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Mortal Kombat still possesses many hidden mysteries and the ability to amaze, more than 30 years after its first appearance in gaming halls. This latest compilation spanning the brand's formative years, which includes four original arcade titles, various home ports, and derivative games, transcends only a accurately simulated series of classics including less celebrated releases — it's also a rich documentary about the making of the renowned brand.

As a dedicated enthusiast of the series who has closely monitored its creation and evolution, there was much to discover for me to understand and value about the series.

What Constitutes the Historical Compilation

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like other vintage game anthologies from the creators at Digital Eclipse, part documentary, part playable archive. The anthology contains simulated releases of the pioneering arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, plus console and handheld ports of several of these titles. This compilation also features the franchise's attempts at spinoffs, like action-oriented titles Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — two of the franchise's most criticized releases.

The Legacy Kollection is therefore not a “best of” collection, but an examination of the series' formative period, when developer Midway and series co-creators the creative duo behind the series were figuring out how to make a fighting game, created from video recordings of actual people, through experimentation. Viewing the historical footage — which includes historical videos, contemporary discussions, and scans of old flyers, illustrated stories, and even interoffice faxes — it's remarkable to see how Mortal Kombat went from modest origins to a international craze. It's truly remarkable to see a group of young game developers, developing without clear direction or supervision, focus their cultural enthusiasms into creating a legendary video game series.

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 then goes on to show how the very same individuals reckoned with how to routinely one-up themselves, experiencing considerable pressure to repeat their triumphs. It represents an intriguing historical record composed of VHS tapes and analog photographs and manual drawings, which showcase the DIY nature of the series' creation process and how word of mouth helped disseminate its secrets and hidden aspects of Mortal Kombat in its golden era in coin-op establishments. Told in bite-sized chunks, it's an eminently watchable series of documentary shorts that includes titles, illustrated stories, cinematic adaptations and including the humorous real-world tour. The collection additionally features some never-implemented techniques and game character images among its cutting-room-floor content.

Interactive Experience

Placed within the quintet of documentary episodes' progression are invitations to experience the games themselves. At various points, audience members can jump into a Mortal Kombat title or a console adaptation to reexperience its mechanics and graphics, simulated with remarkable precision on modern hardware.

I allocated the majority of my time engaging with the vintage coin-op games, 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 artificial intelligence fighters in these releases is a demonstration of how basic and unbalanced the programming was in the franchise's pioneering releases. AI-managed characters obviously use unfair advantages or are alternatively incredibly stupid. Lacking another person to compete with — online play is available in the majority of included games, but too light on features — you'll miss the full enjoyment.

Visual Options

The 23 playable Mortal Kombat games in the collection, a mix of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are faithfully recreated, though I detected a few small quirks — mainly control latency and sporadic glitches, particularly in Mortal Kombat 4. Although the titles are mostly shown in their original form, the creators has added several intelligent user experience improvements and visual presentation options. For instance, players have the option to reveal combatant-unique actions on the display and select to activate unlimited duration to complete lethal techniques. Also included are choices for revealing concealed combatants, removing the requirement to complete some esoteric trick to obtain them.

Graphically, the titles can be experienced with numerous visual enhancements and presentation styles. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection offers very realistic options that simulate the traditional television screens of coin-op establishments or home televisions, or the monochrome green display of a Game Boy. An especially welcome feature is the choice to enable gaming hall-style borders surrounding the screen, with your selected Mortal Kombat title faithfully and subtly duplicating against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's remarkably visually appealing.

Bonus Elements

Players will discover multiple welcome features besides the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, including a music player that lets you revisit the tunes of various fighting releases excluding the sounds of combatants violently defeating each other. There are also fighter biographies that contain backgrounds and the various bits of lore shown through arcade games' attract mode screens and conclusions.

Archival Discovery

A particularly notable inclusion for hardcore Mortal Kombat fans is the ability to access a example of historically missing material in the form of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This specific release, a moderately improved edition of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an early attempt by Midway at head-to-head network battles in coin-op establishments. The online-enabled release of the game is almost exactly the same to UMK3, but included the option to compete against internet adversaries and included some minor error corrections and adjustments. However, this network version never gained traction, in part