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This iconic fighting game continues to hold its share of secrets and the power to astonish, more than 30 years after its initial debut in coin-op establishments. This latest compilation spanning the franchise's earliest days, which includes four original arcade titles, multiple console adaptations, and derivative games, transcends only a accurately simulated series of classics including less celebrated releases — it functions as a rich documentary about the development of the legendary series.

Even as a lifelong enthusiast of the series who has paid close attention its creation and evolution, there was much to discover for me to understand and value about the series.

What Makes the Legacy Collection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection comparable to other retro collections from developer Digital Eclipse, part documentary, part playable archive. This compilation features digitally recreated editions of the original arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, including television and mobile versions of some of those games. The anthology additionally contains the series' ventures at derivative games, like combat-focused releases Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — two of the franchise's most criticized releases.

The Legacy Kollection is therefore not a highlight reel anthology, but a study of the franchise's initial era, when developer Midway and franchise originators the visionary developers were determining how to create a combat title, digitized from footage of live performers, on the fly. Watching the documentary — which includes historical videos, contemporary discussions, and reproductions of classic advertisements, comics, and including internal communications — it's remarkable to see how Mortal Kombat went from modest origins to a global sensation. It's frankly astounding to observe several early video game creators, working with minimal planning or supervision, focus their cultural enthusiasms into creating a legendary video game series.

Educational Component

The documentary portion of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection documents the ascent of Mortal Kombat and the founders' vocational paths at the now-defunct Midway. It then goes on to show how these identical developers contended with how to routinely one-up themselves, experiencing considerable pressure to repeat their achievements. It represents an intriguing historical record made from video recordings and film-based pictures and manual drawings, which showcase the DIY nature of Mortal Kombat's development and how personal recommendations helped circulate its mysteries and secrets of MK in its golden era in coin-op establishments. Presented in manageable segments, it's highly engaging series of documentary shorts that includes titles, illustrated stories, cinematic adaptations and even the comical physical events. It also includes some unused moves and digital fighter representations among its previously unreleased material.

Playable Component

Interspersed along the five-segment historical film's chronology are invitations to experience the games themselves. During specific moments, audience members can jump into a game of Mortal Kombat or one of its home console ports to reexperience its mechanics and graphics, emulated nearly perfectly on contemporary systems.

I spent the bulk of my time playing the arcade classics, particularly Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Numerous titles here hold up, especially in direct competitive sessions. But playing against the aforementioned game's AI-controlled opponents is a demonstration of how basic and unbalanced the programming was in the series' initial installments. AI-managed characters obviously use unfair advantages or are conversely remarkably unintelligent. Lacking someone to play against — online play is available in the majority of included games, but too light on features — you'll miss the full enjoyment.

Display Features

The 23 playable Mortal Kombat games in the anthology, a blend of arcade, console, and handheld games, are faithfully recreated, though I've observed a couple minor issues — mostly input lag and intermittent errors, especially with Mortal Kombat 4. And while the games are largely presented as-is, the development team has incorporated various clever user experience improvements and graphical adjustment settings. For example, players have the option to reveal combatant-unique actions on-screen and choose to enable infinite time to complete lethal techniques. Additionally available are settings for unlocking secret characters, eliminating the need to execute some esoteric trick to obtain them.

Graphically, the titles can be played with a variety of graphical effects and display options. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection provides highly authentic effects that reproduce the CRT monitors of coin-op establishments or home televisions, or the greenscale screen 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 simulated dark plastic edges. It's very artistically charming.

Additional Features

Players will discover multiple nice touches beyond the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, containing a soundtrack mode that lets you revisit the tunes of various Mortal Kombat games excluding the sounds of fighters brutally eliminating opponents. There are also fighter biographies that contain backgrounds and numerous narrative components shown through the demo sequences of coin-op titles and endings.

Historical Preservation

Among the most significant features for hardcore Mortal Kombat fans is the ability to access a example of historically missing material in the form 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 direct online competitive gaming in coin-op establishments. The Wavenet Edition of the game is virtually identical to UMK3, but provided the ability to compete against internet adversaries and featured various slight bug fixes and balance. But the Wavenet update never gained traction, in part