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Mortal Kombat still possesses its share of secrets and the power to astonish, well past its 30th anniversary after its first appearance in coin-op establishments. A new collection including the franchise's earliest days, which includes a quartet of arcade releases, several home system versions, and related titles, goes beyond just a well-emulated collection of iconic titles along with lesser-known entries — it's also a comprehensive historical account about the making of the renowned brand.

As a dedicated enthusiast of the series who has closely monitored its origins and transformation, there was plenty new for me to understand and value about the series.

What Constitutes the Legacy Kollection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection comparable to other retro collections from developer Digital Eclipse, part historical documentation, portion interactive museum. This compilation features simulated releases of the original arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, including television and mobile versions of some of those games. The anthology additionally contains the brand's experiments 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 “best of” collection, but a study of the franchise's initial era, when the creators at Midway and brand founders the creative duo behind the series were figuring out how to create a combat title, digitized from footage of real actors, on the fly. Watching the documentary — that features vintage recordings, recent conversations, and digital copies of vintage posters, graphic novels, and even interoffice faxes — it's remarkable to see how Mortal Kombat went from humble beginnings to a international craze. It's truly remarkable to watch a handful of pioneering developers, working with minimal planning or supervision, focus their cultural enthusiasms into creating a legendary video game series.

Historical Section

The documentary portion of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection charts the rise of the fighting series and its creators' careers at the now-defunct Midway. It further illustrates how the very same individuals contended with how to routinely one-up themselves, encountering significant pressure to repeat their achievements. It represents an intriguing historical record constructed using VHS tapes and analog photographs and hand-drawn illustrations, which demonstrate the hands-on approach of the franchise's production method and how oral tradition helped spread its rumors and secrets of MK in its arcade heyday. Delivered in easily digestible portions, it's an eminently watchable collection of mini-documentaries that includes titles, illustrated stories, cinematic adaptations and even the comical physical events. The collection additionally features some never-implemented techniques and game character images among its previously unreleased material.

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 home system version to reexperience its mechanics and visual presentation, simulated with remarkable precision 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. Many of the games here stand the test of time, particularly during direct competitive sessions. However, facing the aforementioned game's AI-controlled opponents is a reminder of how crude and unbalanced the programming was in early Mortal Kombat games. CPU-controlled opponents obviously use unfair advantages or are otherwise dumb as rocks. If you don't have another person to compete with — network gaming is included in numerous anthology releases, but rather basic in functionality — the experience will be incomplete.

Visual Options

The twenty-three accessible Mortal Kombat titles in the compilation, a blend of arcade, console, and handheld games, are precisely simulated, though I've observed a couple minor issues — mostly input lag and sporadic glitches, especially with Mortal Kombat 4. Even though the releases are mostly shown in their original form, developer Digital Eclipse has added several intelligent quality-of-life features and graphical adjustment settings. For example, users can elect to display fighter-specific techniques on the display and select to activate infinite time to execute finishing moves. Additionally available are settings for accessing hidden fighters, removing the requirement to complete obscure techniques to obtain them.

Visually, the games can be experienced with numerous graphical effects and display options. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection provides highly authentic effects that reproduce the cathode-ray tube displays of gaming halls or household displays, or the greenscale screen of a Game Boy. A notably appreciated element is the setting to activate coin-op-inspired frames framing the gameplay, with the MK game of your choice precisely and gently mirroring against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's remarkably visually appealing.

Additional Features

Players will discover multiple appreciated elements beyond the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, featuring an audio component that enables players to reexperience the tunes of various fighting releases without the din of two kombatants viciously slaughtering each other. Also present are fighter biographies that include bios and the various bits of lore displayed via arcade games' attract mode screens and final sequences.

Historical Preservation

Among the most significant features for committed franchise followers is the ability to access a segment of previously unavailable content in the form of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This particular edition, a slightly updated version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an early attempt by Midway at head-to-head network battles in arcades. The online-enabled release of the game is almost exactly the same to UMK3, but provided the ability to compete against internet adversaries and included some minor bug fixes and balance. But the Wavenet update didn't find widespread adoption, in part