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This iconic fighting game retains numerous undisclosed elements and the capacity to surprise, well past its 30th anniversary after its initial debut in coin-op establishments. The recent anthology covering the franchise's earliest days, featuring four arcade games, various home ports, and derivative games, transcends simply a faithfully reproduced set of legendary games along with lesser-known entries — it's also a comprehensive historical account about the creation of the legendary series.

Even as a lifelong devotee of the franchise who has carefully followed its development and progression, 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 developer Digital Eclipse, part documentary, part playable archive. This compilation features simulated releases of the first arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, including television and mobile versions of certain releases. The collection even includes the franchise's attempts at derivative games, 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 highlight reel anthology, but an examination of Mortal Kombat's early days, when developer Midway and franchise originators the creative duo behind the series were figuring out how to develop a battle series, digitized from footage of real actors, on the fly. Observing the archival material — that features vintage recordings, recent conversations, and reproductions of classic advertisements, illustrated stories, and even company memos — it's astonishing to observe how the series transformed from modest origins to a worldwide phenomenon. It's frankly astounding to watch a handful of young game developers, working with minimal planning or guidance, 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 the founders' vocational paths at the now-defunct Midway. It then goes on to show how those same creators contended with how to routinely one-up themselves, experiencing considerable stress to duplicate their achievements. It represents an intriguing historical record constructed using VHS tapes and traditional photos and hand-drawn illustrations, which demonstrate the hands-on approach of the series' creation process and how word of mouth helped spread its rumors and hidden aspects of Mortal Kombat in its golden era in coin-op establishments. Delivered in easily digestible portions, it's an eminently watchable collection of mini-documentaries that spans games, comics, films and including the humorous real-world tour. The compilation also contains some unused moves and digital fighter representations among its cutting-room-floor content.

Playable Component

Distributed throughout the five-segment historical film's chronology are opportunities to engage with the actual titles. At various points, viewers can hop into a combat game session or one of its home console ports to reexperience its mechanics and visual presentation, simulated with remarkable precision on current technology.

I spent the bulk of my time engaging with the vintage coin-op games, specifically Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Several releases here stand the test of time, particularly during one-on-one local play. However, facing the computer-controlled adversaries in these titles is a demonstration of how basic and unjust the coding existed in early Mortal Kombat games. CPU-controlled opponents clearly employ dishonest tactics or are otherwise dumb as rocks. If you don't have a human opponent — internet multiplayer exists in the majority of included games, but too light on features — the experience will be incomplete.

Display Features

The twenty-three accessible Mortal Kombat titles in the compilation, a mix of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are faithfully recreated, though I have noticed a couple minor issues — mostly input lag and sporadic glitches, particularly in Mortal Kombat 4. Even though the releases are largely presented as-is, the creators has incorporated various clever convenience enhancements and graphical adjustment settings. As an illustration, players have the option to reveal combatant-unique actions on the display and choose to enable unlimited duration to perform a Fatality. There are also options for unlocking secret characters, without having to perform some esoteric trick to access them.

Artistically, the releases can be played with a variety of graphical effects and display options. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection includes remarkably accurate effects that reproduce the CRT monitors of coin-op establishments or domestic TVs, or the greenscale screen of a Nintendo handheld. A notably appreciated element is the setting to activate gaming hall-style borders framing the gameplay, with your selected Mortal Kombat title faithfully and subtly duplicating against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's very artistically charming.

Bonus Elements

The collection includes numerous welcome features besides the historical footage and recreated vintage titles, containing a soundtrack mode that enables players to reexperience the soundtracks of different Mortal Kombat games absent the noise of combatants violently defeating each other. Additionally included are fighter biographies that include bios and multiple story elements shown through arcade games' attract mode screens and endings.

Lost Media Recovery

One of the biggest highlights for dedicated series enthusiasts is the opportunity to play a piece of "lost media" in the format of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This specific release, a moderately improved edition of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an pioneering effort from the developer 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 glitch repairs and refinements. But the Wavenet update failed to achieve popularity, in part