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This iconic fighting game retains many hidden mysteries and the capacity to surprise, well past its 30th anniversary after its first appearance in gaming halls. This latest compilation covering the brand's formative years, comprising four original arcade titles, several home system versions, and derivative games, is more than just a well-emulated series of classics including less celebrated releases — it's also a comprehensive historical account about the development of the iconic franchise.

As a dedicated devotee of the franchise who has paid close attention its origins and transformation, there was numerous fresh aspects for me to discover and admire about the series.

What Constitutes the Historical Compilation

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection similar to other vintage game anthologies from the creators at Digital Eclipse, part historical documentation, part playable archive. The collection includes 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. This compilation also features the franchise's attempts at spinoffs, like action-oriented titles Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — among the series' most criticized releases.

The Legacy Kollection thus isn't a “best of” collection, but a study of the series' formative period, when the development team Midway and series co-creators the creative duo behind the series were figuring out how to create a combat title, produced using film material of actual people, as they went along. Viewing the historical footage — that features vintage recordings, contemporary discussions, and digital copies of vintage posters, illustrated stories, and including internal communications — it's remarkable to see how Mortal Kombat went from humble beginnings to a global sensation. It's frankly astounding to observe several young game developers, operating with virtually no plan or oversight, channel their pop-culture interests into creating a legendary video game series.

Documentary Portion

The educational segment of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection documents the ascent of Mortal Kombat and its creators' careers at the now-defunct Midway. It subsequently demonstrates how those same creators reckoned with how to regularly outdo their previous work, encountering significant stress to duplicate their achievements. It serves as a compelling period piece constructed using video recordings and film-based pictures and manual drawings, which demonstrate the hands-on approach of Mortal Kombat's development and how oral tradition helped spread its rumors and secrets of MK in its peak period in gaming halls. Told in bite-sized chunks, it's highly engaging series of documentary shorts that spans games, comics, films and even the comical physical events. The collection additionally features some unused moves and character sprites among its previously unreleased material.

Interactive Gaming

Distributed throughout the five-segment historical film's chronology are opportunities to engage with the games themselves. At various points, users can directly access a game of Mortal Kombat or one of its home console ports to reexperience its mechanics and artistic style, simulated with remarkable precision on current technology.

I allocated the majority 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, notably with direct competitive sessions. But playing against the artificial intelligence fighters in these releases is a testament to how primitive and unfair the coding existed in the franchise's pioneering releases. AI-managed characters blatantly cheat to win or are conversely remarkably unintelligent. If you don't have a human opponent — network gaming is included in most titles in the collection, but too light on features — the experience will be incomplete.

Visual Options

The two dozen available combat games in the compilation, a blend of arcade, console, and handheld games, are accurately emulated, though I have noticed a handful slight anomalies — mostly input lag and sporadic glitches, particularly in Mortal Kombat 4. Although the titles are primarily displayed authentically, developer Digital Eclipse has added several intelligent user experience improvements and graphical adjustment settings. For instance, players have the option to reveal combatant-unique actions on-screen and choose to enable endless periods to execute finishing moves. There are also options for accessing hidden fighters, removing the requirement to complete some esoteric trick to unlock 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 cathode-ray tube displays of gaming halls or household displays, or the greenscale screen of a Nintendo handheld. A notably appreciated element is the setting to activate gaming hall-style borders 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.

Extra Content

There are plenty of nice touches beyond the educational material and simulated classic games, including a music player that lets you revisit the tunes of various combat titles excluding the sounds of fighters brutally eliminating opponents. Additionally included are fighter biographies that include bios and the various bits of lore shown through arcade games' attract mode screens and conclusions.

Lost Media Recovery

One of the biggest highlights for hardcore Mortal Kombat fans is the chance to experience a piece of "lost media" in the form of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This particular edition, a slightly updated version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an pioneering effort from the developer at head-to-head network battles in coin-op establishments. The online-enabled release of the game is practically indistinguishable to UMK3, but included the option to challenge online opponents and contained several small glitch repairs and refinements. Yet this online edition never gained traction, in part