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This iconic fighting game still possesses many hidden mysteries and the ability to amaze, well past its 30th anniversary after its original launch in coin-op establishments. This latest compilation spanning the brand's formative years, featuring a quartet of arcade releases, various home ports, and related titles, is more than only a accurately simulated collection of iconic titles including less celebrated releases — it additionally serves as a comprehensive historical account about the creation of the legendary series.

Even as a lifelong devotee of the franchise 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 Kollection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection comparable to other retro collections from the development team Digital Eclipse, part historical documentation, part playable archive. This compilation features emulated versions of the original arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, along with home system and portable adaptations of some of those games. This compilation also features the franchise's attempts at spin-off titles, like combat-focused releases Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — two of the franchise's most criticized releases.

The Legacy Kollection consequently doesn't represent a greatest hits compilation, but an examination of the series' formative period, when the development team Midway and brand founders the creative duo behind the series were determining how to make a fighting game, created from video recordings of actual people, as they went along. Viewing the historical footage — containing vintage recordings, contemporary discussions, and digital copies of vintage posters, graphic novels, and even interoffice faxes — it's incredible to witness how Mortal Kombat went from humble beginnings to a worldwide phenomenon. It's frankly astounding to watch a handful of early video game creators, operating with virtually no plan or guidance, direct their entertainment passions into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Historical Section

The educational segment of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection traces the growth of the fighting series and its creators' careers at the no-longer-operating Midway. It subsequently demonstrates how those same creators reckoned with how to regularly outdo their previous work, encountering significant demand to replicate their success. It represents an intriguing historical record constructed using video recordings and traditional photos and pencil sketches, which reveal the self-made character of Mortal Kombat's development and how personal recommendations helped circulate its mysteries and secrets of MK in its peak period in gaming halls. Delivered in easily digestible portions, it's an eminently watchable set of brief historical films that covers video games, graphic novels, movies and even the silly live-action tour. The collection additionally features some unreleased actions and game character images among its archived development assets.

Playable Component

Distributed throughout the five-segment historical film's chronology are prompts to play the original releases. At various points, audience members can jump into a combat game session or a console adaptation to reexperience its mechanics and graphics, simulated with remarkable precision on modern hardware.

I dedicated most of my time engaging with the vintage coin-op games, specifically Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Numerous titles here hold up, particularly during one-on-one local play. But playing against the artificial intelligence fighters in these releases is a demonstration of how basic and unjust the programming was in the franchise's pioneering releases. CPU-controlled opponents obviously use unfair advantages or are conversely remarkably unintelligent. Lacking another person to compete with — online play is available in the majority of included games, but somewhat limited in options — the experience will be incomplete.

Visual Options

The two dozen available combat games in the compilation, a mix of arcade, console, and handheld games, are faithfully recreated, though I detected a few small quirks — primarily delayed responses and sporadic glitches, particularly in Mortal Kombat 4. Although the titles are largely presented as-is, the creators has included some smart quality-of-life features and display customization choices. For instance, players have the option to show each character's special moves during gameplay and opt to have unlimited duration to complete lethal techniques. Additionally available are settings for unlocking secret characters, removing the requirement to complete obscure techniques to access them.

Visually, the games can be experienced with numerous filters and visual treatments. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection includes remarkably accurate effects that reproduce the traditional television screens of arcades or domestic TVs, or the limited color monitor of a Nintendo handheld. An especially welcome feature is the option to have gaming hall-style borders framing the gameplay, with the specific combat game you're playing faithfully and subtly duplicating against the faux black plastic borders. It's remarkably visually appealing.

Extra Content

Players will discover multiple welcome features besides the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, containing a soundtrack mode that lets you revisit the soundtracks of different fighting releases excluding the sounds of combatants violently defeating each other. There are also combatant descriptions that contain backgrounds and numerous narrative components presented by arcade games' attract mode screens and final sequences.

Lost Media Recovery

One of the biggest highlights for committed franchise followers is the opportunity to play a segment of previously unavailable content 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 gaming halls. This network version of the game is virtually identical to UMK3, but provided the ability to compete against internet adversaries and featured various slight bug fixes and balance. However, this network version failed to achieve popularity, in part