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The Mortal Kombat series retains its share of secrets and the ability to amaze, well past its 30th anniversary after its original launch in coin-op establishments. This latest compilation spanning the brand's formative years, which includes four original arcade titles, various home ports, and spinoffs, is more than only a accurately simulated series of classics along with lesser-known entries — it's also a comprehensive historical account about the development of the legendary series.

As a dedicated Mortal Kombat fan who has closely monitored its development and progression, there was numerous fresh aspects for me to discover and admire about the series.

What Defines the Legacy Kollection

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection comparable to other vintage game anthologies from the creators at Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, 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 collection even includes the series' ventures at spin-off titles, like combat-focused releases Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — some of the brand's worst entries.

The Legacy Kollection consequently doesn't represent a greatest hits compilation, but an examination of the franchise's initial era, when developer Midway and brand founders Ed Boon and John Tobias were discovering methods to make a fighting game, digitized from footage of live performers, as they went along. Observing the archival material — that features vintage recordings, new interviews, and digital copies of vintage posters, comics, and even interoffice faxes — 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 young game developers, working with minimal planning or supervision, direct their entertainment passions into creating a legendary video game series.

Historical Section

The educational segment of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection charts the rise of the combat franchise and its creators' careers at the currently closed Midway. It then goes on to show how those same creators contended with how to routinely one-up themselves, experiencing considerable pressure to repeat their achievements. It serves as a compelling period piece composed of video recordings and film-based pictures and manual drawings, which showcase the DIY nature of Mortal Kombat's development and how word of mouth helped spread its rumors and undisclosed elements of the series in its golden era in coin-op establishments. Told in bite-sized chunks, it's highly engaging collection of mini-documentaries that covers video games, graphic novels, movies and even the silly live-action tour. It also includes some never-implemented techniques and character sprites among its previously unreleased material.

Interactive Gaming

Placed within the quintet of documentary episodes' progression are prompts to play the original releases. At certain intervals, audience members can jump into a game of Mortal Kombat or a home system version to reexperience its mechanics and graphics, recreated with impressive accuracy on current technology.

I allocated the majority of my time playing the arcade classics, specifically Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Numerous titles here remain enjoyable, especially in one-on-one local play. However, facing the artificial intelligence fighters in these releases is a demonstration of how basic and unjust the development approached in the franchise's pioneering releases. Computer-directed fighters clearly employ dishonest tactics or are otherwise dumb as rocks. If you don't have a human opponent — online play is available in most titles in the collection, but rather basic in functionality — you'll be missing out.

Technical Presentation

The twenty-three accessible Mortal Kombat titles in the collection, a combination of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are precisely simulated, though I've observed a few small quirks — mainly control latency and sporadic glitches, particularly in Mortal Kombat 4. Although the titles are primarily displayed authentically, developer Digital Eclipse has added several intelligent user experience improvements and display customization choices. For instance, you can choose to show each character's special moves during gameplay and choose to enable endless periods to complete lethal techniques. There are also options for unlocking secret characters, without having to perform complicated methods to access them.

Visually, the games can be experienced with numerous filters and visual treatments. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection provides highly authentic effects that reproduce the CRT monitors of coin-op establishments or home televisions, or the limited color monitor of a portable gaming device. A notably appreciated element is the option to have arcade-like bezels framing the gameplay, with the specific combat game you're playing faithfully and subtly duplicating against the artificial ebony plastic frames. It's very artistically charming.

Additional Features

There are plenty of nice touches beyond the educational material and simulated classic games, featuring an audio component that allows users to rediscover the soundtracks of different fighting releases without the din of combatants violently defeating each other. There are also combatant descriptions that contain backgrounds and multiple story elements presented by the idle displays of gaming hall releases and conclusions.

Lost Media Recovery

A particularly notable inclusion for committed franchise followers is the chance to experience a piece of "lost media" in the guise of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This particular edition, a slightly updated version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an pioneering effort from the developer at head-to-head network battles in gaming halls. The online-enabled release of the game is virtually identical to UMK3, but featured the capability to battle network competitors and contained several small glitch repairs and refinements. Yet this online edition failed to achieve popularity, in part