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This iconic fighting game continues to hold its share of secrets and the ability to amaze, more than 30 years after its first appearance in arcades. The recent anthology covering the brand's formative years, comprising four arcade games, various home ports, and related titles, is more than just a well-emulated set of legendary games and not-so-classics — it functions as a rich documentary about the development of the renowned brand.

Even as a lifelong enthusiast of the series who has closely monitored its creation and evolution, there was much to discover for me to learn and appreciate about the series.

What Makes the Legacy Collection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like previous classic compilations from the development team Digital Eclipse, part historical documentation, part playable archive. The collection includes simulated releases of the first 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 collection even includes the series' ventures at derivative games, like action games Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — some of the brand's worst entries.

The Legacy Kollection thus isn't a greatest hits compilation, but an exploration into Mortal Kombat's early days, when the creators at Midway and brand founders the creative duo behind the series were discovering methods to make a fighting game, produced using film material of real actors, as they went along. Viewing the historical footage — that features vintage recordings, new interviews, and scans of old flyers, illustrated stories, and including internal communications — it's remarkable to see how Mortal Kombat went from humble beginnings to a worldwide phenomenon. It's frankly astounding to see a group of pioneering developers, operating with virtually no plan or supervision, direct their entertainment passions into creating a legendary video game series.

Educational Component

The historical documentation of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection charts the rise of Mortal Kombat and the founders' vocational paths at the currently closed Midway. It subsequently demonstrates how these identical developers reckoned with how to regularly outdo their previous work, encountering significant demand to replicate their success. It represents an intriguing historical record constructed using video recordings and analog photographs and manual drawings, which reveal the self-made character of Mortal Kombat's development and how word of mouth helped disseminate its secrets and undisclosed elements of the series in its golden era in coin-op establishments. Delivered in easily digestible portions, it's highly engaging collection of mini-documentaries that spans games, comics, films and even the silly live-action tour. The collection additionally features some never-implemented techniques and character sprites among its previously unreleased material.

Playable Component

Interspersed along the quintet of documentary episodes' progression are invitations to experience the actual titles. At various points, viewers can hop into a Mortal Kombat title or a console adaptation to reexperience its mechanics and graphics, simulated with remarkable precision on modern hardware.

I dedicated most of my time playing the arcade classics, specifically Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Numerous titles here hold up, particularly during local multiplayer matches. But playing against the aforementioned game's AI-controlled opponents is a reminder of how crude and unfair the development approached in the series' initial installments. CPU-controlled opponents clearly employ dishonest tactics or are conversely remarkably unintelligent. If you don't have a human opponent — online play is available in most titles in the collection, but somewhat limited in options — the experience will be incomplete.

Visual Options

The two dozen available combat games in the compilation, a mix of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are faithfully recreated, though I've observed a handful slight anomalies — mainly control latency and the occasional bug, notably within Mortal Kombat 4. Even though the releases are primarily displayed authentically, the development team has added several intelligent convenience enhancements and graphical adjustment settings. For instance, users can elect to display fighter-specific techniques during gameplay and opt to have unlimited duration to execute finishing moves. Additionally available are settings for accessing hidden fighters, without having to perform obscure techniques to unlock them.

Visually, the games can be played with a variety of visual enhancements and presentation styles. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection includes remarkably accurate options that simulate the traditional television screens of gaming halls or domestic TVs, or the limited color monitor of a portable gaming device. A notably appreciated element is the setting to activate coin-op-inspired frames surrounding the screen, with the MK game of your choice precisely and gently mirroring against the faux black plastic borders. It's remarkably visually appealing.

Additional Features

Players will discover multiple appreciated elements beyond the educational material and simulated classic games, containing a soundtrack mode that allows users to rediscover the soundtracks of different fighting releases excluding the sounds of two kombatants viciously slaughtering each other. There are also fighter biographies that feature histories and numerous narrative components displayed via the idle displays of gaming hall releases and conclusions.

Historical Preservation

Among the most significant features for dedicated series enthusiasts is the ability to access a segment of previously unavailable content in the guise of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This specific release, a somewhat revised iteration of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an pioneering effort from the developer at direct online competitive gaming in arcades. The online-enabled release of the game is virtually identical to UMK3, but featured the capability to compete against internet adversaries and contained several small glitch repairs and refinements. However, this network version didn't find widespread adoption, in part