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Mortal Kombat still possesses its share of secrets and the ability to amaze, over three decades after its original launch in arcades. A new collection covering the series' initial period, featuring four original arcade titles, various home ports, and derivative games, goes beyond simply a faithfully reproduced set of legendary games including less celebrated releases — it's also a rich documentary about the creation of the legendary series.

Even as a lifelong Mortal Kombat fan who has carefully followed its origins and transformation, there was much to discover for me to understand and value about the series.

What Defines the Historical Compilation

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection similar to other retro collections from the development team 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, plus console and handheld ports of some of those games. The anthology additionally contains the brand's experiments at spinoffs, like action games Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — two of the franchise's least successful installments.

The Legacy Kollection consequently doesn't represent a greatest hits compilation, but an examination of Mortal Kombat's early days, when developer Midway and series co-creators the visionary developers were determining how to develop a battle series, produced using film material of real actors, as they went along. Viewing the historical footage — which includes archival footage, recent conversations, and digital copies of vintage posters, comics, and even company memos — it's remarkable to see how Mortal Kombat went from humble beginnings to a worldwide phenomenon. It's truly remarkable to observe several pioneering developers, operating with virtually no plan or supervision, focus their cultural enthusiasms into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Educational Component

The documentary portion of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection charts the rise of Mortal Kombat and the founders' vocational paths at the now-defunct Midway. It subsequently demonstrates how the very same individuals addressed how to routinely one-up themselves, facing no small amount of demand to replicate their success. It represents an intriguing historical record composed of VHS tapes and film-based pictures and hand-drawn illustrations, which showcase the DIY nature of the series' creation process and how oral tradition helped disseminate its secrets and undisclosed elements of the series in its peak period in gaming halls. Delivered in easily digestible portions, it's thoroughly enjoyable collection of mini-documentaries that includes titles, illustrated stories, cinematic adaptations and even the comical physical events. It also includes some unused moves and digital fighter representations among its archived development assets.

Playable Component

Placed within the five-segment historical film's chronology are opportunities to engage with the original releases. During specific moments, audience members can jump into a Mortal Kombat title or a home system version to rediscover its combat system and visual presentation, emulated nearly perfectly on modern hardware.

I dedicated most of my time experiencing the original arcade titles, especially Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Numerous titles here stand the test of time, especially in one-on-one local play. But playing against the aforementioned game's AI-controlled opponents is a reminder of how crude and unbalanced the programming was in the franchise's pioneering releases. Computer-directed fighters blatantly cheat to win or are conversely remarkably unintelligent. Without having a human opponent — online play is available in most titles in the collection, but too light on features — you'll be missing out.

Technical Presentation

The two dozen available combat games in the compilation, a blend of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are accurately emulated, though I've observed 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 incorporated various clever convenience enhancements and visual presentation options. For example, players have the option to show each character's special moves on the display and choose to enable infinite time to complete lethal techniques. Also included are choices for revealing concealed combatants, eliminating the need to execute some esoteric trick to unlock them.

Graphically, the titles can be enjoyed with multiple graphical effects and display options. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection provides highly authentic options that simulate the cathode-ray tube displays of arcades or household displays, or the monochrome green display of a portable gaming device. A notably appreciated element is the option to have arcade-like bezels framing the gameplay, with your selected Mortal Kombat title precisely and gently mirroring against the faux black plastic borders. It's very artistically charming.

Additional Features

Players will discover multiple nice touches beyond the educational material and simulated classic games, including a music player that enables players to reexperience the music from multiple combat titles absent the noise of two kombatants viciously slaughtering each other. Also present are character profiles that include bios and the various bits of lore displayed via the idle displays of gaming hall releases and final sequences.

Lost Media Recovery

Among the most significant features for committed franchise followers is the chance to experience a example of historically missing material in the form of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This specific release, a somewhat revised iteration of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an initial venture by the company at head-to-head network battles in coin-op establishments. The Wavenet Edition of the game is almost exactly the same to UMK3, but provided the ability to challenge online opponents and included some minor bug fixes and balance. Yet this online edition failed to achieve popularity, in part