Mortal Kombat more than 30 years after its debut in arcades, it still holds its share of secrets and the ability to surprise. Featuring four arcade games, various home ports, and spin-offs, this new collection of the franchise's earliest days is more than just a well-reproduced series of classic (and not-so-classic) titles—it's also a rich documentary about the making of an iconic franchise.
Even as a longtime Mortal Kombat fan who paid close attention to its creation and development, I was able to learn and appreciate a lot from the series.
Mortal Kombat: Legacy Collection Like developer Digital Eclipse's other retro collections, it's part documentary, part game archive. The collection includes emulated versions of the original arcade game. Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3And Mortal Kombat 4as well as console and portable versions of some of these games. The collection even includes attempts at spin-offs from the franchise, such as action films. Mythologies of Mortal Kombat: Sub-Zero And Mortal Kombat: Special Forces – two of the worst entries in the franchise.
Heritage Collection So this isn't a “best of” collection, but rather an exploration of the early days of Mortal Kombat, when developer Midway and series co-creators Ed Boon and John Tobias were figuring out how to make a fighting game digitized from footage of real actors on the fly. I'm watching a documentary produced by Zone 5 and includes archival footage, new interviews and scans of old flyers, comics and even internal office faxes – it's great to see how Mortal Kombat has gone from humble beginnings to a global phenomenon. It's honestly amazing to watch a handful of young game developers, operating with little to no plan or control, channel their pop culture interests into creating an iconic gaming franchise.
Documentary part Mortal Kombat: Legacy Collection chronicles the development of Mortal Kombat and the careers of its creators at the now-defunct Midway studio. The following shows how these same creators figured out how to regularly outdo themselves while facing considerable pressure to repeat their success. It's a fascinating time capsule of VHS tapes, analogue photographs, and pencil sketches that demonstrate the DIY nature of Mortal Kombat's development and how word of mouth helped spread MK rumors and secrets during the arcade's heyday. Told in bite-sized chunks, this is an extremely watchable series of short documentaries that includes games, comics, movies, and even silly live-action tours. It also includes some unused moves and character sprites among the editing room content.
Interspersed throughout the chronology of the five-part documentary are invitations to play the games themselves. At various points, viewers can jump into a Mortal Kombat game or one of its home console ports to re-experience the gameplay and graphics, which are emulated almost perfectly on modern hardware.
I spent most of my time playing classic arcade games, in particular Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2And Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Many games do well here, especially in local one-on-one play. But playing against the aforementioned game's AI-controlled opponents is a reminder of how crude (and unfair) the programming was in the early Mortal Kombat games. CPU-controlled opponents outright cheat to win or are otherwise dumb as rocks. If you don't have anyone to play with – online play is available in most games in the collection, but there are too few features – you'll be missing out.
The 23 Mortal Kombat games in the collection, a mix of arcade, console and handheld games, are emulated accurately, although I did notice a few minor quirks – mostly input lag and occasional bugs, especially in Mortal Kombat 4. And while the games are mostly presented as is, developer Digital Eclipse has included some smart quality-of-life features and visual presentation options. For example, you can choose to display each character's special moves on screen and choose to have an unlimited amount of time to perform a Fatality (or any other finishing move). There are also options to unlock secret characters, such as Noob SaibotMeat and Rain, without having to perform any esoteric tricks to access them.
Visually, games can be played with various filters and visual treatments. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Collection offers highly realistic filters that simulate the CRT monitors of arcade machines or home TVs, or the green screen of a Game Boy. A particularly nice touch is the ability to have arcade-like borders around the screen, with your chosen MK game reflected accurately and softly on the faux black plastic borders. It's very charming from an artistic point of view.
Beyond the documentaries and classic arcade game emulations, there are plenty of nice touches, including a music player that lets you revisit tunes from various Mortal Kombat games without the din of two fighters viciously killing each other. There are also character profiles that include biographies and various pieces of history presented in the arcade games' attraction mode screens and endings.
One of the highlights for avid Mortal Kombat fans is the ability to recreate a piece of “lost media” in the form of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet edition. This version of the game is a slightly updated version Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3was Midway's first attempt at one-on-one slot machine gaming over the Internet. The Wavenet Edition of the game is almost identical UMK3but included the ability to challenge online opponents, as well as some minor bug fixes and balance. But the Wavenet upgrade never gained widespread adoption, in part because it was too costly for slot machine operators at the time. Luckily, Digital Eclipse rescued it thanks to a ROM dump by engineer Mike Boone (yes, Ed Boone's brother) and it's finally emulated here. This is a huge conservation win and an exciting relic to pick up.
The rest of the collection is full of classics, including the first four major arcade games and home ports for the Sega Genesis, Super NES, Game Boy, Game Gear, Sega 32X and PlayStation. Some highlights include Mortal Kombat trilogya PlayStation version featuring as many as 32 characters taken from Mortal Kombats. 1-3. A game notorious for its loading times can now be played much more smoothly thanks to faster hardware. Great Super NES port Mortal Kombat 2 it's also fun to revisit, and being able to compare it to the worst Genesis version is instructive.
Some of the games included are simply terrible. Game Boy version of the original Mortal Kombat is an exciting mess, but its inclusion here underscores just how important Mortal Kombat was in the early '90s. Portable version Mortal Kombat was almost unplayable crap, but it certainly sold in mass quantities.
It is no less interesting to return to games such as Mythologies of Mortal Kombat: Sub-Zeroa clunky side-scroller starring an ice ninja, known for its terrible controls. Digital Eclipse has added a new “modern controls” option which, along with the rewind feature, makes the game a little more fun. Also included are three Game Boy Advance games: Mortal Kombat Progress, Mortal Kombat: Deadly AllianceAnd Mortal Kombat Tournament Editionthe latter two of which are adaptations of the first 3D Mortal Kombat game developed exclusively for home consoles. Of course, it would be nice to have a full 3D version. Deadly AllianceThe GBA games are at least a fun curiosity.
Considering the rich history of Mortal Kombat, represented in dozens of games and even several versions of arcade machines, it can be argued that Mortal Kombat: Legacy Collection One could go further in terms of names. But what's here already feels like a solid package, built with broad appeal and an appreciation for what has made Mortal Kombat such a source of delight over the past 33 years.
Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is now available on Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox One and Xbox Series X. The game has been reviewed on PS5 and Switch 2 using a pre-release download code provided by Atari. You can find More information about Polygon's ethical policies can be found here..
