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Mortal Kombat continues to hold its share of secrets and the capacity to surprise, well past its 30th anniversary after its initial debut in gaming halls. This latest compilation covering the brand's formative years, featuring four arcade games, multiple console adaptations, and related titles, goes beyond only a accurately simulated series of classics along with lesser-known entries — it's also a rich documentary about the creation of the iconic franchise.

Even as a lifelong Mortal Kombat fan who has carefully followed its origins and transformation, there was much to discover for me to understand and value about the series.

What Makes the Legacy Kollection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection comparable to other retro collections from the creators at Digital Eclipse, part documentary, portion interactive museum. The anthology contains simulated releases of the original arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, including television and mobile versions of several of these titles. This compilation also features the brand's experiments at derivative games, like action-oriented titles Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — some of the brand's least successful installments.

The Legacy Kollection thus isn't a greatest hits compilation, but an examination of the franchise's initial era, when the development team Midway and brand founders Ed Boon and John Tobias were discovering methods to make a fighting game, created from video recordings of actual people, on the fly. Observing the archival material — which includes archival footage, recent conversations, and reproductions of classic advertisements, graphic novels, and including internal communications — it's remarkable to see how the franchise evolved from simple starts to a worldwide phenomenon. It's frankly astounding to see a group of young game developers, developing without clear direction or oversight, focus their cultural enthusiasms into creating a legendary video game series.

Educational Component

The historical documentation of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection documents the ascent of Mortal Kombat and its creators' careers at the currently closed Midway. It then goes on to show how these identical developers contended with how to consistently surpass their achievements, encountering significant demand to replicate their success. It serves as a compelling period piece composed of analog films and analog photographs and hand-drawn illustrations, which showcase the DIY nature of the series' creation process and how oral tradition helped disseminate its secrets and secrets of MK in its peak period in gaming halls. Delivered in easily digestible portions, it's an eminently watchable series of documentary shorts that includes titles, illustrated stories, cinematic adaptations and even the silly live-action tour. The compilation also contains some unreleased actions and game character images among its previously unreleased material.

Interactive Experience

Interspersed along the quintet of documentary episodes' progression are prompts to play the actual titles. During specific moments, audience members can jump into a game of Mortal Kombat or a home system version to rediscover its combat system and visual presentation, simulated with remarkable precision on current technology.

I spent the bulk of my time experiencing the original arcade titles, especially Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Numerous titles here stand the test of time, notably with local multiplayer matches. But playing against the computer-controlled adversaries in these titles is a reminder of how crude and unfair the development approached in the franchise's pioneering releases. Computer-directed fighters blatantly cheat to win or are otherwise dumb as rocks. Lacking someone to play against — network gaming is included in most titles in the collection, but too light on features — the experience will be incomplete.

Technical Presentation

The 23 playable Mortal Kombat games in the anthology, a mix of gaming hall, television, and mobile releases, are accurately emulated, though I have noticed a couple minor issues — mostly input lag and the occasional bug, particularly in Mortal Kombat 4. And while the games are primarily displayed authentically, the creators has added several intelligent convenience enhancements and visual presentation options. For example, users can elect to display fighter-specific techniques on the display and select to activate unlimited duration to execute finishing moves. There are also options for accessing hidden fighters, eliminating the need to execute some esoteric trick to access them.

Visually, the games can be enjoyed with multiple graphical effects and display options. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection includes remarkably accurate options that simulate the traditional television screens of gaming halls or household displays, or the limited color monitor of a portable gaming device. A particularly nice touch is the choice to enable gaming hall-style borders surrounding the screen, with the specific combat game you're playing faithfully and subtly duplicating against the faux black plastic borders. It's remarkably visually appealing.

Bonus Elements

The collection includes numerous welcome features besides the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, including a music player that allows users to rediscover the soundtracks of different combat titles excluding the sounds of two kombatants viciously slaughtering each other. Also present are character profiles that contain backgrounds and multiple story elements displayed via arcade games' attract mode screens and endings.

Lost Media Recovery

A particularly notable inclusion for committed franchise followers is the ability to access a example of historically missing material in the form of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This specific release, a slightly updated version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an pioneering effort from the developer at one-on-one internet-based play in gaming halls. The Wavenet Edition of the game is almost exactly the same to UMK3, but provided the ability to battle network competitors and featured various slight error corrections and adjustments. Yet this online edition failed to achieve popularity, in part