Why am I unable to attach combos in Mortal Kombat 1?

I am not particularly skilled in fighting games. I could probably defeat a toddler, but that doesn't say much. I am not ashamed. Perhaps I am frustrated, but I am content with being terrible in one of my favorite genres. However, in Mortal Kombat 1, I am even worse since it doesn't allow me to perform combos.

Similar to previous games, combos and special moves are visible in the pause menu. You can scroll through and see all the basic combinations. Skilled players will combine these and incorporate special attacks to create even longer combos that cause even more damage. I have never been that good at it. However, the first step towards achieving this goal is to learn the basics, which becomes infinitely more difficult when one constantly has to tab out of matches to check the combos.

When they're on the screen, a quick glance to the upper right is enough to remember. Ah yes, I have to press triangle, square, square, not square, triangle, triangle. Simple. Without it, you have to open a menu to access another menu, scroll through and find what you're looking for, then switch back and be caught off guard by the flood of punches coming at you. It's not intuitive and a peculiar step backward, especially since it has become an expected feature.

Mortal Kombat 11 did not abolish the inputs, and neither did MKX. It was part of the standard in the single-player mode, even if the story mode cleared your saved combo list after each match. An annoyance, for sure, but far better than spending half of the narrative rummaging through menus and repeating the combination in your mind, hoping it sticks, only to forget it when you learn the next one.

I wasn't skilled in the previous Mortal Kombat games, but I managed to win a few online matches and progress as far as someone like me could. I became reasonably proficient at playing as Jade, and much of it was due to muscle memory making the combos second nature. I knew her basic attacks and special moves, which proved sufficient against less experienced players. However, I learned all of that by playing attached to the combos in Towers. Keeping them glued to the screen anchored them in my memory. I didn't have the same experience with looking into the menu.

In the Invasion mode, I've been playing nothing but Reptile for a good two hours now. At this point, I should at least have mastered some of his moves, but I haven't. I only know two combos from a long list, and every attempt to learn the others only confuses me further. It's easier for me to master them all at once rather than taking it step by step, but memorizing so many combos right away is not exactly one of my strengths.

It is a quality-of-life feature that also impacts accessibility, as it is important to provide the ability to keep the buttons and their corresponding actions visible on the screen at all times. This helps individuals with cognitive and memory impairments. Considering that MK1 otherwise improves the accessibility of the series, this absence is even more peculiar. It's not as if Invasions mode is more competitive than previous single-player offerings, and the Tower and Story modes are structured in the same way as in past games. It somewhat makes sense for it to be absent in multiplayer mode, although I'm not entirely in agreement with that justification either, but completely removing it diminishes the overall experience.

It is disappointing and significantly hinders the learning process of the game for us beginners. Ed Boon has stated that NetherRealm is "exploring" the missing feature, but why it was absent in the first place remains a mystery to me.