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Mortal Kombat retains many hidden mysteries and the capacity to surprise, over three decades after its first appearance in coin-op establishments. This latest compilation including the brand's formative years, which includes four arcade games, several home system versions, and derivative games, is more than simply a faithfully reproduced collection of iconic titles including less celebrated releases — it additionally serves as a detailed chronicle about the development of the iconic franchise.

As a dedicated devotee of the franchise who has carefully followed its development and progression, there was plenty new for me to understand and value about the series.

What Constitutes the Legacy Collection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection comparable to previous classic compilations from developer Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, portion interactive museum. The collection includes digitally recreated editions 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 anthology additionally contains the franchise's attempts at spinoffs, like action-oriented titles Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — among the series' worst entries.

The Legacy Kollection thus isn't a “best of” collection, but an exploration into the franchise's initial era, when the development team Midway and brand founders the visionary developers were figuring out how to develop a battle series, digitized from footage of live performers, through experimentation. Viewing the historical footage — containing vintage recordings, contemporary discussions, and scans of old flyers, illustrated stories, and including internal communications — it's remarkable to see how the franchise evolved from humble beginnings to a global sensation. It's genuinely amazing to watch a handful of early video game creators, developing without clear direction or oversight, channel their pop-culture interests into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Educational Component

The educational segment of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection charts the rise of the combat franchise and its creators' careers at the currently closed Midway. It then goes on to show how these identical developers reckoned with how to routinely one-up themselves, experiencing considerable stress to duplicate their triumphs. It serves as a compelling period piece constructed using VHS tapes and traditional photos and pencil sketches, which reveal the self-made character of Mortal Kombat's development and how personal recommendations helped circulate its mysteries and hidden aspects of Mortal Kombat in its golden era in coin-op establishments. Presented in manageable segments, it's highly engaging set of brief historical films that spans games, comics, films and even the silly live-action tour. The collection additionally features some unused moves and digital fighter representations among its cutting-room-floor content.

Interactive Experience

Placed within the quintet of documentary episodes' progression are invitations to experience the original releases. At various points, viewers can hop into a game of Mortal Kombat or a console adaptation to reexperience its mechanics and graphics, emulated nearly perfectly on modern hardware.

I allocated the majority of my time experiencing the original arcade titles, especially Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Numerous titles here stand the test of time, particularly during one-on-one local play. But playing against the aforementioned game's AI-controlled opponents is a testament to how primitive and unjust the programming was in early Mortal Kombat games. CPU-controlled opponents obviously use unfair advantages or are otherwise dumb as rocks. If you don't have another person to compete with — online play is available in numerous anthology releases, but too light on features — you'll be missing out.

Visual Options

The 23 playable Mortal Kombat games in the anthology, a mix of gaming hall, television, and mobile releases, are faithfully recreated, though I've observed a handful slight anomalies — mainly control latency and intermittent errors, especially with Mortal Kombat 4. And while the games are mostly shown in their original form, the development team has added several intelligent quality-of-life features and graphical adjustment settings. For instance, players have the option to display fighter-specific techniques on the display and select to activate unlimited duration to perform a Fatality. Additionally available are settings for revealing concealed combatants, eliminating the need to execute obscure techniques to obtain them.

Graphically, the titles can be played with a variety of filters and visual treatments. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection includes remarkably accurate effects that reproduce the traditional television screens of gaming halls or home televisions, or the greenscale screen of a Game Boy. An especially welcome feature is the option to have arcade-like bezels encircling the display, with the MK game of your choice accurately and softly reflecting against the simulated dark plastic edges. It's quite aesthetically pleasing.

Extra Content

Players will discover multiple nice touches beyond the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, including a music player that enables players to reexperience the soundtracks of different fighting releases excluding the sounds of fighters brutally eliminating opponents. Also present are combatant descriptions that feature histories and numerous narrative components displayed via the demo sequences of coin-op titles and conclusions.

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 guise of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This version of the game, 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. This network version of the game is virtually identical to UMK3, but included the option to compete against internet adversaries and featured various slight bug fixes and balance. But the Wavenet update failed to achieve popularity, in part