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Mortal Kombat retains its share of secrets and the power to astonish, more than 30 years after its original launch in gaming halls. The recent anthology covering the franchise's earliest days, comprising a quartet of arcade releases, various home ports, and derivative games, transcends only a accurately simulated series of classics along with lesser-known entries — it's also a rich documentary about the development of the renowned brand.

Even as a lifelong devotee of the franchise who has closely monitored its creation and evolution, there was numerous fresh aspects for me to discover and admire about the series.

What Constitutes the Legacy Collection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection similar to previous classic compilations from developer Digital Eclipse, part documentary, section playable historical record. This compilation features simulated releases of the first arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, along with home system and portable adaptations 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 consequently doesn't represent a “best of” collection, but a study of the franchise's initial era, when developer Midway and series co-creators the creative duo behind the series were figuring out how to create a combat title, digitized from footage of real actors, on the fly. Observing the archival material — that features vintage recordings, recent conversations, and scans of old flyers, graphic novels, and even interoffice faxes — it's astonishing to observe how the series transformed from modest origins to a international craze. It's genuinely amazing to observe several young game developers, working with minimal planning or oversight, channel their pop-culture interests into establishing an enduring gaming brand.

Educational Component

The documentary portion of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection documents the ascent of Mortal Kombat and the developers' professional journeys at the now-defunct Midway. It subsequently demonstrates how those same creators contended with how to consistently surpass their achievements, facing no small amount of pressure to repeat their achievements. It represents an intriguing historical record constructed using VHS tapes and traditional photos and manual drawings, which reveal the self-made character of the franchise's production method and how oral tradition helped spread its rumors and hidden aspects of Mortal Kombat in its peak period in gaming halls. Told in bite-sized chunks, it's an eminently watchable set of brief historical films that covers video games, graphic novels, movies and including the humorous real-world tour. The collection additionally features some never-implemented techniques and character sprites among its archived development assets.

Playable Component

Placed within the five-part documentary's timeline are opportunities to engage with the original releases. At certain intervals, users can directly access a game of Mortal Kombat or a home system version to rediscover its combat system and visual presentation, emulated nearly perfectly on current technology.

I dedicated most of my time playing the arcade classics, specifically Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Numerous titles here hold up, especially in direct competitive sessions. Yet competing with the computer-controlled adversaries in these titles is a demonstration of how basic and unfair the programming was in the series' initial installments. CPU-controlled opponents blatantly cheat to win or are otherwise dumb as rocks. If you don't have someone to play against — online play is available in most titles in the collection, but somewhat limited in options — you'll be missing out.

Technical Presentation

The two dozen available combat games in the compilation, a combination of arcade, console, and handheld games, are accurately emulated, though I've observed a couple minor issues — mostly input lag and intermittent errors, particularly in Mortal Kombat 4. Even though the releases are primarily displayed authentically, the development team has incorporated various clever user experience improvements and visual presentation options. For instance, players have the option to reveal combatant-unique actions during gameplay and choose to enable infinite time to complete lethal techniques. Additionally available are settings for unlocking secret characters, without having to perform complicated methods to unlock 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 CRT monitors of coin-op establishments or home televisions, or the greenscale screen of a portable gaming device. A notably appreciated element is the choice to enable coin-op-inspired frames encircling the display, with the specific combat game you're playing faithfully and subtly duplicating against the simulated dark plastic edges. It's very artistically charming.

Additional Features

Players will discover multiple appreciated elements beyond the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, including a music player that lets you revisit the soundtracks of different combat titles excluding the sounds of two kombatants viciously slaughtering each other. Additionally included are combatant descriptions that include bios and numerous narrative components displayed via the idle displays of gaming hall releases and endings.

Lost Media Recovery

A particularly notable inclusion for committed franchise followers is the chance to experience a segment of previously unavailable content in the guise of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This specific release, a somewhat revised iteration of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an initial venture by the company at direct online competitive gaming in gaming halls. This network version of the game is practically indistinguishable to UMK3, but provided the ability to battle network competitors and featured various slight error corrections and adjustments. But the Wavenet update didn't find widespread adoption, in part