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Mortal Kombat continues to hold numerous undisclosed elements and the capacity to surprise, well past its 30th anniversary after its original launch in arcades. This latest compilation spanning the brand's formative years, featuring four arcade games, multiple console adaptations, and related titles, is more than just a well-emulated series of classics and not-so-classics — it's also a comprehensive historical account about the creation of the iconic franchise.

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

What Constitutes the Legacy Kollection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like previous classic compilations from the creators at Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, portion interactive museum. The collection includes digitally recreated editions 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 anthology additionally contains the series' ventures at spinoffs, like action-oriented titles Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — among the series' most criticized releases.

The Legacy Kollection thus isn't a highlight reel anthology, but a study of the franchise's initial era, when the development team Midway and brand founders the visionary developers were determining how to make a fighting game, digitized from footage of actual people, as they went along. Viewing the historical footage — that features archival footage, new interviews, and digital copies of vintage posters, illustrated stories, and including internal communications — it's astonishing to observe how the series transformed from simple starts to a worldwide phenomenon. It's truly remarkable to watch a handful of pioneering developers, operating with virtually no plan or oversight, focus their cultural enthusiasms into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Educational Component

The educational segment of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection documents the ascent of the combat franchise and the founders' vocational paths at the now-defunct Midway. It then goes on to show how the very same individuals reckoned with how to consistently surpass their achievements, encountering significant pressure to repeat their achievements. It represents an intriguing historical record made from VHS tapes and film-based pictures and pencil sketches, which showcase the DIY nature of the franchise's production method and how personal recommendations helped circulate its mysteries and hidden aspects of Mortal Kombat in its golden era in coin-op establishments. Delivered in easily digestible portions, it's thoroughly enjoyable collection of mini-documentaries that spans games, comics, films and including the humorous real-world tour. The collection additionally features some never-implemented techniques and digital fighter representations among its previously unreleased material.

Interactive Gaming

Distributed throughout the five-segment historical film's chronology are invitations to experience the original releases. At certain intervals, viewers can hop into a combat game session or one of its home console ports to rediscover its combat system and artistic style, recreated with impressive accuracy 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. Numerous titles here remain enjoyable, notably with direct competitive sessions. But playing against the aforementioned game's AI-controlled opponents is a reminder of how crude and unbalanced the development approached in the series' initial installments. CPU-controlled opponents blatantly cheat to win or are alternatively incredibly stupid. Without having another person to compete with — network gaming is included in the majority of included games, but somewhat limited in options — you'll be missing out.

Visual Options

The two dozen available combat games in the anthology, a combination of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are precisely simulated, though I have noticed a few small quirks — mainly control latency and sporadic glitches, particularly in Mortal Kombat 4. Although the titles are mostly shown in their original form, developer Digital Eclipse has included some smart user experience improvements and display customization choices. For example, users can elect to show each character's special moves during gameplay and opt to have unlimited duration to execute finishing moves. There are also options for accessing hidden fighters, without having to perform some esoteric trick to obtain them.

Visually, the games can be enjoyed with multiple visual enhancements and presentation styles. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection provides highly authentic options that simulate the traditional television screens of arcades or domestic TVs, or the greenscale screen of a Game Boy. An especially welcome feature is the setting to activate arcade-like bezels framing the gameplay, with the MK game of your choice precisely and gently mirroring against the faux black plastic borders. It's very artistically charming.

Extra Content

Players will discover multiple nice touches beyond the documentary and emulated arcade classics, including a music player that lets you revisit the soundtracks of different combat titles excluding the sounds of two kombatants viciously slaughtering each other. Also present are character profiles that feature histories and the various bits of lore shown through arcade games' attract mode screens and final sequences.

Historical Preservation

One of the biggest highlights for committed franchise followers is the ability to access a piece of "lost media" in the format 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 one-on-one internet-based play in coin-op establishments. The Wavenet Edition of the game is practically indistinguishable to UMK3, but provided the ability to compete against internet adversaries and included some minor error corrections and adjustments. But the Wavenet update failed to achieve popularity, in part