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The Mortal Kombat series still possesses many hidden mysteries and the ability to amaze, well past its 30th anniversary after its first appearance in arcades. This latest compilation covering the franchise's earliest days, which includes four arcade games, several home system versions, and spinoffs, transcends just a well-emulated series of classics along with lesser-known entries — it additionally serves as a comprehensive historical account about the creation of the renowned brand.

Even as a lifelong enthusiast of the series who has paid close attention its creation and evolution, there was numerous fresh aspects for me to learn and appreciate about the series.

What Constitutes the Legacy Collection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like other vintage game anthologies from the creators at Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, part playable archive. The collection includes digitally recreated editions 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. This compilation also features the brand's experiments at spinoffs, 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 a study of the series' formative period, when the development team Midway and franchise originators the visionary developers were figuring out how to create a combat title, created from video recordings of live performers, on the fly. Observing the archival material — containing historical videos, recent conversations, and reproductions of classic advertisements, comics, and even interoffice faxes — it's remarkable to see how the series transformed from humble beginnings to a international craze. It's frankly astounding to observe several early video game creators, working with minimal planning or guidance, focus their cultural enthusiasms into creating a legendary video game series.

Historical Section

The documentary portion of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection documents the ascent of Mortal Kombat and its creators' careers at the currently closed Midway. It subsequently demonstrates how these identical developers addressed how to routinely one-up themselves, experiencing considerable pressure to repeat their success. It's a fascinating time capsule made from video recordings and film-based pictures and manual drawings, which demonstrate the hands-on approach of the series' creation process and how word of mouth helped spread its rumors and secrets of MK in its arcade heyday. Presented in manageable segments, it's highly engaging set of brief historical films that spans games, comics, films and even the silly live-action tour. It also includes some unreleased actions and game character images among its cutting-room-floor content.

Playable Component

Distributed throughout the five-segment historical film's chronology are invitations to experience the original releases. At certain intervals, viewers can hop into a Mortal Kombat title or a home system version to reexperience its mechanics and visual presentation, recreated with impressive accuracy on contemporary systems.

I dedicated most of my time playing the arcade classics, specifically Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Several releases here hold up, particularly during direct competitive sessions. But playing against the aforementioned game's AI-controlled opponents is a demonstration of how basic and unfair the coding existed in the franchise's pioneering releases. CPU-controlled opponents obviously use unfair advantages or are otherwise dumb as rocks. Without having someone to play against — internet multiplayer exists in numerous anthology releases, but rather basic in functionality — you'll be missing out.

Display Features

The two dozen available combat games in the anthology, a blend of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are accurately emulated, though I've observed a handful slight anomalies — mostly input lag and intermittent errors, especially with Mortal Kombat 4. And while the games are primarily displayed authentically, developer Digital Eclipse has incorporated various clever quality-of-life features and graphical adjustment settings. As an illustration, players have the option to show each character's special moves on the display and select to activate infinite time to execute finishing moves. Additionally available are settings for unlocking secret characters, without having to perform complicated methods to access them.

Visually, the games can be experienced with numerous graphical effects and display options. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection provides highly authentic filters that mimic the cathode-ray tube displays of coin-op establishments or domestic TVs, or the monochrome green display of a Nintendo handheld. A notably appreciated element is the option to have gaming hall-style borders framing the gameplay, with the MK game of your choice faithfully and subtly duplicating against the simulated dark plastic edges. It's remarkably visually appealing.

Extra Content

There are plenty of appreciated elements beyond the educational material and simulated classic games, featuring an audio component that allows users to rediscover the tunes of various combat titles excluding the sounds of combatants violently defeating each other. Additionally included are fighter biographies that feature histories and numerous narrative components displayed via arcade games' attract mode screens and conclusions.

Historical Preservation

One of the biggest highlights for dedicated series enthusiasts is the chance to experience a segment of previously unavailable content in the form of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This particular edition, a moderately improved edition of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an initial venture by the company at one-on-one internet-based play 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 contained several small bug fixes and balance. Yet this online edition didn't find widespread adoption, in part