' progression are prompts to play the actual titles. At certain intervals, users can directly access a game of Mortal Kombat or a home system version to reexperience its mechanics and visual presentation, emulated nearly perfectly on contemporary systems.

I spent the bulk of my time playing the arcade classics, particularly Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Several releases here remain enjoyable, especially in local multiplayer matches. However, facing the aforementioned game's AI-controlled opponents is a demonstration of how basic and unjust the development approached in the franchise's pioneering releases. CPU-controlled opponents obviously use unfair advantages or are alternatively incredibly stupid. Lacking another person to compete with — online play is available in the majority of included games, but rather basic in functionality — the experience will be incomplete.

Visual Options

The twenty-three accessible Mortal Kombat titles in the collection, a blend of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are faithfully recreated, though I detected a handful slight anomalies — mostly input lag and intermittent errors, notably within Mortal Kombat 4. Although the titles are primarily displayed authentically, the development team has incorporated various clever user experience improvements and display customization choices. For example, you can choose to display fighter-specific techniques during gameplay and choose to enable infinite time to perform a Fatality. Additionally available are settings for accessing hidden fighters, removing the requirement to complete complicated methods to unlock them.

Artistically, the releases can be played with a variety of graphical effects and display options. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection includes remarkably accurate filters that mimic the CRT monitors of coin-op establishments or home televisions, or the greenscale screen of a Game Boy. A notably appreciated element is the setting to activate gaming hall-style borders surrounding the screen, with your selected Mortal Kombat title accurately and softly reflecting against the simulated dark plastic edges. It's quite aesthetically pleasing.

Extra Content

There are plenty of nice touches beyond the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, containing a soundtrack mode that enables players to reexperience the soundtracks of different Mortal Kombat games excluding the sounds of combatants violently defeating each other. There are also character profiles that feature histories and multiple story elements presented by the idle displays of gaming hall releases and final sequences.

Historical Preservation

One of the biggest highlights for dedicated series enthusiasts is the ability to access a segment of previously unavailable content in the form of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This particular edition, a somewhat revised iteration of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an pioneering effort from the developer at one-on-one internet-based play in arcades. The Wavenet Edition of the game is almost exactly the same to UMK3, but provided the ability to challenge online opponents and featured various slight error corrections and adjustments. However, this network version never gained traction, in part