Mortal Kombat - Shaolin Monks

Fatalities were always a punchline at the end of a fight, a reward for winning. Turning them into a mid-combat resource was the smartest thing Midway's Los Angeles studio did here. Knock a Tarkatan into the air, keep him bouncing off your boot, and once the meter fills you can end him with a direct input rather than a menu of finishers. Enemies come in packs, so a finisher is also crowd control, and the spike pits, acid pools and grinding blades scattered across the levels do the same job for free if you can shove someone into them.

The frame is a retelling of Mortal Kombat II, with Liu Kang and Kung Lao pushing through the Living Forest, the Wasteland and Shao Kahn's fortress. Each has a distinct move set and a different traversal ability, which is where the second player matters: this was built for two people on one couch, drop-in and drop-out, with paths that split so co-op partners cover ground separately before rejoining. Playing solo works, but the level design keeps reminding you that a second set of hands would open a door faster.

Structurally it owes more to Golden Axe and the 3D brawlers of the late nineties than to anything in the fighting series, with light platforming and simple environmental puzzles between arenas. Progress unlocks new strings and specials from a modest upgrade screen, which does a decent job of keeping the combat from calcifying across a five-or-six hour run. Test Your Might returns as a button-mashing interlude, and clearing the campaign opens a versus mode with a small roster.

What has aged worst is the camera. It sits where the designer wanted rather than where you need it, and in tighter corridors it will happily hide the enemy about to hit you. Some of the platforming sequences are imprecise enough that death feels arbitrary rather than earned. The art direction, though, holds up better than most sixth-generation licensed spin-offs, because it is not a licence at all — it is the studio's own material, and the fortress interiors and Outworld skyboxes were clearly built by people who knew the source cold.

Mortal Kombat has produced plenty of side projects, most of them forgettable, and this one endures because it understood the appeal of the series was never only the one-on-one duel. It was the moment the fight ends badly for someone. Shaolin Monks just gives you that moment thirty times an hour.