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This iconic fighting game continues to hold its share of secrets and the power to astonish, well past its 30th anniversary after its first appearance in arcades. The recent anthology covering the brand's formative years, featuring four arcade games, multiple console adaptations, and spinoffs, is more than only a accurately simulated series of classics along with lesser-known entries — it additionally serves as a detailed chronicle about the development of the renowned brand.

As a dedicated devotee of the franchise who has closely monitored its development and progression, there was plenty new for me to understand and value about the series.

What Constitutes the Legacy Collection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection similar to previous classic compilations from the development team Digital Eclipse, part historical documentation, section playable historical record. The anthology contains digitally recreated editions of the first arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, including television and mobile versions of several of these titles. The collection even includes the franchise's attempts at derivative games, like combat-focused releases Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — among the series' worst entries.

The Legacy Kollection is therefore not a highlight reel anthology, but an examination of the franchise's initial era, when developer Midway and series co-creators the visionary developers were figuring out how to make a fighting game, digitized from footage of actual people, on the fly. Observing the archival material — that features vintage recordings, contemporary discussions, and reproductions of classic advertisements, graphic novels, and even interoffice faxes — it's remarkable to see how Mortal Kombat went from simple starts to a international craze. It's frankly astounding to watch a handful of pioneering developers, working with minimal planning or supervision, direct their entertainment passions into birthing an iconic game franchise.

Educational Component

The historical documentation of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection documents the ascent of the fighting series and the developers' professional journeys at the now-defunct Midway. It then goes on to show how these identical developers contended with how to routinely one-up themselves, encountering significant stress to duplicate their achievements. It represents an intriguing historical record made from video recordings and film-based pictures and manual drawings, which showcase the DIY nature of the series' creation process and how word of mouth helped disseminate its secrets and undisclosed elements of the series in its peak period in gaming halls. Told in bite-sized chunks, it's an eminently watchable 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.

Interactive Gaming

Placed within the five-segment historical film's chronology are prompts to play the games themselves. During specific moments, audience members can jump into a combat game session or one of its home console ports to reexperience its mechanics and artistic style, emulated nearly perfectly on modern hardware.

I allocated the majority of my time playing the arcade classics, especially Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Several releases here hold up, notably with local multiplayer matches. Yet competing with the aforementioned game's AI-controlled opponents is a demonstration of how basic and unfair the development approached in the series' initial installments. Computer-directed fighters clearly employ dishonest tactics or are conversely remarkably unintelligent. Lacking a human opponent — internet multiplayer exists in the majority of included games, but too light on features — you'll miss the full enjoyment.

Technical Presentation

The twenty-three accessible Mortal Kombat titles in the collection, a blend of arcade, console, and handheld games, are faithfully recreated, though I have noticed a couple minor issues — primarily delayed responses and the occasional bug, especially with Mortal Kombat 4. And while the games are primarily displayed authentically, the creators has incorporated various clever convenience enhancements and visual presentation options. As an illustration, you can choose to show each character's special moves on-screen and opt to have endless periods to complete lethal techniques. Also included are choices for unlocking secret characters, eliminating the need to execute some esoteric trick to obtain them.

Visually, the games can be played with a variety of visual enhancements and presentation styles. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection provides highly authentic options that simulate the cathode-ray tube displays of arcades or home televisions, or the monochrome green display of a Nintendo handheld. A notably appreciated element is the option to have gaming hall-style borders surrounding the screen, with the specific combat game you're playing accurately and softly reflecting 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 enables players to reexperience the music from multiple combat titles without the din of combatants violently defeating each other. There are also combatant descriptions that include bios and multiple story elements presented by arcade games' attract mode screens and final sequences.

Archival Discovery

A particularly notable inclusion for dedicated series enthusiasts 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 initial venture by the company at one-on-one internet-based play in coin-op establishments. The online-enabled release of the game is virtually identical to UMK3, but included the option to compete against internet adversaries and featured various slight glitch repairs and refinements. Yet this online edition never gained traction, in part