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The Mortal Kombat series still possesses numerous undisclosed elements and the ability to amaze, more than 30 years after its first appearance in arcades. The recent anthology including the brand's formative years, which includes four arcade games, various home ports, and derivative games, transcends simply a faithfully reproduced series of classics including less celebrated releases — it's also a rich documentary about the development of the renowned brand.

Being a long-time devotee of the franchise who has closely monitored its creation and evolution, there was numerous fresh aspects for me to understand and value about the series.

What Constitutes the Legacy Collection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like other retro collections from developer Digital Eclipse, part documentary, portion interactive museum. This compilation features emulated versions of the first arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, including television and mobile versions of several of these titles. This compilation also features the brand's experiments at spin-off titles, like combat-focused releases Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — some of the brand's most criticized releases.

The Legacy Kollection thus isn't a “best of” collection, but a study of the franchise's initial era, when the development team Midway and series co-creators Ed Boon and John Tobias were determining how to make a fighting game, digitized from footage of live performers, as they went along. Observing the archival material — that features historical videos, contemporary discussions, and digital copies of vintage posters, comics, and even interoffice faxes — it's astonishing to observe how the series transformed from simple starts to a international craze. It's genuinely amazing to see a group of early video game creators, developing without clear direction or oversight, focus their cultural enthusiasms into creating a legendary video game series.

Educational Component

The documentary portion of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection traces the growth of Mortal Kombat and the founders' vocational paths at the no-longer-operating Midway. It then goes on to show how the very same individuals addressed how to consistently surpass their achievements, encountering significant demand to replicate their triumphs. It represents an intriguing historical record composed of VHS tapes and analog photographs and hand-drawn illustrations, which demonstrate the hands-on approach of the series' creation process and how personal recommendations helped circulate its mysteries and hidden aspects of Mortal Kombat in its peak period in gaming halls. Told in bite-sized chunks, it's an eminently watchable series of documentary shorts that covers video games, graphic novels, movies and including the humorous real-world tour. The collection additionally features some never-implemented techniques and character sprites among its archived development assets.

Interactive Gaming

Interspersed along the quintet of documentary episodes' progression are invitations to experience the original releases. At various points, audience members can jump into a game of Mortal Kombat or a console adaptation to rediscover its combat system and artistic style, emulated nearly perfectly on contemporary systems.

I allocated the majority of my time playing the arcade classics, especially Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Several releases here remain enjoyable, notably with one-on-one local play. Yet competing with the computer-controlled adversaries in these titles is a testament to how primitive and unbalanced the programming was in early Mortal Kombat games. CPU-controlled opponents clearly employ dishonest tactics or are conversely remarkably unintelligent. Without having a human opponent — network gaming is included in numerous anthology releases, but rather basic in functionality — the experience will be incomplete.

Display Features

The two dozen available combat games in the anthology, a blend of arcade, console, and handheld games, are faithfully recreated, though I've observed a few small quirks — primarily delayed responses and the occasional bug, especially with Mortal Kombat 4. And while the games are mostly shown in their original form, the creators has added several intelligent quality-of-life features and display customization choices. For instance, players have the option to reveal combatant-unique actions on-screen and select to activate unlimited duration to complete lethal techniques. There are also options for accessing hidden fighters, without having to perform complicated methods to access them.

Artistically, the releases can be enjoyed with multiple filters and visual treatments. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection provides highly authentic effects that reproduce the CRT monitors of coin-op establishments or household displays, or the limited color monitor of a Nintendo handheld. A notably appreciated element is the option to have coin-op-inspired frames framing the gameplay, with the specific combat game you're playing faithfully and subtly duplicating against the faux black plastic borders. It's very artistically charming.

Extra Content

The collection includes numerous nice touches beyond the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, containing a soundtrack mode that allows users to rediscover the music from multiple fighting releases excluding the sounds of fighters brutally eliminating opponents. Also present are fighter biographies that contain backgrounds and multiple story elements displayed via the demo sequences of coin-op titles and conclusions.

Lost Media Recovery

Among the most significant features for hardcore Mortal Kombat fans is the chance to experience a piece of "lost media" in the form of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This specific release, a somewhat revised iteration of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an initial venture by the company at direct online competitive gaming in arcades. The online-enabled release of the game is practically indistinguishable to UMK3, but featured the capability to compete against internet adversaries and contained several small bug fixes and balance. However, this network version failed to achieve popularity, in part