Setting & Characters:
-The game gives you very little to go off of in game, but you get the gist that the setting is the real world, but there's fantasy stuff, and the characters are competing in a tournament hosted by an old wizard. It isn't as fleshed out as it would be later on, but the simplicity is nice.
-Johnny Cage is a full of himself Hollywood actor, and he's the best.
-Kano is a cyborg criminal man. I think he looks kinda stupid in this game, also he dies.
-Raiden, god of thunder. He's kinda just an asshole in this game, intentionally, unlike later games where he is an asshole unintentionally.
-Liu Kang is the main character and canonical winner of this Mortal Kombat tournament. He is bland and boring in game, and it took a long, long while for anyone to actually give a shit about him.
-Scorpion and Sub-Zero are the twin ninja mascots, and are obviously just really instantly iconic designs. They aren't looking too great here, though. Scorpion is the obviously better one because he is a skeleton.
-Sonia Blade is the only female character in this game, she's a special forces officer who enters the tournament to kill Kano, which she does. She's a very confused character in-game, I feel.
-Goro is a four armed claymation monster. I like Goro. Too bad he's a pain in the ass.
-Shang Tsung is the villain of the game and aforementioned old wizard. He can capture the souls of people and then uses those to shapeshift into them, which is a very cool idea. He doesn't get to do much here, but I like when he claps.
-All in all, I feel like its pretty obvious why Mortal Kombat's characters became instantly iconic. Barring the ninjas, each character is unique, and even with the ninjas they managed to tie their similarities to the story.
-The stages give a good sense of a cheesy kung fu movie, with interesting details in some of them that give the world a sense of place.

Gameplay:
-Movement is stiff but weirdly responsive. I never felt like i was doing things i didnt want my character to do. Except sometimes my character walked forward at the start of matches automatically. This was rare though.
-The air game feels awful but its the optimal strategy against AI players since they have nothing to counter it.
-Characters have, at most, like, 15 moves, with two or three specials, meaning they aren't incredibly complex. They are all distinctive, however.
-The universal jab every character has is hilarious and can drain health so quickly it isn't even funny. You can block it at least.
-Block is also a button here and as a franchise MK is the only 2D fighter to continue doing that.
-Uppercuts are the best move to open a match with because half the time an opponent will walk right into them, and they deal a lot of damage.
-Moves like the elbow and throw can only be activated by pressing a specific button while really close to the opponent and holding forward. I do not like this and never managed to pull off a throw in several hours of playing.
-Specials have some weird inputs. Kano requries you to hold block in order to use both of his specials.
-Single player AI is weird and both difficult and incredibly easy to exploit in some cases. They will always let you land two of your specials for free before they start bloxking them, and the same goes for melee attacks I'm fairly certain. The AI rarely uses special attacks and never jumps.
-Single player's structure has you going from fighting all the characters, including your character, to fighting the six other characters in 3 tag team matches where you only have one health bar, and then you fight Goro and Shang Tsung.
-Goro is a bitch. He deals a ton of damage and blocks all of the most effective moves in the game (jab, uppercut). I think it would be more manageable if his projectile didn't deal the most damage out of all his attacks. He has two strong throws, and any combination of his moves can kill you clean. I managed to beat him by jumping and punching in a way that he would just walk right into my fist repeatedly.
-Shang Tsung is much easier, partly because he doesn't deal a billion damage with all his attacks. He can use attacks from every character in the game, including Goro, and has his own bullshit projectile. This one is easy to dodge because he only uses it in his true form, so when he shifts back he's probably going to use it. He also loves using special moves, unlike every other AI. Ironically, he's easiest when he shapeshifts into Goro, because he's so much more limited than any other character.
-Overall single player is designed entirely to suck quarters out of you. I do not think it is very good.
-I feel like Johnny is the worst character and that's also his bit. His two special moves arent that great and his unique third special doesnt work on every character. He might be intended as a beginner character, but he still kinda sucks.
-Kano is okay. I think he might be one of the first fighting game characters to have a delay version of his special move, as his rolling attack has both a quick version just by doing the input, and a delayed version by holding block. Both his specials involve holding block, which i think is interesting.
-Raiden is the character i beat single player with. He has a single very good special move in his torpedo grab, but his other moves arent that great. He is made significantly worse by his stupid get up animation that takes longer than every other character but he remains entirely vulnerable during, so its a shock i managed to beat the game with him.
-Liu Kang probably has the most basic set of specials, which definitely puts him as the actual beginner character. His jumping kick attack is very funny and very fast, making a good recovery option, and he has the absolute easiest fatality to pull off. He's boring as fuck so nobody picks him, though.
-Scorpion has two very good special moves that also are his main downsides. His teleport is better than Raiden's but can be pretty predictable and requires actual skill to use effectively. His spear is powerful but it leaves him vulnerable for a very long time on whiff.
-Sub-Zero's freeze blast is very powerful, but like most projectiles is very difficult to actually land a hit with. I am physically incapable of performing his slide attack so I just don't think I can play the character that well.
-Sonya has an okay projectile with a weird input, plus a hilarious air dash punch that's pretty much useless considering how little air game matters. I also cannot pull off her throw special, so again i don't feel like I can play her that well.

Aesthetics:
-MK is ALL about aesthetics. It isn't a very good game to play, so the live-actors doing extreme bouts of violence was the main attraction. Unfortunately the graphics have aged a lot... though some of the actual costumes used for characters are very cheap and bad.
-Lot of pixely stuff. Sprites don't scale well for stuff like this honestly, but it's not particularly noticeable on some of the stages. The throne room and arena stages are pretty bad with it though.
-The music is. OK. MK music would only get better, but the main theme is good.
-Sound design is incredibly charming, though it can be annoying at some points, since characters like to scream a lot. Mostly Goro, actually. He's very loud.
-Stages are highly detailed and are only complimented by the real actors standing in them. There's some decent variety and most of them are utterly iconic to the series.
-Fatalities are cool.