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The Mortal Kombat series retains many hidden mysteries and the power to astonish, more than 30 years after its first appearance in coin-op establishments. A new collection spanning the franchise's earliest days, which includes four original arcade titles, various home ports, and related titles, goes beyond just a well-emulated series of classics along with lesser-known entries — it additionally serves as a rich documentary about the development of the legendary series.

As a dedicated Mortal Kombat fan who has closely monitored its development and progression, there was plenty new for me to understand and value about the series.

What Defines the Legacy Kollection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like other retro collections from developer Digital Eclipse, part historical documentation, portion interactive museum. The collection includes simulated releases 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 anthology additionally contains the franchise's attempts at derivative games, like action-oriented titles Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — among the series' worst entries.

The Legacy Kollection thus isn't a “best of” collection, but a study of the series' formative period, when developer Midway and brand founders the creative duo behind the series were figuring out how to create a combat title, produced using film material of real actors, on the fly. Observing the archival material — containing historical videos, new interviews, and scans of old flyers, graphic novels, and even interoffice faxes — it's remarkable to see how the series transformed from humble beginnings to a international craze. It's genuinely amazing to observe several young game developers, operating with virtually no plan or supervision, focus their cultural enthusiasms into establishing an enduring gaming brand.

Historical Section

The documentary portion of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection traces the growth of the fighting series and the founders' vocational paths at the now-defunct Midway. It further illustrates how these identical developers addressed how to regularly outdo their previous work, encountering significant pressure to repeat their achievements. It represents an intriguing historical record made from analog films and analog photographs and pencil sketches, which demonstrate the hands-on approach of the franchise's production method and how oral tradition helped spread its rumors and secrets of MK in its peak period in gaming halls. Delivered in easily digestible portions, it's thoroughly enjoyable collection of mini-documentaries that includes titles, illustrated stories, cinematic adaptations and even the silly live-action tour. The collection additionally features some never-implemented techniques and character sprites among its cutting-room-floor content.

Interactive Gaming

Interspersed along the five-part documentary's timeline are invitations to experience the games themselves. At various points, viewers can hop into a Mortal Kombat title or a console adaptation to rediscover its combat system and visual presentation, recreated with impressive accuracy on modern hardware.

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, notably with direct competitive sessions. Yet competing with the aforementioned game's AI-controlled opponents is a testament to how primitive and unfair the programming was in the franchise's pioneering releases. AI-managed characters clearly employ dishonest tactics or are alternatively incredibly stupid. Lacking another person to compete with — internet multiplayer exists in numerous anthology releases, but too light on features — the experience will be incomplete.

Technical Presentation

The twenty-three accessible Mortal Kombat titles in the collection, a blend of gaming hall, television, and mobile releases, are precisely simulated, though I've observed a handful slight anomalies — primarily delayed responses and intermittent errors, particularly in Mortal Kombat 4. And while the games are mostly shown in their original form, the development team has incorporated various clever convenience enhancements and visual presentation options. For instance, users can elect to show each character's special moves on the display and select to activate endless periods to complete lethal techniques. Also included are choices for revealing concealed combatants, eliminating the need to execute complicated methods to access them.

Graphically, the titles can be played with a variety of visual enhancements and presentation styles. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection offers very realistic options that simulate the cathode-ray tube displays of gaming halls or household displays, or the monochrome green display of a Game Boy. An especially welcome feature is the choice to enable arcade-like bezels framing the gameplay, with your selected Mortal Kombat title precisely and gently mirroring against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's remarkably visually appealing.

Extra Content

Players will discover multiple nice touches beyond the educational material and simulated classic games, featuring an audio component that enables players to reexperience the music from multiple fighting releases absent the noise of two kombatants viciously slaughtering each other. Additionally included are fighter biographies that feature histories and multiple story elements shown through arcade games' attract mode screens and conclusions.

Historical Preservation

One of the biggest highlights for dedicated series enthusiasts is the chance to experience a segment of previously unavailable content in the form of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This version of the game, a somewhat revised iteration of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an pioneering effort from the developer at one-on-one internet-based play in coin-op establishments. This network version of the game is almost exactly the same to UMK3, but included the option to battle network competitors and contained several small bug fixes and balance. Yet this online edition failed to achieve popularity, in part