Yes! After playing a ton of rounds, you get to where you can visualize in your head what is happening based on the sound, timing, and what you've done with the controls. As the fight goes on though it gets increasingly more difficult because you don't know what the other player has done with their controls. So, winning is possible, but extremely difficult. Easier against AI players especially the lower difficulty settings that are much more predictable.
I used to be able to provide very accurate play-by-play commentary on someone's game of Addams Family Pinball from the next room, based on sound alone. I doubt I could have played well blindfolded but I bet I could have played better than a pinball n00b, at least.
>After playing a ton of rounds, you get to where you can visualize in your head what is happening based on the sound, timing, and what you've done with the controls
When you both play blindfolded, it becomes a meta game of knowing your opponent and how he plays, what patterns he uses, and then trying to change your own patterns to exploit what he thinks your moves are going to be and so on.
For character, I usually just let the game pick a random one for me. I found that after the initial fun of learning everyone's combos and special moves, the basic kicks and punches were all you needed. That was the real secret to MK: Precise use of high kick, sweep, uppercut, and block could pretty much beat anyone who made a mistake. If I wanted to show off (MK3), I'd pick Sindel and not allow one hit against me. I think I was the only person in town who used that character.
Another fun variant was to offer to only use one attack button (high punch, high kick, low punch, or low kick), and allowing your opponent to use all of them. Bonus fun: Let your opponent choose which button you are limited to!
Yes, this was the best kept strategy. Newcomers especially would focus heavily on learning the special moves, assuming the regular kicks/punches to be ineffective (or less effective). Big mistake.
That Liu Kang kick where he used both feet and sounded like a chicken was damn near impossible to defeat when your opponent was spamming it. Every now and then I could block and upper cut but mostly I would upper cut and start getting kicked again.
Early MKs are mostly unreactable visually so sound effects become the first priority.
Killer Instinct 2013 unintentionally at first has different sound (and music!) effects for each move as well as every meter so at some points devs were astonished by a letter from actually blind players with a few advices on how to make it even more accessible.
Different game but equally impressive imo. Obviously takes a lot of practice but audio cues are huge for these kind of challenges - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5w6z-h4hoEU
Also what was your character?