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The Mortal Kombat series retains many hidden mysteries and the power to astonish, well past its 30th anniversary after its initial debut in arcades. A new collection spanning the series' initial period, featuring a quartet of arcade releases, various home ports, and derivative games, goes beyond simply a faithfully reproduced set of legendary games along with lesser-known entries — it's also a comprehensive historical account about the development of the iconic franchise.

Even as a lifelong Mortal Kombat fan who has closely monitored 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 comparable to other retro collections from the creators at Digital Eclipse, part documentary, section playable historical record. The anthology contains simulated releases of the pioneering arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, along with home system and portable adaptations of some of those games. The anthology additionally contains the brand's experiments at spinoffs, like action games Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — two of the franchise's worst entries.

The Legacy Kollection consequently doesn't represent a greatest hits compilation, but an examination of the franchise's initial era, when the creators at Midway and series co-creators the visionary developers were determining how to make a fighting game, created from video recordings of real actors, through experimentation. Watching the documentary — that features vintage recordings, recent conversations, and scans of old flyers, illustrated stories, and including internal communications — it's astonishing to observe how Mortal Kombat went from simple starts to a global sensation. It's frankly astounding to watch a handful of pioneering developers, developing without clear direction or oversight, focus their cultural enthusiasms into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Documentary Portion

The historical documentation of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection traces the growth of the combat franchise and the founders' vocational paths at the now-defunct Midway. It further illustrates 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 VHS tapes and traditional photos and pencil sketches, which showcase the DIY nature of the franchise's production method and how personal recommendations helped disseminate its secrets and undisclosed elements of the series in its arcade heyday. Told in bite-sized chunks, it's an eminently watchable set of brief historical films that spans games, comics, films and even the comical physical events. The collection additionally features some unused moves and character sprites among its cutting-room-floor content.

Interactive Gaming

Placed within the quintet of documentary episodes' progression are invitations to experience the games themselves. At certain intervals, audience members can jump into a combat game session or a console adaptation to revisit its gameplay and artistic style, simulated with remarkable precision on current technology.

I spent the bulk of my time playing the arcade classics, particularly Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Numerous titles here stand the test of time, notably with direct competitive sessions. Yet competing with the aforementioned game's AI-controlled opponents is a testament to how primitive and unjust the coding existed in the franchise's pioneering releases. Computer-directed fighters clearly employ dishonest tactics or are alternatively incredibly stupid. If you don't have someone to play against — network gaming is included in numerous anthology releases, but rather basic in functionality — the experience will be incomplete.

Visual Options

The two dozen available combat games in the anthology, a blend of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are faithfully recreated, though I've observed a handful slight anomalies — primarily delayed responses and intermittent errors, especially with Mortal Kombat 4. And while the games are primarily displayed authentically, the development team has added several intelligent quality-of-life features and graphical adjustment settings. As an illustration, players have the option to reveal combatant-unique actions on-screen and select to activate unlimited duration to complete lethal techniques. Additionally available are settings for unlocking secret characters, eliminating the need to execute obscure techniques to obtain them.

Graphically, the titles can be played with a variety of graphical effects and display options. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection includes remarkably accurate options that simulate the CRT monitors of arcades or domestic TVs, or the greenscale screen of a portable gaming device. A particularly nice touch is the setting to activate gaming hall-style borders surrounding the screen, with the specific combat game you're playing accurately and softly reflecting against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's quite aesthetically pleasing.

Bonus Elements

The collection includes numerous welcome features besides the documentary and emulated arcade classics, featuring an audio component that enables players to reexperience the soundtracks of different Mortal Kombat games without the din of fighters brutally eliminating opponents. There are also fighter biographies that include bios and the various bits of lore displayed via arcade games' attract mode screens and endings.

Archival Discovery

A particularly notable inclusion for hardcore Mortal Kombat fans is the opportunity to play a piece of "lost media" in the guise of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This version of the game, a moderately improved edition of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an pioneering effort from the developer at direct online competitive gaming in gaming halls. The Wavenet Edition of the game is virtually identical to UMK3, but provided the ability to compete against internet adversaries and featured various slight error corrections and adjustments. But the Wavenet update failed to achieve popularity, in part