MK2 and MK3 worked in the arcade because the rounds were superfast because of all the literally cheap moves, but everybody had them which made it okay. Virtua Fighter (the first one) actually worked along similar lines in terms of superfast rounds in the arcade.
I haven't played X but I thought the prior game did a decent job of trying to figure out how to keep that feeling and flesh out the game more for a console only world, something the PS2/Xbox games were often going too far in one direction or the other about.
But I always preferred SFII Turbo or Samurai Shodown in that era and beyond (Alpha 3, IV, etc.) but everybody else wanted to play MK1-3. I thought 3 was like a game that would have been decent had UMK3 been the original release and then it got an update from there. I hated MK1 on consoles, was barely tolerant of 2 and okay with 3.
I actually managed to beat a friends copy of MK1 on the Game Boy. No lie. Real losers know what a feat this is.
The first Mortal Kombats whole gimmick was the violence. I remember playing it almost exclusively to see the fatalities/babalities/animalities - like, we'd never play the single player, instead we'd just play vs and then pause it at the end while looking up the inputs for the finishers on GameFAQs printouts, do that a few times, then switch to something that was actually fun to play.
we did this probably more than actually played the first two lol but had to use magazines at the time
also shit like unlocking Reptile, Noob Saibot, etc.
i think i was the only one of my fighting gamer friends who actually beat MK2 and MK3 in the arcade, and Soul Edge
though i beat MK3 before they fixed Motaro and beat MK2 on some accelerator board version that added a bunch of new moves that were just sprite swaps and stuff lol
