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Mortal Kombat retains its share of secrets and the power to astonish, well past its 30th anniversary after its original launch in gaming halls. A new collection spanning the franchise's earliest days, comprising four arcade games, several home system versions, and spinoffs, is more than just a well-emulated collection of iconic titles along with lesser-known entries — it additionally serves as a rich documentary about the development of the legendary series.

As a dedicated devotee of the franchise who has paid close attention its origins and transformation, there was much to discover for me to learn and appreciate about the series.

What Defines the Legacy Kollection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like other retro collections from developer Digital Eclipse, part historical documentation, portion interactive museum. The collection includes emulated versions of the original arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, plus console and handheld ports of some of those games. The anthology additionally contains the series' ventures at spin-off titles, like action games Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — among the series' worst entries.

The Legacy Kollection thus isn't a “best of” collection, but an exploration into the series' formative period, when developer Midway and brand founders Ed Boon and John Tobias were determining how to develop a battle series, produced using film material of live performers, through experimentation. Observing the archival material — containing historical videos, new interviews, and reproductions of classic advertisements, comics, and even company memos — it's remarkable to see how Mortal Kombat went from humble beginnings to a international craze. It's frankly astounding to see a group of early video game creators, working with minimal planning or oversight, direct their entertainment passions into establishing an enduring gaming brand.

Documentary Portion

The educational segment of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection traces the growth of the combat franchise and its creators' careers at the no-longer-operating Midway. It subsequently demonstrates how the very same individuals addressed how to regularly outdo their previous work, encountering significant pressure to repeat their triumphs. It serves as a compelling period piece made from video recordings and analog photographs and hand-drawn illustrations, which showcase the DIY nature of the franchise's production method and how word of mouth helped disseminate its secrets and secrets of MK in its arcade heyday. Presented in manageable segments, it's thoroughly enjoyable series of documentary shorts that spans games, comics, films and even the comical physical events. It also includes some unused moves and digital fighter representations among its archived development assets.

Playable Component

Interspersed along the quintet of documentary episodes' progression are prompts to play the actual titles. During specific moments, audience members can jump into a combat game session or a console adaptation to revisit its gameplay and graphics, recreated with impressive accuracy on current technology.

I spent the bulk of my time engaging with the vintage coin-op games, specifically Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Several releases here hold up, notably with local multiplayer matches. Yet competing with the aforementioned game's AI-controlled opponents is a testament to how primitive and unbalanced the programming was in early Mortal Kombat games. Computer-directed fighters blatantly cheat to win or are alternatively incredibly stupid. If you don't have a human opponent — network gaming is included in the majority of included games, but rather basic in functionality — you'll be missing out.

Visual Options

The 23 playable Mortal Kombat games in the collection, a combination of arcade, console, and handheld games, are accurately emulated, though I've observed a couple minor issues — mainly control latency and sporadic glitches, particularly in Mortal Kombat 4. And while the games are mostly shown in their original form, the development team has added several intelligent user experience improvements and visual presentation options. For example, players have the option to reveal combatant-unique actions on the display and opt to have infinite time to execute finishing moves. Also included are choices for unlocking secret characters, removing the requirement to complete some esoteric trick to access them.

Graphically, the titles can be enjoyed with multiple visual enhancements and presentation styles. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection offers very realistic effects that reproduce the CRT monitors of gaming halls or home televisions, or the limited color monitor of a portable gaming device. An especially welcome feature is the choice to enable coin-op-inspired frames surrounding the screen, with the MK game of your choice accurately and softly reflecting against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's remarkably visually appealing.

Bonus Elements

The collection includes numerous welcome features besides the educational material and simulated classic games, featuring an audio component that lets you revisit the tunes of various combat titles without the din of fighters brutally eliminating opponents. Also present are combatant descriptions that include bios and multiple story elements shown through the idle displays of gaming hall releases and conclusions.

Historical Preservation

Among the most significant features for committed franchise followers is the opportunity to play a segment of previously unavailable content in the guise of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This particular edition, a moderately improved edition of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an initial venture by the company 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 battle network competitors and contained several small error corrections and adjustments. But the Wavenet update didn't find widespread adoption, in part