Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection Review - Screenshot 1 of 6

Not every game in the Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection is a klassic, but dev Digital Eclipse’s ability to kontextualise kontent makes this a kompilation well worth owning.

If you’ve played the excellent Atari 50 or any of the Gold Master Series kollections, then you’ll know roughly what to expect here: a playable timeline of Mortal Kombat’s early era, lovingly presented through a timeline named the Krypt.

There are 23 titles in total on offer, spanning the arcade, konsoles, and handhelds. From the very first koin-op Mortal Kombat through to the seminal PS1 anthology Mortal Kombat Trilogy, pretty much everything up to the PS2 trilogy is represented.

Now there are some noteworthy absentees, like the N64 version of Mortal Kombat Trilogy and the updated Dreamcast version of Mortal Kombat 4, named Mortal Kombat Gold.

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But generally, this is a pretty komplete archive of an iconic franchise.

You get the arcade, Super Nintendo, SEGA Genesis, and even Game Boy versions of the original Mortal Kombat, for example – all accurately presented with high-quality scans of their original manuals and more.

In some instances, the kontent gets fairly obscure, like the SEGA 32X version of Mortal Kombat 2 or the uber-obscure WaveNet edition of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3.

From our testing, the emulation is excellent and the games are presented as accurately as they were upon their release in the 90s.

Although, the dev has made some minor adjustments to optimise the experience in some areas, like removing load screens in the PS1 version of Mortal Kombat Trilogy which irritatingly interrupted the flow in the original.

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Pretty much all of the games come with additional features and toggles too, allowing you to automatically unlock secret characters if you want to or tune the experience to taste.

There are different borders and filters you can choose from, but we mostly opted to stick with the default settings, because we feel like Digital Eclipse’s emulated scanlines do a great job of capturing that classic CRT feel.

All of the games come with save states and rewind as well, which is pretty much necessary in Mortal Kombat 2, where the AI will read your inputs and basically cheat.

We should say that all of the games are presented in a “warts and all” format, and that means any of the issues with the originals resurface here. For as memorable as popping off those Fatalities can be, there’s a lot of bullshit in the Mortal Kombat franchise, and you just have to accept that.

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But the kollection isn’t interested in glossing over the flaws, and its supplementary documentary is direct and endearing, as it was in Atari 50.

There’s a staggering amount of archival kontent included here, from original footage of Ed Boon pitching Scorpion’s iconic rope attack on set, through to hand written lore documents and original pencil sketches.

The kontent digs deep into each kreators’ background, and this goes beyond just Mortal Kombat – it also explores their upbringings and influences.

The documentary also includes insight from Midway royalty like Eugene Jarvis, delving into the origins of the organisation’s arcade chops, and how it kultivated an environment where Mortal Kombat was able to thrive. It’s heady and nostalgic, but never dishonest.

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You can spend several hours pouring through this stuff alone, but the fact that you’re able to see a piece of artwork and then quickly switch to playing it is the gold standard for this kind of stuff.

We’ve enjoyed Capcom’s various fighting game kompilations over the years, but this is just a next level approach – ironic, then, that Digital Eclipse also made the predominantly disappointing Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection.

Perhaps the biggest kriticism we can point to here is that the online suite is rolling out unfinished.

While the dev has promised rollback netcode, we haven’t been able to test it yet because try as we might we can’t get a Quick Match to konnect. And there are no lobbies at launch, even though the studio has promised to add them in at a later date.

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It’s a sour point for a kompilation that otherwise nails every other aspect of its presentation. A delightfully robust music player as well as background and lore for each individual fighter rounds out the offering.

We’d obviously love to see the likes of Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance added in eventually – the Game Boy Advance version is here, but not the primary PS2 edition. And dare we say there could be an opportunity to add in everything up to Mortal Kombat 9?

But it’s not hard to appreciate what is here: scrappy as it can be, the kontext makes a major difference.

Mortal Kombat may not always be at the top of the genre, but its importance kannot be understated, and this kollection more than recognises that.

Conclusion

An agonisingly in-depth archive of Mortal Kombat’s importance to the industry, this is the kind of kompilation the franchise has always deserved. While its absent online features do put a small dampener on the bundle at launch, the sheer scale of this kollection and the quality of its supplementary materials make it a must buy – even for kurious passers-by who may find themselves discovering the franchise for the first time.