Mortal Kombat had a curious action spin-off that is about to turn 20 years old.

Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks was a surprising spin-off of the series that offered us a highly entertaining action-adventure for PS2 and Xbox. It's now 20 years old.

For those unfamiliar, it's a spin-off originally released in 2005 for PlayStation 2 and Xbox that retells the events of Mortal Kombat II through a bloody action-adventure starring Kung Lao and Liu Kang.

One of its biggest selling points was that we could play it both solo and in local co-op for two players. In fact, if we played with others, we could access areas that were otherwise inaccessible.

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This is a Mortal Kombat game, so blood and gore were the order of the day, and we could even perform some fatalities to finish off our opponents and score extra points.

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Although other spin-offs in the series weren't particularly well received by critics and gamers, Shaolin Monks managed to convince and earned numerous notable ratings in magazines of the time thanks to its challenging combat, intense bosses, and how well it adapted the series' hallmarks to the format of an entertaining action game with co-op capabilities.