Killer Instinct (1994 video game)

This article is about the original Killer Instinct. For the 2013 video game, see Killer Instinct (2013 video game).

Killer Instinct
Arcade flyer for Killer Instinct
Developer(s)	Rareware
Publisher(s)	Midway Rareware Nintendo
Designer(s)	Chris Stamper, Pete Cox (hardware) Chris Tilston, Mark Betteridge, Kevin Bayliss, Ken Lobb (game)
Programmer(s)	Mark Betteridge (head) Chris Tilston (gameplay) Martin Hollis (technical) Robert Harrison (3D) Steve Patrick (SNES head)
Artist(s)	Kevin Bayliss (characters) Tim Stamper (backgrounds) Chris Seavor, Adrian Smith (additional graphics)
Composer(s)	Robin Beanland Graeme Norgate
Platform(s)	Arcade, SNES, Game Boy
Release date(s)	Arcade November 28, 1994 SNES August 30, 1995 Game Boy November 1995
Genre(s)	Fighting
Mode(s)	Up to 2 players simultaneously
Distribution	ROM & HDD
Cabinet	Upright
Arcade system	Proprietary MIPS based hardware system
CPU	R4600
Sound	Digital Compression System (DCS)
Display	Horizontal, raster, standard resolution (used: 320 x 240)

Killer Instinct is a fighting game developed by Rare and published by Midway and Nintendo. It was released as an arcade game in 1994 and then ported to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) and the Game Boy in 1995. The game's plot involves an all-powerful corporation called Ultratech organizing a fighting tournament. The story was adapted in a limited comic book series published under the short-lived Acclaim Comics imprint.

Killer Instinct features several gameplay elements unique to fighting games of the time. Instead of fighting enemies in best-of-three rounds bouts, each player has two life bars. The player that depletes the other player's life bars first wins the match. The game also introduced "auto-seconds", which allows players to press a certain sequence of buttons to make characters automatically perform combos on opponents. Also featured in the game are "combo breakers"; special moves that can interrupt combos.

Critically acclaimed, Killer Instinct was followed by a sequel, the 1996 arcade game Killer Instinct 2, later ported to the Nintendo 64 as Killer Instinct Gold, as well as a 2013 reboot of the franchise. Some retrospective lists by various publications included it among the best fighting games of all time.

Gameplay

Killer Instinct arcade screenshot

Killer Instinct plays like many other fighting games, in which the player controls a character in order to beat an opponent in a one-on-one encounter. The game borrows the attack set of Street Fighter and is also inspired by the finishing moves from Mortal Kombat. There are also several features that distinguish it from other franchises:

• A double energy bar: instead of winning two rounds, each player has two bars of energy. If a character finishes with his or her opponent's first life bar, the fight stops and resumes like a round, but the winning character still keeps whatever amount of energy he or she had at that moment. The player who depletes his or her opponent's second life bar wins the bout.
• Automatic combos: rather than press the necessary buttons in order to deliver the individual attacks that form a combo, in Killer Instinct the combos are automated and can be enabled by inputting a determined button or special move.
• Finishing moves: Bearing resemblance to Mortal Kombat's Fatalities, each character has at least two moves known as No Mercy (Danger Move in later revisions) in order to finish the opponent. One of these No Mercy moves can be executed at the end of a combo (which is labeled as an Ultimate Combo), when the opponents life bar flashes red (when his or her second bar is going to be depleted), although it uses a different combination of movements. Another finisher is the Humiliation, that forces the opponent to dance (the dance style depends on the character), but this can only be used if the player has his or her first life bar. Unlike the Fatalities, however, Killer Instinct's finishing moves do not feature brutality or dismemberment.
• Ultra Combo: Another finisher; it operates like an Ultimate Combo, though this one allows the character to deliver a long string of hits as the combo finisher instead, usually surpassing 20 hits, and can sometimes reach upwards of 80 hits.
• Combo Breaker: The player who is being caught in a combo may break out of it by performing a combo breaker move. The combo breaker is a designated special move of the player's character. A combo can be broken at either the auto-double or linker stage. To successfully break an auto-double, the player must use the breaker move at a strength lower than the auto-double itself (i.e. for a player to break a Medium auto-double s/he must use a Quick breaker). The combo can also be broken at the linker stage. At this stage the player can use any strength of breaker, making long combos a risky affair. Also, after performing a combo breaker, a white starburst will appear at the tip of the breaker's health bar, enabling advanced versions of some special moves that require a different command (e.g. Jago, instead of a regular green fireball, can shoot a red fireball).

