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Mortal Kombat retains its share of secrets and the power to astonish, over three decades after its original launch in coin-op establishments. A new collection covering the series' initial period, featuring four original arcade titles, various home ports, and related titles, goes beyond just a well-emulated series of classics including less celebrated releases — it additionally serves as a detailed chronicle about the creation of the iconic franchise.

Even as a lifelong Mortal Kombat fan who has carefully followed its origins and transformation, there was much to discover for me to discover and admire about the series.

What Makes the Legacy Collection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like previous classic compilations from the creators at 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, including television and mobile versions of certain releases. The collection even includes the franchise's attempts at spinoffs, like combat-focused releases Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — among the series' worst entries.

The Legacy Kollection is therefore not a greatest hits compilation, but an examination of Mortal Kombat's early days, when the creators at Midway and series co-creators the creative duo behind the series were determining how to make a fighting game, produced using film material of actual people, through experimentation. Observing the archival material — containing vintage recordings, new interviews, and scans of old flyers, comics, and including internal communications — it's incredible to witness how Mortal Kombat went from humble beginnings to a global sensation. It's frankly astounding to observe several pioneering developers, developing without clear direction or guidance, focus their cultural enthusiasms into establishing an enduring gaming brand.

Educational Component

The documentary portion of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection traces the growth of Mortal Kombat and the developers' professional journeys at the no-longer-operating Midway. It further illustrates how those same creators reckoned with how to regularly outdo their previous work, encountering significant demand to replicate their achievements. It represents an intriguing historical record composed of analog films and analog photographs and hand-drawn illustrations, which reveal the self-made character of Mortal Kombat's development and how word of mouth helped disseminate its secrets and hidden aspects of Mortal Kombat in its golden era in coin-op establishments. 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 collection additionally features some unreleased actions and game character images among its previously unreleased material.

Playable Component

Placed within the quintet of documentary episodes' progression are opportunities to engage with the original releases. During specific moments, audience members can jump into a game of Mortal Kombat or a home system version to rediscover its combat system and visual presentation, simulated with remarkable precision on contemporary systems.

I allocated the majority of my time engaging with the vintage coin-op games, particularly Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Several releases here remain enjoyable, notably with direct competitive sessions. However, facing the computer-controlled adversaries in these titles is a testament to how primitive and unjust the development approached in the franchise's pioneering releases. Computer-directed fighters clearly employ dishonest tactics or are alternatively incredibly stupid. Without having another person to compete with — network gaming is included in most titles in the collection, but too light on features — the experience will be incomplete.

Display Features

The two dozen available combat games in the anthology, a combination of gaming hall, television, and mobile releases, are accurately emulated, though I have noticed a handful slight anomalies — primarily delayed responses and intermittent errors, especially with Mortal Kombat 4. And while the games are largely presented as-is, the development team has added several intelligent convenience enhancements and graphical adjustment settings. As an illustration, users can elect to reveal combatant-unique actions during gameplay and opt to have endless periods to execute finishing moves. There are also options for revealing concealed combatants, eliminating the need to execute some esoteric trick to access them.

Visually, the games can be experienced with numerous visual enhancements and presentation styles. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection offers very realistic filters that mimic the cathode-ray tube displays of gaming halls or domestic TVs, or the monochrome green display of a Nintendo handheld. A notably appreciated element is the choice to enable gaming hall-style borders framing the gameplay, with your selected Mortal Kombat title accurately and softly reflecting against the simulated dark plastic edges. 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 lets you revisit the music from multiple Mortal Kombat games excluding the sounds of combatants violently defeating each other. Additionally included are fighter biographies that include bios and numerous narrative components shown through the demo sequences of coin-op titles and endings.

Historical Preservation

Among the most significant features for hardcore Mortal Kombat fans is the ability to access a segment of previously unavailable content in the guise of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This version of the game, a moderately improved edition of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an pioneering effort from the developer at direct online competitive gaming in coin-op establishments. The online-enabled release of the game is virtually identical to UMK3, but included the option to compete against internet adversaries and featured various slight error corrections and adjustments. But the Wavenet update never gained traction, in part