The Legacy Kollection of Mortal Kombat: A Stunning Success for the Fighting Game Franchise

The Mortal Kombat series continues to hold its share of secrets and the ability to amaze, well past its 30th anniversary after its first appearance in coin-op establishments. The recent anthology spanning the brand's formative years, which includes four original arcade titles, several home system versions, and spinoffs, transcends just a well-emulated set of legendary games including less celebrated releases — it functions as a detailed chronicle about the creation of the legendary series.

As a dedicated devotee of the franchise who has carefully followed its development and progression, there was numerous fresh aspects for me to discover and admire about the series.

What Constitutes the Legacy Collection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like previous classic compilations from developer Digital Eclipse, part historical documentation, portion interactive museum. The anthology contains simulated releases of the original arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, along with home system and portable adaptations of several of these titles. This compilation also features the franchise's attempts at derivative games, like action-oriented titles Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — two of the franchise's least successful installments.

The Legacy Kollection thus isn't a “best of” collection, but an exploration into the series' formative period, when the creators at Midway and brand founders the visionary developers were figuring out how to develop a battle series, created from video recordings of real actors, on the fly. Observing the archival material — which includes vintage recordings, recent conversations, and scans of old flyers, comics, and even interoffice faxes — it's remarkable to see how the series transformed from modest origins to a international craze. It's frankly astounding to see a group of pioneering developers, working with minimal planning or supervision, focus their cultural enthusiasms into creating a legendary video game series.

Historical Section

The historical documentation of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection documents the ascent of the fighting series and its creators' careers at the currently closed Midway. It further illustrates 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 reveal the self-made character of the franchise's production method and how personal recommendations helped spread its rumors and hidden aspects of Mortal Kombat in its peak period in gaming halls. Told in bite-sized chunks, it's thoroughly enjoyable collection of mini-documentaries that includes titles, illustrated stories, cinematic adaptations and even the comical physical events. The collection additionally features some unused moves and game character images among its archived development assets.

Interactive Gaming

Placed within the quintet of documentary episodes' progression are opportunities to engage with the games themselves. During specific moments, viewers can hop into a Mortal Kombat title or one of its home console ports to rediscover its combat system and graphics, simulated with remarkable precision on current technology.

I allocated the majority of my time experiencing the original arcade titles, specifically Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Several releases here remain enjoyable, particularly during local multiplayer matches. However, facing the aforementioned game's AI-controlled opponents is a demonstration of how basic and unfair the development approached in the series' initial installments. Computer-directed fighters obviously use unfair advantages or are alternatively incredibly stupid. If you don't have a human opponent — internet multiplayer exists in numerous anthology releases, but rather basic in functionality — you'll miss the full enjoyment.

Technical Presentation

The two dozen available combat games in the compilation, a combination of gaming hall, television, and mobile releases, are accurately emulated, though I have noticed a few small quirks — mostly input lag and sporadic glitches, notably within Mortal Kombat 4. And while the games are largely presented as-is, the creators has incorporated various clever user experience improvements and graphical adjustment settings. For instance, players have the option to reveal combatant-unique actions during gameplay and opt to have endless periods to complete lethal techniques. Additionally available are settings for unlocking secret characters, without having to perform obscure techniques to unlock them.

Graphically, the titles can be played with a variety of filters and visual treatments. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection includes remarkably accurate options that simulate the traditional television screens of arcades or household displays, or the greenscale screen of a Nintendo handheld. A notably appreciated element is the choice to enable gaming hall-style borders framing the gameplay, with the specific combat game you're playing faithfully and subtly duplicating against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's remarkably visually appealing.

Additional Features

Players will discover multiple nice touches beyond the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, featuring an audio component that lets you revisit the tunes of various Mortal Kombat games excluding the sounds of combatants violently defeating each other. Also present are combatant descriptions that feature histories and the various bits of lore presented by arcade games' attract mode screens and final sequences.

Lost Media Recovery

One of the biggest highlights for hardcore Mortal Kombat fans is the opportunity to play a example of historically missing material in the format of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This version of the game, a moderately improved edition of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an initial venture by the company at one-on-one internet-based play in arcades. The online-enabled release of the game is almost exactly the same to UMK3, but provided the ability to battle network competitors and featured various slight glitch repairs and refinements. However, this network version didn't find widespread adoption, in part