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The Mortal Kombat series retains numerous undisclosed elements and the power to astonish, over three decades after its initial debut in gaming halls. A new collection covering the series' initial period, comprising four arcade games, various home ports, and related titles, is more than only a accurately simulated set of legendary games including less celebrated releases — it's also a rich documentary about the making of the legendary series.

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

What Makes the Historical Compilation

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection similar to other vintage game anthologies from developer Digital Eclipse, part documentary, portion interactive museum. The collection includes simulated releases of the pioneering 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 collection even includes the franchise's attempts at spin-off titles, 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 “best of” collection, but an exploration into Mortal Kombat's early days, when developer Midway and series co-creators Ed Boon and John Tobias were determining how to create a combat title, created from video recordings of actual people, through experimentation. Observing the archival material — containing archival footage, contemporary discussions, and scans of old flyers, comics, and including internal communications — it's remarkable to see how Mortal Kombat went from humble beginnings to a international craze. It's genuinely amazing to observe several young game developers, developing without clear direction or supervision, direct their entertainment passions into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Historical Section

The educational segment of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection traces the growth of Mortal Kombat and the founders' vocational paths at the now-defunct Midway. It further illustrates how those same creators contended with how to regularly outdo their previous work, facing no small amount of pressure to repeat their success. It's a fascinating time capsule constructed using analog films and analog photographs and pencil sketches, which showcase the DIY nature of Mortal Kombat's development and how oral tradition helped disseminate its secrets and hidden aspects of Mortal Kombat in its golden era in coin-op establishments. Delivered in easily digestible portions, it's highly engaging set of brief historical films that covers video games, graphic novels, movies and even the comical physical events. It also includes some unused moves and game character images among its previously unreleased material.

Interactive Gaming

Distributed throughout the quintet of documentary episodes' progression are invitations to experience the actual titles. During specific moments, audience members can jump into a game of Mortal Kombat or a home system version to revisit its gameplay and graphics, emulated nearly perfectly on modern hardware.

I spent the bulk of my time experiencing the original arcade titles, specifically Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Numerous titles here remain enjoyable, particularly during direct competitive sessions. But playing against the aforementioned game's AI-controlled opponents is a testament to how primitive and unfair the coding existed in the franchise's pioneering releases. CPU-controlled opponents clearly employ dishonest tactics or are alternatively incredibly stupid. Without having a human opponent — online play is available in the majority of included games, but too light on features — the experience will be incomplete.

Technical Presentation

The 23 playable Mortal Kombat games in the collection, a combination of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are accurately emulated, though I've observed a few small quirks — primarily delayed responses and intermittent errors, particularly in Mortal Kombat 4. And while the games are mostly shown in their original form, the development team has included some smart quality-of-life features and display customization choices. For instance, users can elect to show each character's special moves during gameplay and opt to have infinite time to execute finishing moves. Additionally available are settings for revealing concealed combatants, without having to perform some esoteric trick to access them.

Graphically, the titles can be enjoyed with multiple graphical effects and display options. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection provides highly authentic options that simulate the traditional television screens of gaming halls or domestic TVs, or the monochrome green display of a Game Boy. An especially welcome feature is the setting to activate arcade-like bezels framing the gameplay, with the MK game of your choice faithfully and subtly duplicating against the simulated dark plastic edges. It's very artistically charming.

Additional Features

Players will discover multiple welcome features besides the educational material and simulated classic games, containing a soundtrack mode that enables players to reexperience the music from multiple Mortal Kombat games excluding the sounds of fighters brutally eliminating opponents. There are also character profiles that feature histories and numerous narrative components shown through the idle displays of gaming hall releases and conclusions.

Historical Preservation

Among the most significant features for dedicated series enthusiasts is the ability to access a segment of previously unavailable content in the form of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This specific release, a moderately improved edition of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an initial venture by the company at direct online competitive gaming in coin-op establishments. This network version of the game is practically indistinguishable to UMK3, but featured the capability to compete against internet adversaries and contained several small bug fixes and balance. However, this network version didn't find widespread adoption, in part