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Mortal Kombat still possesses many hidden mysteries and the ability to amaze, over three decades after its first appearance in arcades. A new collection covering the series' initial period, comprising four arcade games, various home ports, and spinoffs, goes beyond just a well-emulated series of classics along with lesser-known entries — it's also a detailed chronicle about the making of the legendary series.

Being a long-time Mortal Kombat fan who has carefully followed its creation and evolution, there was plenty new for me to discover and admire about the series.

What Constitutes the Legacy Collection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection comparable to other vintage game anthologies from the development team Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, portion interactive museum. This compilation features emulated versions 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 brand's experiments at spin-off titles, like combat-focused releases Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — among the series' least successful installments.

The Legacy Kollection consequently doesn't represent a highlight reel anthology, but an exploration into the series' formative period, when the creators at Midway and brand founders Ed Boon and John Tobias were figuring out how to create a combat title, produced using film material of live performers, through experimentation. Viewing the historical footage — that features archival footage, recent conversations, and reproductions of classic advertisements, graphic novels, and even company memos — it's remarkable to see how Mortal Kombat went from humble beginnings to a international craze. It's truly remarkable to see a group of pioneering developers, operating with virtually no plan or guidance, focus their cultural enthusiasms into creating a legendary video game series.

Educational Component

The historical documentation of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection traces the growth of Mortal Kombat and the developers' professional journeys at the now-defunct Midway. It subsequently demonstrates how those same creators addressed how to routinely one-up themselves, encountering significant demand to replicate their achievements. It represents an intriguing historical record composed of analog films and film-based pictures and pencil sketches, which demonstrate the hands-on approach of the series' creation process and how oral tradition helped disseminate its secrets and hidden aspects of Mortal Kombat in its golden era in coin-op establishments. Delivered in easily digestible portions, it's an eminently watchable series of documentary shorts that spans games, comics, films and including the humorous real-world tour. The compilation also contains some never-implemented techniques and character sprites among its cutting-room-floor content.

Interactive Experience

Placed within the quintet of documentary episodes' progression are opportunities to engage with the games themselves. At certain intervals, viewers can hop into a Mortal Kombat title or one of its home console ports to revisit its gameplay and graphics, simulated with remarkable precision on modern hardware.

I spent the bulk of my time experiencing the original arcade titles, specifically Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Several releases here remain enjoyable, notably with direct competitive sessions. But playing against the computer-controlled adversaries in these titles is a testament to how primitive and unbalanced the programming was in the franchise's pioneering releases. Computer-directed fighters clearly employ dishonest tactics or are alternatively incredibly stupid. Without having another person to compete with — online play is available in most titles in the collection, but too light on features — the experience will be incomplete.

Display Features

The twenty-three accessible Mortal Kombat titles in the collection, a blend of arcade, console, and handheld games, are faithfully recreated, though I have noticed a couple minor issues — mostly input lag and the occasional bug, notably within Mortal Kombat 4. And while the games are primarily displayed authentically, developer Digital Eclipse has included some smart quality-of-life features and graphical adjustment settings. As an illustration, users can elect to reveal combatant-unique actions during gameplay and choose to enable unlimited duration to execute finishing moves. Additionally available are settings for accessing hidden fighters, without having to perform complicated methods to access them.

Artistically, the releases can be experienced with numerous filters and visual treatments. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection includes remarkably accurate effects that reproduce the traditional television screens of arcades or domestic TVs, or the monochrome green display of a portable gaming device. A particularly nice touch is the setting to activate coin-op-inspired frames framing the gameplay, with your selected Mortal Kombat title accurately and softly reflecting against the simulated dark plastic edges. It's quite aesthetically pleasing.

Extra Content

The collection includes numerous nice touches beyond the educational material and simulated classic games, including a music player that allows users to rediscover the tunes of various Mortal Kombat games absent the noise of combatants violently defeating each other. Also present are combatant descriptions that contain backgrounds and the various bits of lore presented by arcade games' attract mode screens and final sequences.

Archival Discovery

One of the biggest highlights for committed franchise followers is the opportunity to play a example of historically missing material in the guise of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This particular edition, a slightly updated version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an initial venture by the company at direct online competitive gaming in arcades. The Wavenet Edition of the game is almost exactly the same to UMK3, but featured the capability to compete against internet adversaries and contained several small bug fixes and balance. Yet this online edition failed to achieve popularity, in part