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The Mortal Kombat series retains many hidden mysteries and the power to astonish, over three decades after its first appearance in coin-op establishments. This latest compilation spanning the brand's formative years, which includes a quartet of arcade releases, several home system versions, and derivative games, goes beyond only a accurately simulated collection of iconic titles along with lesser-known entries — it additionally serves as a detailed chronicle about the making of the iconic franchise.

Even as a lifelong devotee of the franchise who has carefully followed its creation and evolution, there was numerous fresh aspects for me to understand and value about the series.

What Constitutes the Historical Compilation

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection comparable to previous classic compilations from the development team Digital Eclipse, part documentary, section playable historical record. This compilation features simulated releases of the original arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, plus console and handheld ports of some of those games. The collection even includes the brand's experiments at spinoffs, like action-oriented titles Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — among the series' most criticized releases.

The Legacy Kollection thus isn't a “best of” collection, but a study of the franchise's initial era, when the creators at Midway and franchise originators Ed Boon and John Tobias were discovering methods to make a fighting game, digitized from footage of live performers, through experimentation. Watching the documentary — containing archival footage, contemporary discussions, and reproductions of classic advertisements, comics, and even interoffice faxes — it's remarkable to see how the series transformed from modest origins to a worldwide phenomenon. It's genuinely amazing to see a group of early video game creators, developing without clear direction or supervision, channel their pop-culture interests into establishing an enduring gaming brand.

Historical Section

The educational segment of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection charts the rise of the combat franchise and the founders' vocational paths at the no-longer-operating Midway. It then goes on to show how these identical developers reckoned with how to consistently surpass their achievements, experiencing considerable stress to duplicate their success. It's a fascinating time capsule composed of analog films and film-based pictures and manual drawings, which showcase the DIY nature of the franchise's production method and how oral tradition helped spread its rumors and undisclosed elements of the series in its arcade heyday. Presented in manageable segments, it's an eminently watchable collection of mini-documentaries that covers video games, graphic novels, movies and even the silly live-action tour. The compilation also contains some unreleased actions and digital fighter representations among its cutting-room-floor content.

Playable Component

Distributed throughout the five-part documentary's timeline are prompts to play the actual titles. At certain intervals, viewers can hop into a Mortal Kombat title or a home system version to reexperience its mechanics and artistic style, recreated with impressive accuracy on modern hardware.

I spent the bulk of my time engaging with the vintage coin-op games, particularly Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Many of the games here remain enjoyable, notably with direct competitive sessions. Yet competing with the aforementioned game's AI-controlled opponents is a demonstration of how basic and unfair the programming was in the series' initial installments. Computer-directed fighters clearly employ dishonest tactics or are conversely remarkably unintelligent. Without having another person to compete with — network gaming is included in numerous anthology releases, but rather basic in functionality — the experience will be incomplete.

Technical Presentation

The 23 playable Mortal Kombat games in the compilation, a mix of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are accurately emulated, though I have noticed a couple minor issues — mostly input lag and intermittent errors, particularly in Mortal Kombat 4. Even though the releases are largely presented as-is, the creators has added several intelligent quality-of-life features and graphical adjustment settings. For instance, you can choose to show each character's special moves on-screen and select to activate endless periods to perform a Fatality. Additionally available are settings for accessing hidden fighters, eliminating the need to execute complicated methods 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 traditional television screens of arcades or home televisions, or the monochrome green display of a Game Boy. A notably appreciated element is the option to have coin-op-inspired frames surrounding the screen, with your selected Mortal Kombat title precisely and gently mirroring against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's very artistically charming.

Additional Features

There are plenty of appreciated elements beyond the documentary and emulated arcade classics, including a music player that enables players to reexperience the soundtracks of different Mortal Kombat games absent the noise of two kombatants viciously slaughtering each other. There are also fighter biographies that contain backgrounds and multiple story elements displayed via arcade games' attract mode screens and endings.

Lost Media Recovery

A particularly notable inclusion for hardcore Mortal Kombat fans is the opportunity to play a segment of previously unavailable content in the format 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 coin-op establishments. The Wavenet Edition of the game is almost exactly the same to UMK3, but featured the capability to battle network competitors and contained several small bug fixes and balance. However, this network version failed to achieve popularity, in part