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Mortal Kombat still possesses numerous undisclosed elements and the capacity to surprise, more than 30 years after its original launch in arcades. A new collection covering the franchise's earliest days, featuring four original arcade titles, various home ports, and spinoffs, goes beyond simply a faithfully reproduced set of legendary games including less celebrated releases — it's also a comprehensive historical account about the making of the renowned brand.

Being a long-time Mortal Kombat fan who has closely monitored its development and progression, there was much to discover for me to learn and appreciate about the series.

What Defines the Legacy Kollection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection similar to other vintage game anthologies from developer Digital Eclipse, part historical documentation, section playable historical record. The anthology contains simulated releases 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 anthology additionally contains the franchise's attempts at derivative games, like action games Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — among the series' least successful installments.

The Legacy Kollection thus isn't a “best of” collection, but an examination of Mortal Kombat's early days, when developer Midway and franchise originators Ed Boon and John Tobias were discovering methods to create a combat title, created from video recordings of live performers, through experimentation. Observing the archival material — containing historical videos, new interviews, and reproductions of classic advertisements, graphic novels, and even interoffice faxes — it's incredible to witness how Mortal Kombat went from modest origins to a global sensation. It's genuinely amazing to observe several young game developers, working with minimal planning or guidance, channel their pop-culture interests into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Historical Section

The historical documentation of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection traces the growth of Mortal Kombat and the developers' professional journeys at the now-defunct Midway. It subsequently demonstrates how those same creators addressed how to routinely one-up themselves, encountering significant demand to replicate their triumphs. It serves as a compelling period piece composed of video recordings and film-based pictures and hand-drawn illustrations, which reveal the self-made character of Mortal Kombat's development and how personal recommendations helped spread its rumors and hidden aspects of Mortal Kombat in its peak period in gaming halls. Delivered in easily digestible portions, it's highly engaging series of documentary shorts that spans games, comics, films and even the comical physical events. It also includes some unreleased actions and character sprites among its cutting-room-floor content.

Interactive Gaming

Distributed throughout the five-segment historical film's chronology are prompts to play the original releases. During specific moments, users can directly access a combat game session or a console adaptation to revisit its gameplay and artistic style, emulated nearly perfectly on modern hardware.

I dedicated most of my time engaging with the vintage coin-op games, specifically Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Many of the games here remain enjoyable, particularly during local multiplayer matches. However, facing the artificial intelligence fighters in these releases is a reminder of how crude and unbalanced the development approached in the franchise's pioneering releases. Computer-directed fighters blatantly cheat to win or are otherwise dumb as rocks. If you don't have a human opponent — internet multiplayer exists 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 mix of gaming hall, television, and mobile releases, are precisely simulated, though I've observed a couple minor issues — mostly input lag and intermittent errors, notably within Mortal Kombat 4. Even though the releases are primarily displayed authentically, the development team has incorporated various clever quality-of-life features and visual presentation options. For instance, you can choose to show each character's special moves on-screen and opt to have unlimited duration to execute finishing moves. There are also options for revealing concealed combatants, without having to perform obscure techniques to obtain them.

Graphically, the titles can be enjoyed with multiple filters and visual treatments. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection offers very realistic filters that mimic the traditional television screens of arcades or domestic TVs, or the monochrome green display of a portable gaming device. A notably appreciated element is the choice to enable coin-op-inspired frames encircling the display, with your selected Mortal Kombat title precisely and gently mirroring against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's very artistically charming.

Bonus Elements

The collection includes numerous appreciated elements beyond the educational material and simulated classic games, including a music player that lets you revisit the music from multiple combat titles without the din of combatants violently defeating each other. Additionally included are combatant descriptions that contain backgrounds and numerous narrative components displayed via arcade games' attract mode screens and conclusions.

Lost Media Recovery

A particularly notable inclusion for hardcore Mortal Kombat fans is the opportunity to play a example of historically missing material in the form of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This specific release, a moderately improved edition of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an initial venture by the company at one-on-one internet-based play in coin-op establishments. This network version of the game is practically indistinguishable to UMK3, but included the option to challenge online opponents and included some minor bug fixes and balance. Yet this online edition failed to achieve popularity, in part