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Mortal Kombat still possesses its share of secrets and the ability to amaze, more than 30 years after its first appearance in coin-op establishments. The recent anthology spanning the franchise's earliest days, featuring a quartet of arcade releases, several home system versions, and related titles, transcends just a well-emulated set of legendary games and not-so-classics — it additionally serves as a comprehensive historical account about the creation of the renowned brand.

Even as a lifelong Mortal Kombat fan who has paid close attention its origins and transformation, there was numerous fresh aspects for me to understand and value about the series.

What Makes the Legacy Collection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection similar to previous classic compilations from developer Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, part playable archive. The collection includes emulated versions 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 collection even includes the franchise's attempts at derivative games, like action games Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — among the series' least successful installments.

The Legacy Kollection consequently doesn't represent a “best of” collection, but an examination of the franchise's initial era, when the development team Midway and franchise originators the visionary developers were discovering methods to make a fighting game, produced using film material of real actors, on the fly. Observing the archival material — that features vintage recordings, new interviews, and scans of old flyers, illustrated stories, and including internal communications — it's astonishing to observe how the franchise evolved from simple starts to a worldwide phenomenon. It's truly remarkable to watch a handful of young game developers, working with minimal planning or oversight, focus their cultural enthusiasms into establishing an enduring gaming brand.

Historical Section

The documentary portion of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection charts the rise of the fighting series and the developers' professional journeys at the no-longer-operating Midway. It subsequently demonstrates how the very same individuals addressed how to routinely one-up themselves, experiencing considerable demand to replicate their achievements. It's a fascinating time capsule constructed using analog films and film-based pictures and pencil sketches, which showcase the DIY nature of the franchise's production method and how word of mouth helped disseminate its secrets and hidden aspects of Mortal Kombat in its golden era in coin-op establishments. Told in bite-sized chunks, it's an eminently watchable collection of mini-documentaries that includes titles, illustrated stories, cinematic adaptations and even the silly live-action tour. The compilation also contains some never-implemented techniques and character sprites among its previously unreleased material.

Playable Component

Interspersed along the quintet of documentary episodes' progression are prompts to play the actual titles. At certain intervals, users can directly access a Mortal Kombat title or one of its home console ports to rediscover its combat system and visual presentation, recreated with impressive accuracy on contemporary systems.

I dedicated most of my time experiencing the original arcade titles, especially Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Many of the games here remain enjoyable, especially in one-on-one local play. Yet competing with the aforementioned game's AI-controlled opponents is a reminder of how crude and unbalanced the programming was in the series' initial installments. CPU-controlled opponents blatantly cheat to win or are otherwise dumb as rocks. If you don't have someone to play against — online play is available in the majority of included games, but rather basic in functionality — the experience will be incomplete.

Technical Presentation

The twenty-three accessible Mortal Kombat titles in the collection, a combination of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are precisely simulated, though I've observed a couple minor issues — mostly input lag and intermittent errors, particularly in Mortal Kombat 4. Although the titles are primarily displayed authentically, developer Digital Eclipse has incorporated various clever user experience improvements and graphical adjustment settings. For instance, you can choose to reveal combatant-unique actions on-screen and select to activate endless periods to execute finishing moves. Additionally available are settings for accessing hidden fighters, removing the requirement to complete obscure techniques to obtain them.

Visually, the games can be enjoyed with multiple visual enhancements and presentation styles. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection provides highly authentic filters that mimic the traditional television screens of gaming halls or home televisions, or the greenscale screen of a Nintendo handheld. A particularly nice touch is the choice to enable coin-op-inspired frames framing the gameplay, with the MK game of your choice faithfully and subtly duplicating against the simulated dark plastic edges. It's very artistically charming.

Extra Content

Players will discover multiple welcome features besides the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, including a music player that enables players to reexperience the music from multiple Mortal Kombat games without the din of fighters brutally eliminating opponents. Also present are combatant descriptions that feature histories and the various bits of lore presented by the demo sequences of coin-op titles and final sequences.

Archival Discovery

Among the most significant features for dedicated series enthusiasts is the ability to access a example of historically missing material in the format of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This version of the game, a somewhat revised iteration of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an early attempt by Midway at one-on-one internet-based play in gaming halls. The online-enabled release of the game is almost exactly the same to UMK3, but included the option to battle network competitors and included some minor error corrections and adjustments. However, this network version never gained traction, in part