![]() ![]() There’s a pretty wide variety of pop culture archetypes among the cast that there’s a surprising amount of variety. While there’s plenty of standard humans across the series, the amount of characters that break from that mold is only eclipsed by games like Darkstalkers and Guilty Gear. Most fighting games of the time stuck to characters that were distinctly human, possibly with some kind of beast man for variety’s sake. Part of the appeal of Killer Instinct is its odd array of characters. With that in mind, the fact that its recent revival ended up so much better than anybody could have expected is more than a little surprising. With tournaments being broadcast across the world, and massive cash prizes on the line, it was only fair enough. This revival lead to a new era in fighting games where every feature had to be carefully considered and balanced. From there, Rareware would suffer a long and painful decline that’s been far better documented in so many other places.Īnd so, through KI‘s long absence, the fighting game industry fell into a long hibernation, before emerging into a renaissance with Street Fighter IV. A third game that would bring the series to the third dimension was briefly planned, and then cancelled. The gameplay, while far more playable than the worst the decade had to offer, never managed to draw much interest from competitive players, either. It wouldn’t be long before CGI technology improved by leaps and bounds, leaving the graphics more dated than traditional pixel art. The original Killer Instinct games were pretty much the perfect time capsule of what was huge in the mid 90s, which might explain why the series flared out so quickly. Still, it most likely didn’t hurt their image, especially given this was when the infamous “PLAY IT LOUD” ad campaign was in full swing. ![]() ![]() While it’s certainly not a patch on Mortal Kombat in terms of gore, these are still semi-realistic human beings and undead monsters beating each other up, complete with fatal finishing moves. Even more surprising is just how gritty this is for a game mid-90s Nintendo chose to put their name on. KI is one of the only traditional fighting games the company published, unless one chooses to count the Famicom’s Joy Mech Fight. It was also a rather large swerve for its publisher Nintendo, achieving a lot of things that gamers of the time would never dream the big N would do. In terms of gameplay, the series takes far more after Japanese fighters of the time, making use of a six button layout, rolling and charged based special moves, and a focus on those newfangled combos that would become a critical gameplay element. The original games eschew live actors and pixel art in favor of CGI models, with plenty of FMV to draw In crowds. Despite this, the series does enough of its own thing that it still feels unique, which made it more of a worthy rival to the MK series than all the other games that tried to copy it. There’s definitely some similarities between the two series, given the finishing moves and darker atmosphere compared to similar games of the time. It’s difficult to say if Killer Instinct was directly competing against Mortal Kombat or not, since the cabinets themselves were manufactured by Midway. And so entered Rare, not too long just before they rose to super-stardom with the Donkey Kong Country series. It was an interesting time, full of both successes and failures in the genre. Mortal Kombat 2 had received home ports that were selling just as well as they were in American arcades. Not content there, they’d release Children of the Atom, a game that’d create now well-known concepts like air combos and chain combos. ![]() Capcom had polished its flagship title, Street Fighter II, to a silver shine with the release of Super Turbo. Killer Instinct II / Killer Instinct Goldġ994 was an interesting time for fighting games. ![]()
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