Level Up: Killer Instinct

(Once again, blogspot flips this picture on its side, even though the original picture was not like this.)

Oh, just give me a second here, I’m nailing my door shut. After last week’s “guest”, I want to make sure it doesn’t happen again this month, what with the characters I’m gonna be talking about. There…

When selecting a game to review, it’s sometimes hard to choose exactly which ones to do. However, in a month with a Halloween theme, this week’s game definitely stood out, almost calling me and with it’s pure black cartridge and title. Those of you who have this game know exactly what I’m talking about: Killer Instinct for the Super Nintendo.

If you haven’t listened to my Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat 2 review, do it, because I’ll be referencing those two games quite a bit. This game is like them, in the sense that it’s a 2D fighter, but different in some key areas. First up, it’s the life bar: it doesn’t refill at the end of the round. In most other fighting games, once you knock out your enemy, a new round starts and both your energy meters refill. In this game, the damage carries over. You are given two full life bars and that’s it. Make it last.

This can be very hard though, because it’s easy to put the hurt on your opponent. I mentioned that in games like Street Fighter, pushing the right button combination for special moves can be difficult. In Killer Instinct, a lot of the special moves can be activated by pressing a two or three buttons. Even without this, it’s easy to pound your enemy with basic attacks, because this game allows for automatic combos. It only ends when your opponent either breaks it, or you launch him in the air. These are hard to explain, but the feel of it is great and they are fun to do.

Finally, you have finishing moves: either the No Mercy or Danger move depending on which version you play. This is honestly just a rip of Mortal Kombat’s Fatalities. (It’d be fair to point out that Midway games helped publish the Arcade versions of both titles.) However, they are a lot tamer in this game; remember this one is only rated T, while Mortal Kombat got an M rating. I can probably call this a flop as far as this game goes though. Other than these elements, this game is pretty much your basic 2D fighting game, where you jump around, hit your opponent and try not to take too much damage.

As usual, with fighting games, I gotta talk about the characters. This time around, there are 10, which doesn’t seem like much now a days, but back in 1994, it was just around average. As usual, what I like is the diversity, and I am not talking about this game during October for no reason. You get a few usual fighters: the token ninja and female. Then you also get a boxer and a dual Tomahawk user, which are two things you don’t see in many games. Finally, the other 6 are the true reason for playing: a werewolf, a dinosaur, an iceman, a man of flames, a skeleton and Fulgor, who I can only guess is a suit of armour based robot. Even with only 10 characters, all the different mix ups you can make with these diverse characters makes them one of the best aspects of this game.

This is another game developed by Rare, like Donkey Kong Country, so I found a lot of the graphics and music quite similar. Once again, Rare used the polygon technique for making their graphics, which suits this game perfectly. Though, I will admit, the Arcade version looks much better, especially with Cider. I have the same problem with the sound effect I have with most fighting games though: it’s easy to get audio fatigue from the constant shouting going on. The music, however, is pretty cool, and worth keeping the volume up on your TV. As I’ve said, this was developed by Rare, so it has the same quality as DKC. It’s kind of industrial in a sense, but really works at invoking one’s Killer Instinct.

This game is different from most 2D fighters, which makes it’s one of my favourites. But at the same time, I could see some of the more hard core fighter game fans not liking this game. This is good for people who play games like Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat by mostly button mashing, but for people who bother to memorize the huge button moves, this might not be enough of a challenge. Also, getting trapped in a combo might seem cheap to these people. But the big disappointment might come from the fact that this game is rated T, and for a game called “KILLER” Instinct, that’s a big problem. Still, the great graphic, music and monstrous characters should be enjoyable to anyone, even if the game play might be hit or miss for most people (and for me, it’s a definite hit). I give Killer Instinct for the Super Nintendo 7.5 Levels out 10.