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Mortal Kombat continues to hold its share of secrets and the ability to amaze, well past its 30th anniversary after its original launch in arcades. A new collection covering the series' initial period, comprising four original arcade titles, several home system versions, and derivative games, is more than just a well-emulated set of legendary games and not-so-classics — it's also a comprehensive historical account about the development of the iconic franchise.

As a dedicated enthusiast of the series who has paid close attention its development and progression, there was much to discover for me to understand and value about the series.

What Constitutes the Legacy Kollection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection comparable to other vintage game anthologies from the creators at Digital Eclipse, part documentary, portion interactive museum. The anthology contains digitally recreated editions of the first arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, including television and mobile versions of certain releases. This compilation also features the series' ventures at spinoffs, like combat-focused releases Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — some of the brand's least successful installments.

The Legacy Kollection thus isn't a “best of” collection, but an exploration into the franchise's initial era, when developer Midway and series co-creators Ed Boon and John Tobias were determining how to create a combat title, produced using film material of live performers, through experimentation. Watching the documentary — containing vintage recordings, contemporary discussions, and scans of old flyers, illustrated stories, and even interoffice faxes — it's astonishing to observe how the series transformed from simple starts to a international craze. It's frankly astounding to see a group of pioneering developers, working with minimal planning or supervision, channel their pop-culture interests into creating a legendary video game series.

Educational Component

The educational segment of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection charts the rise of the fighting series and the developers' professional journeys at the currently closed Midway. It then goes on to show how these identical developers contended with how to routinely one-up themselves, encountering significant demand to replicate their triumphs. It represents an intriguing historical record composed of video recordings and film-based pictures and manual drawings, which demonstrate the hands-on approach of the franchise's production method and how personal recommendations helped disseminate its secrets and hidden aspects of Mortal Kombat in its arcade heyday. 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 unused moves and game character images among its archived development assets.

Playable Component

Placed within the five-segment historical film's chronology are prompts to play the actual titles. At certain intervals, audience members can jump into a combat game session or one of its home console ports to revisit its gameplay and graphics, simulated with remarkable precision on current technology.

I spent the bulk of my time playing the arcade classics, especially Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Many of the games here hold up, particularly during direct competitive sessions. But playing against the aforementioned game's AI-controlled opponents is a demonstration of how basic and unbalanced the coding existed in the franchise's pioneering releases. AI-managed characters blatantly cheat to win or are alternatively incredibly stupid. Without having someone to play against — network gaming is included in most titles in the collection, but somewhat limited in options — you'll be missing out.

Display Features

The two dozen available combat games in the compilation, a mix of arcade, console, and handheld games, are precisely simulated, though I detected a couple minor issues — mainly control latency and sporadic glitches, particularly in Mortal Kombat 4. Even though the releases are largely presented as-is, developer Digital Eclipse has added several intelligent user experience improvements and visual presentation options. For example, you can choose to display fighter-specific techniques on the display and opt to have endless periods to execute finishing moves. Also included are choices for accessing hidden fighters, eliminating the need to execute some esoteric trick to unlock them.

Visually, the games can be enjoyed with multiple filters and visual treatments. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection offers very realistic options that simulate the CRT monitors of arcades or household displays, or the monochrome green display of a portable gaming device. An especially welcome feature is the option to have arcade-like bezels framing the gameplay, with your selected Mortal Kombat title accurately and softly reflecting against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's very artistically charming.

Additional Features

There are plenty of nice touches beyond the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, featuring an audio component that enables players to reexperience the music from multiple Mortal Kombat games absent the noise of combatants violently defeating each other. Also present are combatant descriptions that feature histories and numerous narrative components presented by the demo sequences of coin-op titles and conclusions.

Archival Discovery

A particularly notable inclusion for committed franchise followers is the opportunity to play a example of historically missing material in the form of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This version of the game, a slightly updated version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an pioneering effort from the developer at one-on-one internet-based play in arcades. The online-enabled release of the game is almost exactly the same to UMK3, but featured the capability to challenge online opponents and contained several small error corrections and adjustments. Yet this online edition didn't find widespread adoption, in part