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This iconic fighting game continues to hold many hidden mysteries and the ability to amaze, more than 30 years after its initial debut in coin-op establishments. The recent anthology including the brand's formative years, featuring four original arcade titles, several home system versions, and spinoffs, transcends just a well-emulated set of legendary games along with lesser-known entries — it's also a rich documentary about the creation of the iconic franchise.

As a dedicated devotee of the franchise who has carefully followed its origins and transformation, 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 previous classic compilations from developer Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, part playable archive. The collection includes emulated versions of the pioneering 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 franchise's attempts at spin-off titles, like action-oriented titles Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — some of the brand's most criticized releases.

The Legacy Kollection consequently doesn't represent a highlight reel anthology, but an exploration into the series' formative period, when the creators at Midway and series co-creators Ed Boon and John Tobias were discovering methods to create a combat title, created from video recordings of real actors, through experimentation. Observing the archival material — containing archival footage, new interviews, and reproductions of classic advertisements, comics, and even company memos — it's incredible to witness how Mortal Kombat went from simple starts to a worldwide phenomenon. It's frankly astounding to watch a handful of early video game creators, operating with virtually no plan or oversight, direct their entertainment passions into establishing an enduring gaming brand.

Historical Section

The historical documentation of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection charts the rise of the combat franchise and its creators' careers at the no-longer-operating Midway. It then goes on to show how those same creators addressed how to regularly outdo their previous work, encountering significant pressure to repeat their achievements. It represents an intriguing historical record made from video recordings and analog photographs and hand-drawn illustrations, which showcase the DIY nature of the series' creation process and how personal recommendations helped disseminate its secrets and hidden aspects of Mortal Kombat in its golden era in coin-op establishments. Presented in manageable segments, it's thoroughly enjoyable set of brief historical films that includes titles, illustrated stories, cinematic adaptations and even the comical physical events. It also includes some unreleased actions and game character images among its archived development assets.

Interactive Gaming

Distributed throughout the five-part documentary's timeline are opportunities to engage with the actual titles. At various points, viewers can hop into a game of Mortal Kombat or a console adaptation to revisit its gameplay and graphics, simulated with remarkable precision on modern hardware.

I dedicated most of my time playing the arcade classics, particularly Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Many of the games here remain enjoyable, notably with one-on-one local play. However, facing the artificial intelligence fighters in these releases is a demonstration of how basic and unbalanced the development approached in the series' initial installments. Computer-directed fighters clearly employ dishonest tactics or are otherwise dumb as rocks. If you don't have someone to play against — network gaming is included in most titles in the collection, but too light on features — the experience will be incomplete.

Technical Presentation

The twenty-three accessible Mortal Kombat titles in the anthology, 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 the occasional bug, especially with Mortal Kombat 4. And while the games are primarily displayed authentically, the development team has included some smart quality-of-life features and display customization choices. For example, you can choose to reveal combatant-unique actions on the display and select to activate infinite time to complete lethal techniques. Additionally available are settings for accessing hidden fighters, without having to perform obscure techniques to unlock them.

Artistically, the releases can be experienced with numerous graphical effects and display options. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection provides highly authentic options that simulate the traditional television screens of gaming halls or household displays, or the limited color monitor of a Nintendo handheld. A particularly nice touch is the setting to activate gaming hall-style borders surrounding the screen, with the MK game of your choice precisely and gently mirroring against the faux black plastic borders. It's quite aesthetically pleasing.

Extra Content

The collection includes numerous nice touches beyond the educational material and simulated classic games, featuring an audio component that lets you revisit the tunes of various combat titles absent the noise of combatants violently defeating each other. Also present are combatant descriptions that feature histories and the various bits of lore shown through the demo sequences of coin-op titles and final sequences.

Historical Preservation

One of the biggest highlights for dedicated series enthusiasts is the opportunity to play a piece of "lost media" in the guise of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This version of the game, a slightly updated version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an initial venture by the company at head-to-head network battles in coin-op establishments. This network version of the game is virtually identical to UMK3, but featured the capability to battle network competitors and featured various slight bug fixes and balance. Yet this online edition failed to achieve popularity, in part