| Killer Instinct 25 | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Rare Ltd. |
| Publisher(s) | Nintendo Midway (Arcade Manufacturer) |
| Designer(s) | Chris Tilston Kevin Bayliss Mark Betteridge |
| Composer(s) | Robin Beanland |
| Platform(s) | Arcade |
| Release date(s) | |
| Genre(s) | Fighting game |
| Mode(s) | Up to 2 players simultaneously |
| Media/distribution | ROM & HDD |
| Cabinet | Upright |
| Arcade system | Killer Instinct MIPS Based Hardware System |
| CPU | R4600 |
| Sound | Midway Digital Compression System (DCS) - Amplified Mono |
| Display | Raster, Standard Resolution (Horizontal) CRT Color |
Killer Instinct 2 (commonly abbreviated KI2) is a 1996 arcade-only fighting game developed by Rare, licensed by Nintendo, and manufactured by Midway.
KI2 is the sequel to Killer Instinct (1994), an arcade game which was also ported to the SNES. Like its predecessor, the game features two 8-way joysticks with six buttons each for attacks (three punch and three kick), allowing for both a single player mode or a two player versus mode.
A modified version of KI2 appeared on the Nintendo 64 as Killer Instinct: Gold in 1996 (see below). A SNES version of KI2 was also developed and completed but never released.[1]
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As with most fighting games and indeed its predecessor, two characters square off with the goal of depleting the opponent's life bar. As with the original Killer Instinct, when a player's original life bar is fully depleted, he or she will fall to the ground, and immediately begin on his or her second lifebar.
As with the first game, KI2 relies on an automatic combo subsystem in its matches. The matches, as with Killer Instinct, revolve around a three strength system (Quick, Medium and Fierce). However, normal moves have lost a lot of their priority and range, as well as gaining extra recovery time. Throws have been added into the game to deal with blocking characters (as opposed to the top attack in Killer Instinct). Additionally, characters can be knocked down much easier with normal moves than in the first game, ending the possibility of opening with a 'glitch' combo and also weakening the effectiveness of normal moves. Normal special moves no longer are judged on priority, but instead follow a three tiered 'rock, paper, scissors' system, in which a certain special move will always break another certain special move (similar to the three tiered system in Soul Calibur). The system has been seen as flawed due to little differences between the special moves themselves.
Additionally, a Super bar has been added to the game (similar to Street Fighter Alpha or the The King of Fighters series). This super bar fills as players take damage. After the bar reaches a certain point, the player can use a multi-hit Super Move which is usually an extended version of a normal special move.
The combo system has its roots in the original Killer Instinct. By pressing a certain strength button after an opener move, a player will launch an auto-double and initiate the combo system of the game. However, unlike the first game, players can now open up combos with new and much less risky moves than before (most notable a close Fierce punch or close Fierce kick). Additionally, Super Moves can be placed into combos, greatly increasing their damage and potency as well as being unbreakable. Additionally combos can be extended using throws, super linkers, manual-doubles, and super end specials. As a result of the weakened normal moves and other changes to the system, combos have now become more devastating in KI2. In an apparent effort to help ease this dominance, combo breakers are now easier to perform. Unlike combo breakers in the first game, which also required a three tiered 'rock, paper, scissors' system based on strength to break, combos are now broken depending on the type of attack. Punches break kick doubles, and kicks will break punch doubles.
Parry, an advanced new addition, allow an open counter-attack after a successful parry block. A player can assume a standing defensive position and cause the attacker to temporarily freeze if the parry is successful, and from there either perform a special stunning technique or a 3-hit variant of a Special Move.
The finishing moves have also been reworked. Now each character can only execute these attacks when the opponent's second life bar flashes red (unlike the first Killer Instinct the opponents falls when he or she loses all of his or her energy bars). Each characters has two Ultimate combo moves (one of them can be executed without executing a combo), the Humiliation sequences were dropped, and the Ultra combo feature is still intact.
Killer Instinct 2 follows on from the plot line that the previous installment ended with. Eyedol's death at the hands of Orchid accidentally sets off a time warp, transporting some of the combatants back in time and allowing the Demon Lord Gargos to escape from Limbo. Now, trapped 2000 years in the past, the warriors that survived Killer Instinct, along with several new faces, fight for the right to face Gargos in combat, but Chief Thunder, Cinder and Riptor did not return. Each character that survived the journey from the first game has a corresponding background story, while new characters on this installment are native inhabitants of this past time period. Some fighters, like T.J. Combo who survives from the original, just want to get home. Others, like new character Tusk, want to bring an end to Gargos and his reign of evil. This time there is no tournament or prize money, just a fight to the finish with the fate of the future hanging in the balance.
Characters returning from the first game:
Each character in the game has two or four different endings. Which ending the player gets depends whether or not the player kills (by using a finishing move vs. simply depleting their health) one or more certain character(s) during the course of the game.
For example, Jago's endings both involve Fulgore and Black Orchid. Thus, killing or not killing them over the course of the game alters the outcomes of his endings:
| Killer Instinct Gold | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Rare |
| Publisher(s) | Nintendo |
| Designer(s) | Chris Tilston Kevin Bayliss Mark Betteridge |
| Composer(s) | Robin Beanland |
| Platform(s) | Nintendo 64 |
| Release date(s) | November 25, 1996 |
| Genre(s) | Fighting |
| Mode(s) | Single player, multiplayer |
| Rating(s) | ESRB: T |
Killer Instinct: Gold is the Nintendo 64 version of Killer Instinct 2. It was released shortly after the launch of the console. The game suffered some graphical downgrades and the endings for each character do not change (as they would in the Arcade version) due to the memory limitations of the Nintendo 64 cartridge. Other than that, Killer Instinct: Gold remains faithful to the original Killer Instinct 2.
These differences include:
KI: Gold is compatible with the Nintendo 64's Controller Pak to save options and high scores, though the cartridge also includes battery save.
Unlike the arcade version, however, this home port had most of its FMV scenes and several frames of character animation removed, due to the memory limitations of the Nintendo 64 cartridge. Alternate endings for characters were also removed, resulting in each character having only one ending which seems to mix certain aspects of their other endings into one. Since this system was cartridge-based, and full-screen FMVs can take up hundreds of megabytes of space, the FMVs had to be replaced with a simple animation consisting of a zoom of the character the player was using. To compensate for the loss of animation, the stages in the game were fully rendered in 3D, as opposed to the scaling and distorting FMVs used for the stage backgrounds in the arcade version, allowing more dynamic camera takes at the beginning of the battle, while using less memory consumption. However, the quality of the animation of the sprites was notably decreased in comparison to KI2.
The FMV introduction of KI2 features a provocative scene of the female character Black Orchid. Before release, the full version of this video sequence was shown on the UK gaming TV show GamesMaster,[4] but was later cut for the arcade release.
Killer Instinct: Gold won four Nintendo Power Awards '96 in the categories Best Tournament Fighting Game (1st place), Best Code (1st place for the Gargos Code), Best Multi-Player Game (2nd place) and Best Player Control (3rd place).[2]
Killer Instinct: Gold also released its original soundtrack, as the first Killer Instinct under Rare Label. It was called "Killer Instinct Gold Cuts" It consisted in a 16-track-audio-CD, which included original tracks from the Arcade versions plus two remixes and the Training Mode track.