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Mortal Kombat continues to hold many hidden mysteries and the power to astonish, more than 30 years after its first appearance in arcades. The recent anthology covering the franchise's earliest days, featuring four arcade games, multiple console adaptations, and related titles, is more than just a well-emulated collection of iconic titles along with lesser-known entries — it functions as a rich documentary about the development of the renowned brand.

Being a long-time Mortal Kombat fan who has paid close attention its origins and transformation, there was plenty new for me to understand and value about the series.

What Defines the Legacy Collection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is, like previous classic compilations from the creators at Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, part playable archive. The anthology contains emulated versions of the original 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 franchise's attempts at spinoffs, like action-oriented titles 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 a study of the series' formative period, when developer Midway and series co-creators the creative duo behind the series were discovering methods to make a fighting game, produced using film material of real actors, on the fly. Watching the documentary — which includes historical videos, recent conversations, and scans of old flyers, comics, and even company memos — it's remarkable to see how Mortal Kombat went from simple starts to a worldwide phenomenon. It's genuinely amazing to watch a handful of early video game creators, developing without clear direction or supervision, focus their cultural enthusiasms into creating a legendary video game series.

Historical Section

The historical documentation of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection documents the ascent of the combat franchise and its creators' careers at the now-defunct Midway. It subsequently demonstrates how those same creators contended with how to routinely one-up themselves, encountering significant stress to duplicate their achievements. It's a fascinating time capsule constructed using VHS tapes and film-based pictures and manual drawings, which demonstrate the hands-on approach of Mortal Kombat's development and how word of mouth helped disseminate its secrets and hidden aspects of Mortal Kombat in its arcade heyday. Presented in manageable segments, it's highly engaging series of documentary shorts that spans games, comics, films and including the humorous real-world tour. It also includes some never-implemented techniques and character sprites among its previously unreleased material.

Playable Component

Interspersed along the quintet of documentary episodes' progression are prompts to play the actual titles. During specific moments, users can directly access a Mortal Kombat title or one of its home console ports to rediscover its combat system and visual presentation, emulated nearly perfectly on modern hardware.

I dedicated most of my time experiencing the original arcade titles, especially Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Many of the games here stand the test of time, particularly during one-on-one local play. But playing against the aforementioned game's AI-controlled opponents is a testament to how primitive and unfair the development approached in the series' initial installments. AI-managed characters blatantly cheat to win or are conversely remarkably unintelligent. Without having another person to compete with — internet multiplayer exists in numerous anthology releases, but rather basic in functionality — you'll miss the full enjoyment.

Technical Presentation

The two dozen available combat games in the compilation, a blend of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are accurately emulated, though I have noticed a handful slight anomalies — mostly input lag and intermittent errors, particularly in Mortal Kombat 4. Even though the releases are largely presented as-is, developer Digital Eclipse has added several intelligent quality-of-life features and display customization choices. For instance, users can elect to reveal combatant-unique actions on-screen and opt to have unlimited duration to complete lethal techniques. There are also options for unlocking secret characters, without having to perform obscure techniques to obtain them.

Artistically, the releases can be played with a variety of graphical effects and display options. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection includes remarkably accurate options that simulate the cathode-ray tube displays of gaming halls or home televisions, or the monochrome green display of a portable gaming device. An especially welcome feature is the setting to activate coin-op-inspired frames framing the gameplay, with your selected Mortal Kombat title accurately and softly reflecting against the faux black plastic borders. It's quite aesthetically pleasing.

Bonus Elements

The collection includes numerous welcome features besides the documentary and emulated arcade classics, containing a soundtrack mode that lets you revisit the music from multiple Mortal Kombat games without the din of fighters brutally eliminating opponents. There are also character profiles that feature histories and the various bits of lore presented by the idle displays of gaming hall releases and conclusions.

Archival Discovery

Among the most significant features for hardcore Mortal Kombat fans is the ability to access a segment of previously unavailable content 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 direct online competitive gaming in gaming halls. The Wavenet Edition of the game is almost exactly the same to UMK3, but included the option to compete against internet adversaries and featured various slight glitch repairs and refinements. But the Wavenet update failed to achieve popularity, in part