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The Mortal Kombat series still possesses its share of secrets and the ability to amaze, well past its 30th anniversary after its initial debut in coin-op establishments. This latest compilation spanning the series' initial period, featuring a quartet of arcade releases, various home ports, and spinoffs, goes beyond only a accurately simulated set of legendary games along with lesser-known entries — it's also a detailed chronicle about the development of the iconic franchise.

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 Makes the Historical Compilation

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection comparable to other retro collections from developer Digital Eclipse, part historical documentation, part playable archive. This compilation features simulated releases of the pioneering arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, including television and mobile versions of several of these titles. The anthology additionally contains the brand's experiments at spin-off titles, like action games Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — among the series' least successful installments.

The Legacy Kollection is therefore not a highlight reel anthology, but an examination of the franchise's initial era, when the development team Midway and series co-creators the visionary developers were discovering methods to make a fighting game, digitized from footage of real actors, through experimentation. Watching the documentary — that features archival footage, contemporary discussions, and reproductions of classic advertisements, graphic novels, and even interoffice faxes — it's astonishing to observe how Mortal Kombat went from simple starts to a international craze. It's frankly astounding to observe several pioneering developers, developing without clear direction or oversight, focus their cultural enthusiasms into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Educational Component

The historical documentation of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection charts the rise of the fighting series and the founders' vocational paths at the now-defunct Midway. It further illustrates how those same creators addressed how to regularly outdo their previous work, encountering significant demand to replicate their success. It represents an intriguing historical record composed of analog films and analog photographs and manual drawings, which reveal the self-made character of Mortal Kombat's development and how oral tradition helped circulate its mysteries and undisclosed elements of the series in its arcade heyday. Told in bite-sized chunks, it's an eminently watchable set of brief historical films that includes titles, illustrated stories, cinematic adaptations and including the humorous real-world tour. The compilation also contains some never-implemented techniques and character sprites among its cutting-room-floor content.

Interactive Experience

Interspersed along the five-segment historical film's chronology are prompts to play the original releases. During specific moments, audience members can jump into a combat game session or a home system version to rediscover its combat system and artistic style, 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. Several releases here stand the test of time, notably with direct competitive sessions. But playing against the aforementioned game's AI-controlled opponents is a testament to how primitive and unbalanced the development approached in the franchise's pioneering releases. CPU-controlled opponents clearly employ dishonest tactics or are otherwise dumb as rocks. Lacking another person to compete with — online play is available in most titles in the collection, but somewhat limited in options — you'll be missing out.

Technical Presentation

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 detected a handful slight anomalies — mostly input lag and intermittent errors, notably within Mortal Kombat 4. Although the titles are primarily displayed authentically, the creators has incorporated various clever user experience improvements and graphical adjustment settings. For example, you can choose to display fighter-specific techniques during gameplay and choose to enable endless periods to execute finishing moves. Also included are choices for accessing hidden fighters, eliminating the need to execute obscure techniques to access them.

Graphically, the titles can be enjoyed with multiple visual enhancements and presentation styles. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection includes remarkably accurate effects that reproduce the CRT monitors of arcades or domestic TVs, or the limited color monitor of a Game Boy. An especially welcome feature is the setting to activate gaming hall-style borders surrounding the screen, with your selected Mortal Kombat title accurately and softly reflecting against the faux black plastic borders. It's remarkably visually appealing.

Bonus Elements

The collection includes numerous welcome features besides the educational material and simulated classic games, featuring an audio component that allows users to rediscover the soundtracks of different combat titles excluding the sounds of two kombatants viciously slaughtering each other. There are also character profiles that contain backgrounds and the various bits of lore displayed via the demo sequences of coin-op titles and conclusions.

Lost Media Recovery

One of the biggest highlights for committed franchise followers is the opportunity to play a segment of previously unavailable content in the format of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This specific release, a somewhat revised iteration of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an early attempt by Midway at one-on-one internet-based play in arcades. The online-enabled release of the game is virtually identical to UMK3, but provided the ability to challenge online opponents and included some minor bug fixes and balance. Yet this online edition didn't find widespread adoption, in part