Few things go as hand-in-hand as the 90s and fighting games. Games like Street Fighter II, Mortal Kombat, and Fatal Fury were doing successful rounds in both arcades and the home console market, establishing a new genre of game that would still live on to this day and prove very successful.
Ken Lobb, whose pitch for a fighting game had previously been rejected from Namco, went to work at Rare, a British gaming company founded by Tim and Chris Stamper in 1985 that Nintendo had acquired a 25% stake (later to become 49%) of in 1994. Rare had plans to rival Mortal Kombat, and the Stamper brothers approved Lobb’s pitch of Killer Instinct. In that same year, Killer Instinct was released in arcades by Midway and was ported to Nintendo’s Super NES console in 1995. Killer Instinct has gone on to receive two sequels and has been critically acclaimed, often mentioned when talking about the best fighting games of all time.
Despite this, Killer Instinct is relatively unknown to the general society. It was no doubt overshadowed by Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat, as those franchises have continued to live on in modern pop culture, while KI has fallen out of style. Knowing this, I’d like to shine a light on it and give it the recognition it deserves and more.
Killer Instinct follows the powerful corporation Ultratech, organizing a fighting tournament using not only participants, but also tampering with other creatures to test their abilities. Character examples include a skeleton warrior named Spinal, an alien named Glacius with ice powers, the velociraptor clone Riptor, and a destructive robot named Fulgore.
My personal favorite of the game’s playable cast is Sabrewulf, a werewolf which was inspired by the Sabre Wulf franchise that Rare released for the ZX Spectrum computer while under the company name Ultimate Play the Game. In Sabre Wulf’s third game Knight Lore, the main character Sabreman (an adventurer) is bitten by the Sabre Wulf he has avoided on his adventures thus far and is seeking a cure. This gives a sense of connectivity to KI, and it encouraged Rare to incorporate characters from their different IPs into their games, such as Sabreman in human form appearing in Banjo Tooie and Rash from Battletoads being a playable character in the 2013 Xbox One reboot of Killer Instinct. All of this is to say that it feels somewhat heartwarming to see a company connect their characters in meaningful ways that isn’t just blatant product placement.
Another thing worth mentioning is the graphical style. Rare used a technique called Advanced Computer Modeling (ACM) in the construction of some of their games. They created 3D models of everything in the game, such as characters, particles, and effects, and converted them to 2D models, allowing for a more realistic presentation with more colors and shading effects. Rare has been praised for using this technique to create graphically impressive games, and Killer Instinct is no different, feeling similar but somewhat better than the motion capture used to create the realistic violence two years prior in Mortal Kombat.
Killer Instinct features a six button layout, with three punch and three kick buttons as well as the ability to block attacks, similar to Street Fighter II. Special moves are also included, with most of them being fairly straightforward and using the same inputs as Street Fighter. The last similarity it has to other fighters are the finishing moves which are triggered by a complex input, akin to Mortal Kombat (albeit less violent). It may seem that KI is but another carbon copy of 90s fighting games; however, this is where the similarities end and the new concepts begin.
The first of KI’s unique qualities is the humiliations. Humiliations are a type of finisher that can be pulled off with similar inputs, but instead of brutally executing your opponent by incinerating them with laser beams or punching them into the screen, you force them to dance. This is very much a product of the 90s, but it’s still enjoyable nonetheless. Saying that, though, the concept of alternative fatalities had existed before, with the year prior’s Mortal Kombat II including a “friendship” finisher that was a result of the hearings on video game violence.
Most fighting games are played in a specific format. You and your opponent are given a health bar, and whichever bar is depleted first is knocked out and the win goes to the other player. These rounds are played in a two out of three format, so even if you lose once, you still have a chance to try again. KI does not follow this format. It instead ops for one round with two healthbars, receiving your second after your first is gone. It also pauses and distances both players once either player’s first healthbar is gone, so that you can’t have Jago the Tiger Warrior bodyblock you in a corner and bash your hopes and dreams in with infinite uppercuts.
I really like this format. It immensely improves the pacing of the game, and it feels a lot more fluid without the wait times that would come between multiple rounds. It also makes the game more user-friendly, which ends up working in its favor because KI is far from easy to master.
The biggest thing that makes KI truly unique is the combo system. By combining various regular and special moves in specific orders, you can hit your opponent for upwards of twenty hits in a row. Again, this takes immense time to master, so it incentivizes the player to practice, giving the game more replayability.
Combos are different for each character, so you can choose the playstyle you like best as well as experiment and test yourself by trying someone more unfamiliar. The game even includes a practice mode, aware that this system takes time but is extremely rewarding.
The music is also phenomenal. The composition was done by Robin Beanland, who still composes for Rare to this day. The main theme perfectly encapsulates the style of the game, sounding mystic but also brash and upfront at times. All of the character themes are able to immerse you in the surrounding environment of the stage. Even something as simple as the music for the selection screen works well, providing an intense, pounding metal track that is short but does exactly what it needs to.
The only issue that KI has is the degradation from the arcade to the SNES port. A lot of technical displays, such as a 3D-panning camera and opening animations for the fights are absent in the home port. But considering most home console ports from this era were infamous for being noticeably worse, KI retains the gameplay and the graphical style of its arcade counterpart, even if the graphics are somewhat lesser. It’s worth noting that Rare had released Donkey Kong Country the year prior using the same ACM graphical style, to much critical acclaim, and since KI also carries this style, it is equally as impressive.
Killer Instinct subverts expectations. On the surface, it looks similar to all of its competitors. But underneath that initial impression is a complex system that takes time to master and perfect. Although KI went on to receive a sequel in 1996 and a series reboot in 2013, it has since stayed dormant. Killer Instinct is a complex masterpiece that created many fighting game standards and should be remembered in as high of regards as other games of its genre that are equally as such.
