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Mortal Kombat still possesses many hidden mysteries and the power to astonish, over three decades after its first appearance in arcades. The recent anthology covering the brand's formative years, featuring four arcade games, various home ports, and derivative games, is more than simply a faithfully reproduced series of classics along with lesser-known entries — it functions as a rich documentary about the creation of the renowned brand.

As a dedicated enthusiast of the series who has closely monitored its development and progression, there was plenty new for me to discover and admire about the series.

What Makes the Historical Compilation

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection comparable to other vintage game anthologies from developer Digital Eclipse, part documentary, section playable historical record. This compilation features digitally recreated editions of the pioneering arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, along with home system and portable adaptations of certain releases. The collection even includes the series' ventures at spin-off titles, like combat-focused releases Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — among the series' most criticized releases.

The Legacy Kollection consequently doesn't represent a greatest hits compilation, but a study of Mortal Kombat's early days, 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, through experimentation. Watching the documentary — containing historical videos, new interviews, and scans of old flyers, illustrated stories, and including internal communications — it's remarkable to see how the franchise evolved from humble beginnings to a worldwide phenomenon. It's truly remarkable to see a group of early video game creators, working with minimal planning or oversight, focus their cultural enthusiasms into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Documentary Portion

The documentary portion of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection charts the rise of the fighting series and the developers' professional journeys at the now-defunct Midway. It further illustrates how those same creators reckoned with how to consistently surpass their achievements, encountering significant stress to duplicate their success. It's a fascinating time capsule composed of analog films and analog photographs and pencil sketches, which demonstrate the hands-on approach of Mortal Kombat's development and how oral tradition helped spread its rumors and undisclosed elements of the series in its arcade heyday. Presented in manageable segments, it's thoroughly enjoyable set of brief historical films that covers video games, graphic novels, movies and even the silly live-action tour. It also includes some never-implemented techniques and character sprites among its cutting-room-floor content.

Playable Component

Placed within the five-part documentary's timeline are prompts to play the actual titles. At certain intervals, viewers can hop into a combat game session or a home system version to rediscover its combat system and graphics, recreated with impressive accuracy on current technology.

I allocated the majority of my time playing the arcade classics, specifically Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Several releases here remain enjoyable, especially in local multiplayer matches. But playing against the computer-controlled adversaries in these titles is a reminder of how crude and unjust the development approached in the series' initial installments. CPU-controlled opponents blatantly cheat to win or are otherwise dumb as rocks. Without having someone to play against — internet multiplayer exists in most titles in the collection, but too light on features — the experience will be incomplete.

Technical Presentation

The two dozen available combat games in the compilation, a mix of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are accurately emulated, though I've observed a few small quirks — mostly input lag and the occasional bug, notably within Mortal Kombat 4. Even though the releases are primarily displayed authentically, the development team has included some smart convenience enhancements and visual presentation options. As an illustration, players have the option to show each character's special moves on the display and select to activate infinite time to execute finishing moves. Additionally available are settings for accessing hidden fighters, without having to perform obscure techniques to access them.

Graphically, the titles can be experienced with numerous filters and visual treatments. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection provides highly authentic options that simulate the cathode-ray tube displays of coin-op establishments or household displays, or the greenscale screen of a portable gaming device. A particularly nice touch is the choice to enable gaming hall-style borders framing the gameplay, with the MK game of your choice precisely and gently mirroring against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's remarkably visually appealing.

Bonus Elements

The collection includes numerous appreciated elements beyond the documentary and emulated arcade classics, containing a soundtrack mode that lets you revisit the tunes of various Mortal Kombat games absent the noise of two kombatants viciously slaughtering each other. Additionally included are fighter biographies that feature histories and the various bits of lore shown through the idle displays of gaming hall releases and final sequences.

Historical Preservation

One of the biggest highlights for dedicated series enthusiasts is the opportunity to play a segment of previously unavailable content in the form of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This particular edition, a somewhat revised iteration of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an early attempt by Midway at head-to-head network battles in arcades. The online-enabled release of the game is practically indistinguishable to UMK3, but featured the capability to battle network competitors and included some minor glitch repairs and refinements. Yet this online edition didn't find widespread adoption, in part