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This iconic fighting game still possesses its share of secrets and the power to astonish, well past its 30th anniversary after its first appearance in gaming halls. This latest compilation spanning the series' initial period, featuring four arcade games, several home system versions, and derivative games, is more than simply a faithfully reproduced set of legendary games along with lesser-known entries — it functions as a detailed chronicle about the making of the iconic franchise.

Being a long-time Mortal Kombat fan who has carefully followed its creation and evolution, there was numerous fresh aspects for me to learn and appreciate about the series.

What Makes the Legacy Collection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection similar to other retro collections from developer Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, section playable historical record. The anthology contains emulated versions of the first arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, plus console and handheld ports of several of these titles. The collection even includes the franchise's attempts at spin-off titles, like combat-focused releases Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — some of the brand's most criticized releases.

The Legacy Kollection thus isn't a “best of” collection, but a study of the franchise's initial era, when the development team Midway and series co-creators the visionary developers were discovering methods to create a combat title, created from video recordings of actual people, through experimentation. Observing the archival material — containing vintage recordings, contemporary discussions, and reproductions of classic advertisements, illustrated stories, and including internal communications — it's astonishing to observe how the franchise evolved from simple starts to a international craze. It's genuinely amazing to watch a handful of early video game creators, operating with virtually no plan or oversight, direct their entertainment passions into creating a legendary video game series.

Educational Component

The historical documentation of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection traces the growth of the fighting series and the founders' vocational paths at the no-longer-operating Midway. It further illustrates how these identical developers reckoned with how to regularly outdo their previous work, facing no small amount of demand to replicate their achievements. It represents an intriguing historical record constructed using analog films and film-based pictures and pencil sketches, which showcase the DIY nature of the franchise's production method and how personal recommendations helped disseminate its secrets and undisclosed elements of the series in its peak period in gaming halls. Told in bite-sized chunks, it's thoroughly enjoyable set of brief historical films that includes titles, illustrated stories, cinematic adaptations and even the silly live-action tour. The collection additionally features some unused moves and character sprites among its cutting-room-floor content.

Interactive Experience

Distributed throughout the quintet of documentary episodes' progression are opportunities to engage with the actual titles. During specific moments, viewers can hop into a Mortal Kombat title or one of its home console ports to revisit its gameplay and graphics, recreated with impressive accuracy on modern hardware.

I dedicated most of my time playing the arcade classics, especially Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Numerous titles here stand the test of time, particularly during local multiplayer matches. However, facing the aforementioned game's AI-controlled opponents is a testament to how primitive and unfair the development approached in the franchise's pioneering releases. Computer-directed fighters blatantly cheat to win or are otherwise dumb as rocks. Without having 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 collection, a mix of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are faithfully recreated, though I detected a handful slight anomalies — mostly input lag and intermittent errors, particularly in Mortal Kombat 4. Although the titles are mostly shown in their original form, the development team has incorporated various clever user experience improvements and graphical adjustment settings. For instance, players have the option to show each character's special moves on the display and select to activate infinite time to complete lethal techniques. There are also options for unlocking secret characters, removing the requirement to complete some esoteric trick to obtain them.

Visually, the games can be enjoyed with multiple visual enhancements and presentation styles. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection includes remarkably accurate effects that reproduce the cathode-ray tube displays of gaming halls or domestic TVs, or the greenscale screen of a portable gaming device. A notably appreciated element is the setting to activate gaming hall-style borders encircling the display, with your selected Mortal Kombat title precisely and gently mirroring against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's quite aesthetically pleasing.

Additional Features

The collection includes numerous welcome features besides the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, featuring an audio component that lets you revisit the soundtracks of different fighting releases without the din of two kombatants viciously slaughtering each other. Also present are character profiles that include bios and numerous narrative components displayed via the demo sequences of coin-op titles and endings.

Lost Media Recovery

One of the biggest highlights for hardcore Mortal Kombat fans is the opportunity to play a piece of "lost media" in the form of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This version of the game, a moderately improved edition of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an pioneering effort from the developer at head-to-head network battles in arcades. The online-enabled release of the game is almost exactly the same to UMK3, but included the option to compete against internet adversaries and contained several small error corrections and adjustments. Yet this online edition never gained traction, in part