🔗 Share this article

Mortal Kombat continues to hold its share of secrets and the capacity to surprise, well past its 30th anniversary after its initial debut in arcades. A new collection spanning the franchise's earliest days, featuring four arcade games, multiple console adaptations, and related titles, transcends simply a faithfully reproduced collection of iconic titles along with lesser-known entries — it additionally serves as a rich documentary about the development of the iconic franchise.

Even as a lifelong Mortal Kombat fan who has carefully followed its creation and evolution, there was much to discover for me to learn and appreciate about the series.

What Defines the Legacy Kollection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like other retro collections from the creators at Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, part playable archive. The anthology contains digitally recreated editions of the pioneering 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 brand's experiments at derivative games, like combat-focused releases Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — among the series' most criticized releases.

The Legacy Kollection consequently doesn't represent a “best of” collection, but an examination of the series' formative period, when the creators at Midway and brand founders the creative duo behind the series were discovering methods to develop a battle series, produced using film material of actual people, through experimentation. Viewing the historical footage — that features historical videos, contemporary discussions, and scans of old flyers, comics, and including internal communications — it's remarkable to see how Mortal Kombat went from modest origins to a international craze. It's genuinely amazing to observe several pioneering developers, operating with virtually no plan or oversight, focus their cultural enthusiasms into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Educational Component

The educational segment of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection traces the growth of the fighting series and the developers' professional journeys at the now-defunct Midway. It then goes on to show how the very same individuals reckoned with how to regularly outdo their previous work, experiencing considerable stress to duplicate their achievements. It's a fascinating time capsule composed of analog films and analog photographs and hand-drawn illustrations, which demonstrate the hands-on approach of the series' creation process and how word of mouth 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 includes titles, illustrated stories, cinematic adaptations and even the comical physical events. It also includes some unreleased actions and game character images among its cutting-room-floor content.

Playable Component

Interspersed along the five-segment historical film's chronology are opportunities to engage with the actual titles. During specific moments, users can directly access a Mortal Kombat title or a console adaptation to revisit its gameplay and visual presentation, emulated nearly perfectly on current technology.

I allocated the majority of my time experiencing the original arcade titles, particularly Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Many of the games here remain enjoyable, especially in one-on-one local play. Yet competing with the aforementioned game's AI-controlled opponents is a demonstration of how basic and unbalanced the coding existed in early Mortal Kombat games. AI-managed characters clearly employ dishonest tactics or are conversely remarkably unintelligent. Without having someone to play against — online play is available in the majority of included games, but too light on features — you'll miss the full enjoyment.

Technical Presentation

The twenty-three accessible Mortal Kombat titles in the collection, a combination of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are faithfully recreated, though I have noticed a handful slight anomalies — mostly input lag and intermittent errors, especially with Mortal Kombat 4. Although the titles are largely presented as-is, developer Digital Eclipse has included some smart convenience enhancements and visual presentation options. For example, players have the option to show each character's special moves on the display and choose to enable endless periods to perform a Fatality. Additionally available are settings for revealing concealed combatants, eliminating the need to execute some esoteric trick to access them.

Graphically, the titles can be enjoyed with multiple graphical effects and display options. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection provides highly authentic options that simulate the traditional television screens of gaming halls or household displays, or the greenscale screen of a Nintendo handheld. A particularly nice touch is the option to have gaming hall-style borders encircling the display, with the MK game of your choice faithfully and subtly duplicating against the faux black plastic borders. It's very artistically charming.

Extra Content

The collection includes numerous appreciated elements beyond the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, containing a soundtrack mode that allows users to rediscover the music from multiple Mortal Kombat games excluding the sounds of fighters brutally eliminating opponents. Also present are character profiles that feature histories and the various bits of lore shown through the demo sequences of coin-op titles and conclusions.

Lost Media Recovery

One of the biggest highlights for hardcore Mortal Kombat fans is the opportunity to play a piece of "lost media" in the format of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This particular edition, a slightly updated version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an early attempt by Midway at direct online competitive gaming in coin-op establishments. The online-enabled release of the game is practically indistinguishable to UMK3, but included the option to compete against internet adversaries and featured various slight error corrections and adjustments. But the Wavenet update failed to achieve popularity, in part