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This iconic fighting game retains its share of secrets and the capacity to surprise, well past its 30th anniversary after its initial debut in coin-op establishments. The recent anthology covering the brand's formative years, which includes a quartet of arcade releases, various home ports, and spinoffs, is more than simply a faithfully reproduced series of classics and not-so-classics — it functions as a rich documentary about the making of the iconic franchise.

Even as a lifelong enthusiast of the series who has closely monitored its development and progression, there was numerous fresh aspects for me to understand and value about the series.

What Makes the Legacy Kollection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection comparable to other retro collections from developer Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, portion interactive museum. The anthology contains digitally recreated editions of the original 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 spinoffs, like combat-focused releases Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — two of the franchise's worst entries.

The Legacy Kollection is therefore not a “best of” collection, but an examination of the franchise's initial era, when the creators at Midway and series co-creators the creative duo behind the series were discovering methods to make a fighting game, produced using film material of live performers, as they went along. Viewing the historical footage — that features historical videos, recent conversations, and scans of old flyers, comics, and even company memos — it's remarkable to see how the series transformed from humble beginnings to a international craze. It's frankly astounding to see a group of young game developers, working with minimal planning or guidance, focus their cultural enthusiasms into creating a legendary video game series.

Documentary Portion

The educational segment of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection charts the rise of Mortal Kombat and its creators' careers at the now-defunct Midway. It subsequently demonstrates how those same creators contended with how to consistently surpass their achievements, facing no small amount of demand to replicate their success. It represents an intriguing historical record composed of analog films and traditional photos and manual drawings, which demonstrate the hands-on approach of the series' creation process and how oral tradition helped disseminate its secrets and undisclosed elements of the series in its peak period in gaming halls. Told in bite-sized chunks, it's thoroughly enjoyable set of brief historical films that covers video games, graphic novels, movies and including the humorous real-world tour. The compilation also contains some never-implemented techniques and digital fighter representations among its archived development assets.

Interactive Experience

Distributed throughout the quintet of documentary episodes' progression are invitations to experience the games themselves. At various points, users can directly access a game of Mortal Kombat or a home system version to revisit its gameplay and artistic style, recreated with impressive accuracy 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. Several releases here hold up, especially in one-on-one local play. But playing against the aforementioned game's AI-controlled opponents is a demonstration of how basic and unfair the development approached in the series' initial installments. CPU-controlled opponents clearly employ dishonest tactics or are alternatively incredibly stupid. Without having another person to compete with — network gaming is included in numerous anthology releases, but somewhat limited in options — you'll miss the full enjoyment.

Display Features

The 23 playable Mortal Kombat games in the compilation, a combination of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are accurately emulated, though I've observed a handful slight anomalies — mostly input lag and sporadic glitches, especially with Mortal Kombat 4. Even though the releases are mostly shown in their original form, the creators has added several intelligent quality-of-life features and graphical adjustment settings. For example, players have the option to reveal combatant-unique actions on the display and opt to have unlimited duration to perform a Fatality. Also included are choices for unlocking secret characters, removing the requirement to complete obscure techniques to unlock them.

Visually, the games can be played with a variety of visual enhancements and presentation styles. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection provides highly authentic options that simulate the cathode-ray tube displays of coin-op establishments or household displays, or the limited color monitor of a Nintendo handheld. A notably appreciated element is the choice to enable arcade-like bezels surrounding the screen, with the specific combat game you're playing accurately and softly reflecting against the simulated dark plastic edges. It's remarkably visually appealing.

Additional Features

The collection includes numerous appreciated elements beyond the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, containing a soundtrack mode that lets you revisit the tunes of various combat titles excluding the sounds of fighters brutally eliminating opponents. Also present are character profiles that include bios and multiple story elements presented by arcade games' attract mode screens and endings.

Historical Preservation

A particularly notable inclusion for dedicated series enthusiasts is the chance to experience a segment of previously unavailable content in the format of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This version of the game, a moderately improved edition of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an initial venture by the company at direct online competitive gaming in coin-op establishments. This network version of the game is virtually identical to UMK3, but included the option to compete against internet adversaries and included some minor error corrections and adjustments. But the Wavenet update failed to achieve popularity, in part