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This iconic fighting game still possesses numerous undisclosed elements and the ability to amaze, well past its 30th anniversary after its first appearance in arcades. This latest compilation spanning the brand's formative years, featuring a quartet of arcade releases, various home ports, and spinoffs, transcends only a accurately simulated set of legendary games along with lesser-known entries — it functions as a detailed chronicle about the making of the renowned brand.

As a dedicated devotee of the franchise who has paid close attention its creation and evolution, there was much to discover for me to discover and admire about the series.

What Defines the Legacy Kollection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection comparable to previous classic compilations from developer Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, part playable archive. This compilation features emulated versions of the first arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, including television and mobile versions of several of these titles. The anthology additionally contains the series' ventures at spinoffs, like action games 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 “best of” collection, but an examination of Mortal Kombat's early days, when developer Midway and franchise originators the creative duo behind the series were determining how to make a fighting game, created from video recordings of actual people, through experimentation. Watching the documentary — that features historical videos, new interviews, and scans of old flyers, graphic novels, and including internal communications — it's remarkable to see how Mortal Kombat went from simple starts to a international craze. It's frankly astounding to observe several pioneering developers, working with minimal planning or oversight, focus their cultural enthusiasms into creating a legendary video game series.

Historical Section

The historical documentation of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection traces the growth of the combat franchise and the developers' professional journeys at the no-longer-operating Midway. It then goes on to show how those same creators addressed how to consistently surpass their achievements, experiencing considerable pressure to repeat their achievements. It represents an intriguing historical record made from VHS tapes and analog photographs and manual drawings, which showcase the DIY nature of the series' creation process and how word of mouth helped spread its rumors and undisclosed elements of the series in its golden era in coin-op establishments. Delivered in easily digestible portions, it's an eminently watchable set of brief historical films that includes titles, illustrated stories, cinematic adaptations and even the silly live-action tour. It also includes some unreleased actions and character sprites among its archived development assets.

Interactive Gaming

Distributed throughout the five-segment historical film's chronology are prompts to play the actual titles. At various points, audience members can jump into a combat game session or a home system version to revisit its gameplay and visual presentation, recreated with impressive accuracy on modern hardware.

I dedicated most of my time experiencing the original arcade titles, especially Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Many of the games here hold up, particularly during one-on-one local play. Yet competing with the aforementioned game's AI-controlled opponents is a demonstration of how basic and unfair the programming was in early Mortal Kombat games. Computer-directed fighters obviously use unfair advantages or are otherwise dumb as rocks. Without having another person to compete with — network gaming is included in most titles in the collection, but somewhat limited in options — the experience will be incomplete.

Display Features

The two dozen available combat games in the compilation, a mix of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are accurately emulated, though I have noticed a few small quirks — primarily delayed responses and sporadic glitches, notably within Mortal Kombat 4. Even though the releases are mostly shown in their original form, developer Digital Eclipse has incorporated various clever user experience improvements and display customization choices. For instance, players have the option to show each character's special moves on the display and select to activate endless periods to perform a Fatality. Also included are choices for accessing hidden fighters, without having to perform obscure techniques to obtain them.

Artistically, the releases can be enjoyed with multiple visual enhancements and presentation styles. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection includes remarkably accurate effects that reproduce the cathode-ray tube displays of arcades or home televisions, or the limited color monitor of a Game Boy. A notably appreciated element is the setting to activate coin-op-inspired frames encircling the display, with the MK game of your choice accurately and softly reflecting against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's very artistically charming.

Additional Features

Players will discover multiple appreciated elements beyond the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, featuring an audio component that enables players to reexperience the tunes of various Mortal Kombat games absent the noise of fighters brutally eliminating opponents. Also present are combatant descriptions that include bios and the various bits of lore presented by the demo sequences of coin-op titles and final sequences.

Archival Discovery

One of the biggest highlights for dedicated series enthusiasts is the opportunity to play a segment of previously unavailable content in the guise of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This particular edition, a somewhat revised iteration of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an early attempt by Midway at head-to-head network battles in gaming halls. The Wavenet Edition of the game is practically indistinguishable to UMK3, but featured the capability to battle network competitors and featured various slight bug fixes and balance. However, this network version didn't find widespread adoption, in part