Mortal Kombat 9, also known as “Mortal Kombat” or “Mortal Kombat (2011)” is where the modern canon starts. It’s also delisted from sale, so you’ll need to find a used copy for consoles or pirate it for PC. It’s a soft reboot of the story and also establishes the bar for what fighting game story modes should be. It’s campy and leans into it, and that’s the tone that MK always has when it’s at its best.

Mortal Kombat X and Mortal Kombat 11 are sequels to that, and they escalate the ridiculousness. These are direct sequels, so while they make efforts to ensure you can understand what’s happening even if you haven’t played the games before, MKX is best enjoyed after playing MK9, and MK11 is best enjoyed after playing MKX.

Mortal Kombat 1 is another soft reboot, but (slight spoiler) it also does this while preserving the canon of, and sequeling, MK9, MKX, and MK11. s MK9 is a throwback to your favorite characters with modern (at the time) mechanics.

MKX brings back the run button and tries to keep all of the different versions of each character over the years in the same game via its “variation” system.

MK11 tries to do away with some superfluous features of MKX while adding more defensive options.

MK1 introduces “kameos”, which is like a Marvel vs. Capcom 1 style assist system.