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Mortal Kombat continues to hold its share of secrets and the capacity to surprise, over three decades after its first appearance in arcades. This latest compilation spanning the brand's formative years, featuring four arcade games, several home system versions, and spinoffs, goes beyond simply a faithfully reproduced collection of iconic titles along with lesser-known entries — it additionally serves as a comprehensive historical account about the development of the renowned brand.

Even as a lifelong Mortal Kombat fan who has paid close attention its development and progression, there was numerous fresh aspects for me to learn and appreciate about the series.

What Makes the Legacy Kollection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like other vintage game anthologies from developer Digital Eclipse, part documentary, section playable historical record. The anthology contains digitally recreated editions of the pioneering arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, plus console and handheld ports of certain releases. This compilation also features the brand's experiments at spin-off titles, like combat-focused releases Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — two of the franchise's worst entries.

The Legacy Kollection consequently doesn't represent a greatest hits compilation, but an exploration into the series' formative period, when the development team Midway and franchise originators the visionary developers were discovering methods to create a combat title, digitized from footage of real actors, on the fly. Observing the archival material — that features vintage recordings, new interviews, and reproductions of classic advertisements, illustrated stories, and including internal communications — it's astonishing to observe how the franchise evolved from modest origins to a worldwide phenomenon. It's truly remarkable to see a group of pioneering developers, developing without clear direction or supervision, channel their pop-culture interests into establishing an enduring gaming brand.

Historical Section

The documentary portion of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection traces the growth of Mortal Kombat and the founders' vocational paths at the no-longer-operating Midway. It further illustrates how the very same individuals contended with how to routinely one-up themselves, encountering significant demand to replicate their triumphs. It's a fascinating time capsule made from analog films and film-based pictures and manual drawings, which showcase the DIY nature of the franchise's production method and how personal recommendations helped circulate its mysteries and secrets of MK in its arcade heyday. Told in bite-sized chunks, it's thoroughly enjoyable collection of mini-documentaries that includes titles, illustrated stories, cinematic adaptations and even the silly live-action tour. The compilation also contains some unused moves and game character images among its previously unreleased material.

Playable Component

Distributed throughout the quintet of documentary episodes' progression are prompts to play the actual titles. At various points, viewers can hop into a combat game session or a home system version to rediscover its combat system and graphics, recreated with impressive accuracy on contemporary systems.

I dedicated most of my time playing the arcade classics, particularly Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Many of the games here hold up, notably with local multiplayer matches. However, facing the computer-controlled adversaries in these titles is a reminder of how crude and unfair the coding existed in the franchise's pioneering releases. CPU-controlled opponents blatantly cheat to win or are conversely remarkably unintelligent. Without having someone to play against — online play is available in numerous anthology releases, but somewhat limited in options — the experience will be incomplete.

Technical Presentation

The two dozen available combat games in the anthology, a mix of gaming hall, television, and mobile releases, are accurately emulated, though I have noticed a handful slight anomalies — primarily delayed responses and the occasional bug, notably within Mortal Kombat 4. And while the games are mostly shown in their original form, the development team has incorporated various clever convenience enhancements and display customization choices. For instance, you can choose to show each character's special moves on-screen and opt to have unlimited duration to execute finishing moves. Additionally available are settings for unlocking secret characters, eliminating the need to execute obscure techniques to unlock them.

Graphically, the titles can be enjoyed with multiple graphical effects and display options. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection offers very realistic filters that mimic the CRT monitors of arcades or home televisions, or the monochrome green display of a Nintendo handheld. An especially welcome feature is the choice to enable arcade-like bezels encircling the display, with the MK game of your choice accurately and softly reflecting against the simulated dark plastic edges. It's remarkably visually appealing.

Bonus Elements

Players will discover multiple appreciated elements beyond the documentary and emulated arcade classics, containing a soundtrack mode that allows users to rediscover the tunes of various combat titles without the din of two kombatants viciously slaughtering each other. Also present are fighter biographies that contain backgrounds and multiple story elements presented by the demo sequences of coin-op titles and final sequences.

Lost Media Recovery

A particularly notable inclusion for hardcore Mortal Kombat fans 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 early attempt by Midway at direct online competitive gaming in arcades. This network version of the game is virtually identical to UMK3, but provided the ability to challenge online opponents and contained several small error corrections and adjustments. Yet this online edition never gained traction, in part