Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero

Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero from 1997 was the series' first spin-off outside the fighting game genre - instead of one-on-one combat, it offered an action platformer in which the player controlled the younger Sub-Zero (Bi-Han) on his mission to obtain a mysterious amulet before it fell into the hands of Quan Chi and Shao Kahn. The story takes place between the events of the first and second games, leading the player through the Lin Kuei clan's temple, snowy mountains, and other locations from the series, and for the first time showed the background of Sub-Zero's rivalry with Scorpion in detail through continuous cutscenes instead of the terse text captions players were used to from the arcade entries. The whole journey is narrated by Sub-Zero himself, which for the first time in the series gave players a view of events from the perspective of a single specific character instead of the short intros alternating before individual fighters' battles.

The gameplay combined progressing through the environment, jumping between platforms, and combat sections against regular enemies and bosses, supplemented by ice-based powers such as freezing an enemy or creating an ice weapon. The game drew criticism for clunky controls, camera trouble in tight spaces, and a merciless continue system with no way to save progress in the middle of a long level, so that a failed boss fight could easily send the player back twenty minutes - but that's exactly what makes it unique within the series - it was an attempt to expand the Mortal Kombat universe beyond the arcade fighting formula.

Why play it: Mythologies is worth trying mainly for fans of the series' lore - it offers the most detailed look at Sub-Zero's past of all the nineties games and for the first time tells the story in a continuous form, though bear in mind it's a clunky and difficult platformer, not a classic fighting Mortal Kombat, and works more as a supplement to the arcade entries for patient series fans than as a replacement for the casual player.