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The Mortal Kombat series retains numerous undisclosed elements and the capacity to surprise, well past its 30th anniversary after its original launch in arcades. A new collection spanning the series' initial period, which includes a quartet of arcade releases, several home system versions, and derivative games, transcends just a well-emulated set of legendary games along with lesser-known entries — it additionally serves as a detailed chronicle about the creation of the legendary series.

Being a long-time devotee of the franchise who has paid close attention its origins and transformation, there was plenty new for me to understand and value about the series.

What Makes the Historical Compilation

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like other retro collections from the creators at Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, part playable archive. This compilation features emulated versions of the first arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, along with home system and portable adaptations of some of those games. The anthology additionally contains the brand's experiments at spinoffs, like action-oriented titles Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — two of the franchise's most criticized releases.

The Legacy Kollection thus isn't a highlight reel anthology, but an examination of Mortal Kombat's early days, when the creators at Midway and brand founders the visionary developers were figuring out how to create a combat title, created from video recordings of live performers, on the fly. Observing the archival material — containing archival footage, new interviews, and digital copies of vintage posters, illustrated stories, and even interoffice faxes — it's remarkable to see how the series transformed from modest origins to a international craze. It's frankly astounding to observe several early video game creators, operating with virtually no plan or oversight, direct their entertainment passions into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Documentary Portion

The educational segment of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection traces the growth of the combat franchise and its creators' careers at the now-defunct Midway. It then goes on to show how these identical developers reckoned with how to consistently surpass their achievements, encountering significant pressure to repeat their triumphs. It serves as a compelling period piece made from analog films and film-based pictures and manual drawings, which reveal the self-made character of Mortal Kombat's development and how word of mouth helped circulate its mysteries and hidden aspects of Mortal Kombat in its golden era in coin-op establishments. Told in bite-sized chunks, it's thoroughly enjoyable set of brief historical films that includes titles, illustrated stories, cinematic adaptations and including the humorous real-world tour. It also includes some unreleased actions and digital fighter representations among its cutting-room-floor content.

Playable Component

Interspersed along the quintet of documentary episodes' progression are invitations to experience the original releases. At certain intervals, viewers can hop into a game of Mortal Kombat or a console adaptation to revisit its gameplay and graphics, recreated with impressive accuracy on contemporary systems.

I dedicated most of my time playing the arcade classics, specifically Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Many of the games here remain enjoyable, especially in local multiplayer matches. However, facing the artificial intelligence fighters in these releases is a reminder of how crude and unbalanced the coding existed in the franchise's pioneering releases. Computer-directed fighters blatantly cheat to win or are alternatively incredibly stupid. Lacking a human opponent — online play is available in most titles in the collection, but too light on features — the experience will be incomplete.

Display Features

The 23 playable Mortal Kombat games in the anthology, a blend of arcade, console, and handheld games, are precisely simulated, though I've observed a couple minor issues — mainly control latency and intermittent errors, particularly in Mortal Kombat 4. Even though the releases are largely presented as-is, the creators has added several intelligent quality-of-life features and display customization choices. For example, you can choose to display fighter-specific techniques on the display and choose to enable unlimited duration to execute finishing moves. Additionally available are settings for accessing hidden fighters, removing the requirement to complete some esoteric trick to obtain them.

Graphically, the titles can be experienced with numerous graphical effects and display options. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection offers very realistic options that simulate the CRT monitors of arcades or household displays, or the greenscale screen of a Nintendo handheld. A particularly nice touch is the choice to enable arcade-like bezels encircling the display, with the MK game of your choice accurately and softly reflecting against the faux black plastic borders. It's remarkably visually appealing.

Bonus Elements

There are plenty of welcome features besides the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, containing a soundtrack mode that allows users to rediscover the soundtracks of different Mortal Kombat games without the din of combatants violently defeating each other. Also present are character profiles that contain backgrounds and the various bits of lore presented by the demo sequences of coin-op titles and conclusions.

Archival Discovery

One of the biggest highlights for dedicated series enthusiasts is the ability to access a piece of "lost media" in the format of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This specific release, a somewhat revised iteration of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an early attempt by Midway at head-to-head network battles in arcades. This network version of the game is almost exactly the same to UMK3, but provided the ability to battle network competitors and included some minor error corrections and adjustments. But the Wavenet update didn't find widespread adoption, in part