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Mortal Kombat continues to hold many hidden mysteries and the ability to amaze, well past its 30th anniversary after its first appearance in coin-op establishments. The recent anthology covering the franchise's earliest days, comprising four arcade games, multiple console adaptations, and spinoffs, transcends only a accurately simulated series of classics along with lesser-known entries — it's also a detailed chronicle about the development of the legendary series.

Even as a lifelong devotee of the franchise who has closely monitored its creation and evolution, there was much to discover for me to learn and appreciate about the series.

What Constitutes the Legacy Collection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like previous classic compilations from developer Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, section playable historical record. This compilation features emulated versions of the original 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-oriented titles Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — two of the franchise's least successful installments.

The Legacy Kollection thus isn't a highlight reel anthology, but an exploration into Mortal Kombat's early days, when the creators at Midway and brand founders the visionary developers were figuring out how to develop a battle series, produced using film material of live performers, through experimentation. Viewing the historical footage — which includes vintage recordings, new interviews, and scans of old flyers, illustrated stories, and including internal communications — it's astonishing to observe how the franchise evolved from simple starts to a worldwide phenomenon. It's frankly astounding to see a group of early video game creators, operating with virtually no plan or guidance, direct their entertainment passions into establishing an enduring gaming brand.

Documentary Portion

The historical documentation of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection charts the rise 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 consistently surpass their achievements, facing no small amount of pressure to repeat their achievements. It represents an intriguing historical record made from analog films and traditional photos and manual drawings, which reveal the self-made character of the series' creation process and how personal recommendations helped circulate its mysteries and secrets of MK in its arcade heyday. Told in bite-sized chunks, it's thoroughly enjoyable series of documentary shorts that spans games, comics, films and even the silly live-action tour. The compilation also contains some unreleased actions and game character images among its cutting-room-floor content.

Playable Component

Interspersed along the five-segment historical film's chronology are invitations to experience the actual titles. At various points, audience members can jump into a Mortal Kombat title or a console adaptation to rediscover its combat system and graphics, emulated nearly perfectly 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. Numerous titles here hold up, notably with one-on-one local play. But playing against the aforementioned game's AI-controlled opponents is a demonstration of how basic and unjust the development approached in early Mortal Kombat games. AI-managed characters blatantly cheat to win or are alternatively incredibly stupid. Without having another person to compete with — network gaming is included in numerous anthology releases, but too light on features — the experience will be incomplete.

Technical Presentation

The 23 playable Mortal Kombat games in the anthology, a combination of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are faithfully recreated, though I have noticed a couple minor issues — mainly control latency and intermittent errors, notably within Mortal Kombat 4. Even though the releases are largely presented as-is, the creators has added several intelligent quality-of-life features and visual presentation options. 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. There are also options for unlocking secret characters, removing the requirement to complete obscure techniques to unlock them.

Visually, the games can be experienced with numerous filters and visual treatments. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection provides highly authentic effects that reproduce the cathode-ray tube displays of gaming halls or household displays, or the monochrome green display of a Game Boy. A particularly nice touch is the setting to activate gaming hall-style borders surrounding the screen, with the specific combat game you're playing faithfully and subtly duplicating against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's quite aesthetically pleasing.

Additional Features

The collection includes numerous appreciated elements beyond the educational material and simulated classic games, including a music player that enables players to reexperience the tunes of various fighting releases excluding the sounds of fighters brutally eliminating opponents. Additionally included are fighter biographies that include bios and numerous narrative components presented by the idle displays of gaming hall releases and final sequences.

Lost Media Recovery

One of the biggest highlights for dedicated series enthusiasts is the ability to access a piece of "lost media" in the format 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 one-on-one internet-based play in coin-op establishments. The online-enabled release of the game is virtually identical to UMK3, but provided the ability to challenge online opponents and featured various slight error corrections and adjustments. But the Wavenet update failed to achieve popularity, in part