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This iconic fighting game still possesses numerous undisclosed elements and the capacity to surprise, over three decades after its original launch in arcades. A new collection including the franchise's earliest days, which includes a quartet of arcade releases, several home system versions, and derivative games, is more than just a well-emulated series of classics along with lesser-known entries — it's also a comprehensive historical account about the creation of the legendary series.

Being a long-time Mortal Kombat fan who has closely monitored its creation and evolution, there was numerous fresh aspects for me to understand and value about the series.

What Makes the Historical Compilation

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection comparable to previous classic compilations from developer Digital Eclipse, part historical documentation, section playable historical record. The anthology contains digitally recreated editions of the pioneering 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 collection even includes the brand's experiments at spin-off titles, like action-oriented titles Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — two of the franchise's least successful installments.

The Legacy Kollection thus isn't a “best of” collection, but an examination of the series' formative period, when developer Midway and brand founders Ed Boon and John Tobias were figuring out how to develop a battle series, produced using film material of actual people, on the fly. Viewing the historical footage — that features archival footage, recent conversations, and scans of old flyers, illustrated stories, and including internal communications — it's remarkable to see how the franchise evolved from modest origins to a worldwide phenomenon. It's frankly astounding to observe several young game developers, operating with virtually no plan or supervision, direct their entertainment passions into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Educational Component

The documentary portion of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection charts the rise of the fighting series and the developers' professional journeys at the currently closed Midway. It further illustrates how these identical developers contended with how to consistently surpass their achievements, encountering significant demand to replicate their success. It represents an intriguing historical record made from analog films and film-based pictures and hand-drawn illustrations, which reveal the self-made character of Mortal Kombat's development and how personal recommendations helped circulate its mysteries and secrets of MK in its arcade heyday. Presented in manageable segments, it's an eminently watchable collection of mini-documentaries that includes titles, illustrated stories, cinematic adaptations and even the comical physical events. It also includes some unreleased actions and game character images among its cutting-room-floor content.

Interactive Gaming

Distributed throughout the five-segment historical film's chronology are invitations to experience the games themselves. During specific moments, users can directly access a combat game session or one of its home console ports to revisit its gameplay and visual presentation, recreated with impressive accuracy on current technology.

I allocated the majority of my time engaging with the vintage coin-op games, particularly Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Numerous titles here stand the test of time, notably with one-on-one local play. Yet competing with the artificial intelligence fighters in these releases is a testament to how primitive and unbalanced the development approached in the franchise's pioneering releases. AI-managed characters blatantly cheat to win or are conversely remarkably unintelligent. If you don't have someone to play against — internet multiplayer exists in numerous anthology releases, but too light on features — you'll be missing out.

Technical Presentation

The twenty-three accessible Mortal Kombat titles in the collection, a mix of gaming hall, television, and mobile releases, are faithfully recreated, though I have noticed a couple minor issues — mostly input lag and intermittent errors, especially with Mortal Kombat 4. Although the titles are largely presented as-is, the development team has included some smart user experience improvements and graphical adjustment settings. For example, users can elect to display fighter-specific techniques on the display and opt to have infinite time to perform a Fatality. Additionally available are settings for accessing hidden fighters, removing the requirement to complete obscure techniques to obtain them.

Graphically, the titles can be experienced with numerous filters and visual treatments. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection provides highly authentic filters that mimic the traditional television screens of coin-op establishments or household displays, or the monochrome green display of a Nintendo handheld. An especially welcome feature is the setting to activate coin-op-inspired frames surrounding the screen, with the specific combat game you're playing accurately and softly reflecting against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's quite aesthetically pleasing.

Additional Features

The collection includes numerous appreciated elements beyond the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, featuring an audio component that allows users to rediscover the tunes of various combat titles absent the noise of combatants violently defeating each other. Additionally included are fighter biographies that include bios and multiple story elements displayed via arcade games' attract mode screens and conclusions.

Historical Preservation

Among the most significant features for dedicated series enthusiasts is the opportunity to play a segment of previously unavailable content in the form of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This version of the game, a slightly updated version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an early attempt by Midway at one-on-one internet-based play in coin-op establishments. The online-enabled release of the game is almost exactly the same to UMK3, but featured the capability to compete against internet adversaries and contained several small error corrections and adjustments. However, this network version didn't find widespread adoption, in part