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The Mortal Kombat series continues to hold its share of secrets and the power to astonish, well past its 30th anniversary after its original launch in arcades. A new collection spanning the franchise's earliest days, which includes four original arcade titles, various home ports, and spinoffs, goes beyond only a accurately simulated series of classics including less celebrated releases — it functions as a detailed chronicle about the creation of the iconic franchise.

Being a long-time devotee of the franchise who has carefully followed its development and progression, there was numerous fresh aspects for me to discover and admire about the series.

What Makes the Historical Compilation

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection comparable to other retro collections from developer Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, section playable historical record. This compilation features 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 several of these titles. The collection even includes the brand's experiments at spin-off titles, like action-oriented titles Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — two of the franchise's worst entries.

The Legacy Kollection thus isn't a “best of” collection, but a study of the franchise's initial era, when developer Midway and brand founders the creative duo behind the series were figuring out how to create a combat title, created from video recordings of real actors, through experimentation. Observing the archival material — containing archival footage, recent conversations, and scans of old flyers, graphic novels, and including internal communications — it's incredible to witness how the franchise evolved from simple starts to a international craze. It's frankly astounding to watch a handful of young game developers, working with minimal planning or oversight, focus their cultural enthusiasms into creating a legendary video game series.

Documentary Portion

The documentary portion of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection charts the rise of Mortal Kombat and its creators' careers at the no-longer-operating Midway. It subsequently demonstrates how these identical developers reckoned with how to consistently surpass their achievements, experiencing considerable demand to replicate their success. It's a fascinating time capsule composed of VHS tapes and analog photographs and manual drawings, which showcase the DIY nature of the series' creation process and how personal recommendations helped spread its rumors and secrets of MK in its peak period in gaming halls. Delivered in easily digestible portions, it's an eminently watchable series of documentary shorts that spans games, comics, films and including the humorous real-world tour. It also includes some unused moves and digital fighter representations among its archived development assets.

Interactive Experience

Distributed throughout the five-part documentary's timeline are prompts to play the actual titles. At certain intervals, users can directly access a game of Mortal Kombat or one of its home console ports to rediscover its combat system and visual presentation, recreated with impressive accuracy on contemporary systems.

I allocated the majority of my time engaging with the vintage coin-op games, especially Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Many of the games here remain enjoyable, especially in direct competitive sessions. Yet competing with the aforementioned game's AI-controlled opponents is a testament to how primitive and unfair the coding existed in the series' initial installments. CPU-controlled opponents clearly employ dishonest tactics or are otherwise dumb as rocks. Lacking another person to compete with — 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 gaming hall, television, and mobile releases, are accurately emulated, though I've observed a few small quirks — mostly input lag and the occasional bug, particularly in Mortal Kombat 4. And while the games are primarily displayed authentically, the development team has added several intelligent convenience enhancements and graphical adjustment settings. For instance, players have the option to show each character's special moves on the display and choose to enable infinite time to complete lethal techniques. Additionally available are settings for unlocking secret characters, removing the requirement to complete obscure techniques to unlock them.

Visually, the games can be enjoyed with multiple filters and visual treatments. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection offers very realistic effects that reproduce the CRT monitors of coin-op establishments or domestic TVs, or the monochrome green display of a portable gaming device. An especially welcome feature is the choice to enable gaming hall-style borders framing the gameplay, with the MK game of your choice faithfully and subtly duplicating against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's remarkably visually appealing.

Additional Features

The collection includes numerous appreciated elements beyond the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, featuring an audio component that lets you revisit the soundtracks of different fighting releases without the din of fighters brutally eliminating opponents. There are also fighter biographies that include bios and numerous narrative components shown through the idle displays of gaming hall releases and final sequences.

Historical Preservation

Among the most significant features for committed franchise followers is the ability to access a segment of previously unavailable content in the format of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This specific release, a moderately improved edition of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an early attempt by Midway at head-to-head network battles in arcades. The online-enabled release of the game is virtually identical to UMK3, but included the option to challenge online opponents and included some minor bug fixes and balance. However, this network version didn't find widespread adoption, in part