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The Mortal Kombat series still possesses its share of secrets and the capacity to surprise, well past its 30th anniversary after its first appearance in gaming halls. A new collection including the series' initial period, comprising a quartet of arcade releases, various home ports, and related titles, goes beyond simply a faithfully reproduced collection of iconic titles including less celebrated releases — it's also a detailed chronicle about the making of the renowned brand.

Even as a lifelong enthusiast of the series who has carefully followed its origins and transformation, there was much to discover for me to discover and admire about the series.

What Makes the Legacy Collection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection comparable to other retro collections from developer Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, section playable historical record. This compilation features digitally recreated editions of the original arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, along with home system and portable adaptations of several of these titles. The collection even includes the series' ventures at spin-off titles, like combat-focused releases Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — two of the franchise's least successful installments.

The Legacy Kollection thus isn't a greatest hits compilation, but a study of the series' formative period, when the creators at Midway and franchise originators the creative duo behind the series were figuring out how to make a fighting game, created from video recordings of real actors, on the fly. Viewing the historical footage — containing vintage recordings, new interviews, and scans of old flyers, comics, and including internal communications — it's incredible to witness how the series transformed from simple starts to a global sensation. It's frankly astounding to see a group of pioneering developers, operating with virtually no plan or guidance, direct their entertainment passions into creating a legendary video game series.

Educational Component

The educational segment of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection documents the ascent of the combat franchise and the developers' professional journeys at the now-defunct Midway. It further illustrates how these identical developers reckoned with how to consistently surpass their achievements, encountering significant stress to duplicate their triumphs. It represents an intriguing historical record composed of 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 spread its rumors and undisclosed elements of the series in its peak period in gaming halls. Told in bite-sized chunks, it's thoroughly enjoyable set of brief historical films that covers video games, graphic novels, movies and even the comical physical events. The collection additionally features some never-implemented techniques and digital fighter representations among its previously unreleased material.

Interactive Gaming

Distributed throughout the five-segment historical film's chronology are opportunities to engage with the actual titles. At various points, 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 current technology.

I allocated the majority of my time experiencing the original arcade titles, particularly Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Numerous titles here hold up, particularly during one-on-one local play. But playing against the computer-controlled adversaries in these titles is a testament to how primitive and unfair the coding existed in early Mortal Kombat games. Computer-directed fighters clearly employ dishonest tactics or are alternatively incredibly stupid. Lacking another person to compete with — network gaming is included in numerous anthology releases, but somewhat limited in options — you'll be missing out.

Technical Presentation

The two dozen available combat games in the anthology, a blend of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are faithfully recreated, though I have noticed a handful slight anomalies — mainly control latency and intermittent errors, particularly in Mortal Kombat 4. And while the games are mostly shown in their original form, the development team has added several intelligent quality-of-life features and graphical adjustment settings. As an illustration, you can choose to display fighter-specific techniques during gameplay and select to activate infinite time to execute finishing moves. There are also options for unlocking secret characters, eliminating the need to execute obscure techniques to unlock them.

Artistically, the releases can be enjoyed with multiple visual enhancements and presentation styles. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection includes remarkably accurate options that simulate the cathode-ray tube displays of coin-op establishments or home televisions, or the greenscale screen of a Game Boy. An especially welcome feature is the choice to enable coin-op-inspired frames framing the gameplay, with the specific combat game you're playing faithfully and subtly duplicating against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's quite aesthetically pleasing.

Additional Features

Players will discover multiple nice touches beyond the documentary and emulated arcade classics, including a music player that enables players to reexperience the soundtracks of different fighting releases excluding the sounds of fighters brutally eliminating opponents. Additionally included are character profiles that feature histories and the various bits of lore displayed via the idle displays of gaming hall releases and final sequences.

Archival Discovery

A particularly notable inclusion for committed franchise followers is the opportunity to play a piece of "lost media" in the form of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This version of the game, a moderately improved edition of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an initial venture by the company at head-to-head network battles in arcades. The Wavenet Edition of the game is practically indistinguishable to UMK3, but included the option to compete against internet adversaries and featured various slight glitch repairs and refinements. But the Wavenet update didn't find widespread adoption, in part