Plot

Ultratech is a very powerful megacorporation (entities which, in this future setting, have replaced all governments) which organizes a tournament called Killer Instinct. Along with regular participants, experimental creatures created by Ultratech also fight in the tournament so their strength can be tested. Ultratech also discovers a technology to make bridges between dimensions, and releases a two-headed, one-eyed, satyr monster called Eyedol from this dimensional prison.

Characters

Main article: List of Killer Instinct characters

According to GamePro in 2010, Killer Instinct is "remembered for its colorful cast of combatants. KI featured a velociraptor, a sword-wielding skeleton, a creature made out of ice, and a buttload of other memorable characters." In 2012, Topless Robot wrote that Killer Instinct "featured one of the most amazing and varied cast of characters ever to grace a fighting game, including the Native American Chief Thunder, the demonic skeleton Spinal, fiery criminal Cinder, the killer cyborg Fulgore and the vicious velociraptor-hybrid Riptor."

Development

Initially released to arcades in 1994, Killer Instinct and a racing game Cruis'n USA were promoted as running on Ultra 64, a hardware platform upon which a 64-bit Nintendo console of the same name (and which ultimately became Nintendo 64) was to be released. In actuality, the game ran on proprietary arcade hardware co-developed by Rare and Midway. A version of the game was to be developed for Nintendo's new console, but the console's release was delayed and the game was instead ported to two existing Nintendo consoles. Killer Instinct was the first arcade game to use an internal hard disk drive in addition to the game's ROMs.^{[citation needed]} This allowed it to store massive amounts of data thereby giving it the ability to have more detailed graphics than other games of this genre. The game used pre-rendered sprites for characters, created with Silicon Graphics computers and the backgrounds were pre-rendered as a "movie," which simply adjusted frames based on the current location of the players. All this data was stored on the hard drive. Killer Instinct's R4600 processor was clocked at 100 MHz.

In the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) port many of the features the arcade version were altered, downsampled, or removed. The graphic detail was vastly reduced and the character sprites were smaller. The stages with a 3D panning camera were simplified into a 2D panning view using parallax scrolling for the background and mode 7 for the ground or arena, thus simulating a pseudo-3D effect. Zooming and scaling were removed. Some of the stages were redesigned. The full motion videos that showed the characters after a victory were replaced by still images. Voice samples and sound effects were severely limited, whether shortened or missing altogether. Most of the characters preserved their special moves and danger moves. However, some of the special graphical effects — notably the shadow move effect — were removed. To make up for the loss of overall quality, some other modes were added, such as a training mode, a tournament mode (used for multi-player purposes), and other options. When released in Europe, Japan, Australia, Canada, and the United States the SNES game had black cartridge casing, instead of the standard grey shell. The TV advertisement for Canada and the United States showed a person cutting through the arcade cabinet with a chainsaw to reveal an SNES console with the game plugged in. Killer Cuts, an arranged soundtrack CD featuring original music from Killer Instinct was released as a pack-in for the SNES release of the game.

A Game Boy port was also made, but cuts were necessary due to the system's limitations. As a result, neither Cinder nor Riptor are featured and the moves were severely altered due to the more limited controls of the portable. The game supports some coloring when played in a Super Game Boy, which also allowed for a two player versus match to be played by inserting a second controller.

Reception

Upon its release on the SNES, VideoGames reviewer Tyrone Rodriguez gave the game a score of 8 (Great), stating his preference of it over Mortal Kombat 3 (the other editors' additional scores being 8-6-6). Computer and Video Games gave the game a 93%, adding: "Rare weren't lying when they said the home version would play better than the coin-op: no-one realised they were talking about the SNES!"

Retrospectively, Killer Instinct was ranked as the 148th best game made on any Nintendo system by Nintendo Power in 2006 and as the 19th best SNES game of all time by ScrewAttack in 2008. In 2007, CraveOnline users ranked it as the sixth top 2D fighter of all time, the staff calling it "the bastard child of Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat." In 2008, ScrewAttack listed it as the fifth best fighting game of all time. That same year, GamePro ranked it as the 18th best fighting game. Virgin Media ranked it as the eighth top beat 'em-up of all time in 2009, adding that Killer Instinct was "most famous for having the longest combos in the business." In 2010, it was ranked as the 10th top fighting game of all time by UGO.

Legacy

Main article: Killer Instinct (video game series)

A sequel titled Killer Instinct 2 was released in 1996. Like the first game, it was ported to a home console, this time to the Nintendo 64 as KI Gold.

A new Killer Instinct is currently in development by Rare and Double Helix Games for Microsoft, to be released exclusively for the Xbox One.

External links

• Killer Instinct at the Open Directory Project
• Killer Instinct (1994 video game) at the Killer List of Videogames
• Killer Instinct at Nintendo.com (archives of the original at the Internet Archive)
• Killer Instinct Wiki at Wikia