Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection: A Stunning Success for the Combat Series Brand
This iconic fighting game retains its share of secrets and the ability to amaze, well past its 30th anniversary after its first appearance in gaming halls. The recent anthology spanning the brand's formative years, comprising four arcade games, several home system versions, and related titles, is more than only a accurately simulated collection of iconic titles along with lesser-known entries — it additionally serves as a rich documentary about the making of the iconic franchise.
Even as a lifelong Mortal Kombat fan who has carefully followed its creation and evolution, there was much to discover for me to discover and admire about the series.
What Constitutes the Legacy Collection
Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection comparable to previous classic compilations from developer Digital Eclipse, portion educational film, section playable historical record. The anthology contains simulated releases of the pioneering arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, along with home system and portable adaptations of some of those games. The collection even includes the franchise's attempts at spin-off titles, like action games Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — among the series' least successful installments.
The Legacy Kollection consequently doesn't represent a greatest hits compilation, but an examination of the series' formative period, when the creators at Midway and brand founders Ed Boon and John Tobias were discovering methods to make a fighting game, created from video recordings of live performers, through experimentation. Viewing the historical footage — containing historical videos, recent conversations, and reproductions of classic advertisements, illustrated stories, and even interoffice faxes — it's astonishing to observe how Mortal Kombat went from simple starts to a global sensation. It's genuinely amazing to observe several young game developers, working with minimal planning or supervision, channel their pop-culture interests into birthing an iconic game franchise.
Historical Section
The documentary portion of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection documents the ascent of the fighting series and the founders' vocational paths at the now-defunct Midway. It then goes on to show how those same creators contended with how to regularly outdo their previous work, experiencing considerable stress to duplicate their achievements. It's a fascinating time capsule composed of analog films and traditional photos and pencil sketches, which showcase the DIY nature of the franchise's production method and how word of mouth helped circulate its mysteries and secrets of MK in its arcade heyday. Told in bite-sized chunks, it's highly engaging series of documentary shorts that covers video games, graphic novels, movies and including the humorous real-world tour. The compilation also contains some unreleased actions and game character images among its cutting-room-floor content.
Interactive Gaming
Distributed throughout the five-part documentary's timeline are opportunities to engage with the games themselves. During specific moments, viewers can hop into a game of Mortal Kombat or one of its home console ports to reexperience its mechanics and visual presentation, emulated nearly perfectly on contemporary systems.
I allocated the majority of my time engaging with the vintage coin-op games, specifically Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Several releases here hold up, particularly during one-on-one local play. However, facing the aforementioned game's AI-controlled opponents is a demonstration of how basic and unjust the development approached in the series' initial installments. CPU-controlled opponents obviously use unfair advantages or are alternatively incredibly stupid. Lacking someone to play against — network gaming is included in the majority of included games, but too light on features — you'll miss the full enjoyment.
Display Features
The two dozen available combat games in the compilation, a combination of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are accurately emulated, though I detected a couple minor issues — primarily delayed responses and sporadic glitches, notably within Mortal Kombat 4. Even though the releases are largely presented as-is, the creators has added several intelligent user experience improvements and visual presentation options. For instance, you can choose to display fighter-specific techniques on-screen and choose to enable unlimited duration to perform a Fatality. Additionally available are settings for revealing concealed combatants, eliminating the need to execute some esoteric trick to access them.
Artistically, the releases can be experienced with numerous visual enhancements and presentation styles. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection offers very realistic filters that mimic the CRT monitors of coin-op establishments or domestic TVs, or the greenscale screen of a portable gaming device. A particularly nice touch is the setting to activate coin-op-inspired frames framing the gameplay, with the specific combat game you're playing precisely and gently mirroring against the faux black plastic borders. It's remarkably visually appealing.
Extra Content
Players will discover multiple nice touches beyond the educational material and simulated classic games, featuring an audio component that lets you revisit the tunes of various Mortal Kombat games absent the noise of fighters brutally eliminating opponents. Also present are character profiles that feature histories and multiple story elements displayed via the demo sequences of coin-op titles and conclusions.
Historical Preservation
Among the most significant features for hardcore Mortal Kombat fans is the ability to access a segment of previously unavailable content in the guise of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This version of the game, a somewhat revised iteration of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an initial venture by the company at one-on-one internet-based play in arcades. The online-enabled release of the game is virtually identical to UMK3, but featured the capability to challenge online opponents and contained several small bug fixes and balance. Yet this online edition never gained traction, in part