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Mortal Kombat still possesses many hidden mysteries and the power to astonish, over three decades after its first appearance in arcades. The recent anthology spanning the franchise's earliest days, which includes a quartet of arcade releases, multiple console adaptations, and spinoffs, transcends only a accurately simulated series of classics including less celebrated releases — it's also a rich documentary about the creation of the legendary series.

Being a long-time enthusiast of the series who has paid close attention its origins and transformation, there was plenty new for me to learn and appreciate about the series.

What Defines the Historical Compilation

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like other retro collections from the development team Digital Eclipse, part documentary, part playable archive. The anthology contains 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 series' ventures at derivative games, like action games Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — two of the franchise's most criticized releases.

The Legacy Kollection thus isn't a highlight reel anthology, but an examination of the franchise's initial era, when developer Midway and franchise originators the creative duo behind the series were discovering methods to make a fighting game, produced using film material of actual people, on the fly. Watching the documentary — containing archival footage, contemporary discussions, and scans of old flyers, graphic novels, and even company memos — it's incredible to witness how Mortal Kombat went from simple starts to a global sensation. It's truly remarkable to watch a handful of young game developers, working with minimal planning or guidance, focus their cultural enthusiasms into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Educational Component

The educational segment of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection charts the rise of the fighting series and its creators' careers at the now-defunct Midway. It subsequently demonstrates how those same creators reckoned with how to consistently surpass their achievements, experiencing considerable stress to duplicate their triumphs. It's a fascinating time capsule constructed using video recordings and film-based pictures and hand-drawn illustrations, which demonstrate the hands-on approach of the series' creation process and how word of mouth helped disseminate its secrets and hidden aspects of Mortal Kombat in its peak period in gaming halls. Told in bite-sized chunks, it's an eminently watchable collection of mini-documentaries that includes titles, illustrated stories, cinematic adaptations and including the humorous real-world tour. The collection additionally features some never-implemented techniques and digital fighter representations among its archived development assets.

Playable Component

Placed within the quintet of documentary episodes' progression are prompts to play the actual titles. During specific moments, viewers can hop into a combat game session or a console adaptation to rediscover its combat system and artistic style, simulated with remarkable precision on modern hardware.

I spent the bulk of my time experiencing the original arcade titles, specifically Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Several releases here hold up, particularly during one-on-one local play. However, facing the artificial intelligence fighters in these releases is a reminder of how crude and unjust the coding existed in early Mortal Kombat games. AI-managed characters obviously use unfair advantages or are otherwise dumb as rocks. Without having 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 two dozen available combat games in the anthology, a mix of gaming hall, television, and mobile releases, are accurately emulated, though I have noticed a couple minor issues — mainly control latency and intermittent errors, particularly in Mortal Kombat 4. And while the games are largely presented as-is, the creators has incorporated various clever quality-of-life features and display customization choices. For instance, you can choose to display fighter-specific techniques on-screen and select to activate unlimited duration to perform a Fatality. Additionally available are settings for unlocking secret characters, eliminating the need to execute complicated methods to unlock them.

Artistically, the releases can be played with a variety of visual enhancements and presentation styles. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection offers very realistic effects that reproduce the CRT monitors of arcades or domestic TVs, or the limited color monitor of a portable gaming device. An especially welcome feature is the option to have gaming hall-style borders surrounding the screen, with the MK game of your choice accurately and softly reflecting against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's remarkably visually appealing.

Extra Content

There are plenty of nice touches beyond the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, including a music player that lets you revisit the soundtracks of different fighting releases excluding the sounds of combatants violently defeating each other. Also present are character profiles that include bios and numerous narrative components shown through arcade games' attract mode screens and conclusions.

Archival Discovery

One of the biggest highlights for committed franchise followers is the chance to experience a segment of previously unavailable content in the form of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This specific release, a slightly updated version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an initial venture by the company at head-to-head network battles in coin-op establishments. The online-enabled release of the game is almost exactly the same to UMK3, but provided the ability to battle network competitors and contained several small bug fixes and balance. Yet this online edition never gained traction, in part