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A classic fighting game.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: May 30, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This is one of my favorite fight games of all time. I have just started playing it again and I still had remembered some of the cool combos. I still wanted to try KI Gold again though. I dont think I have gotten the hang of a few things.

Best Figter ever!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: November 02, 2006
Author: Amazon User

A Unqiue style of fighting that doesn't not exist anywhere else today.

Killer first effort from Rare

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: September 03, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Rare had a pretty good "first-time" streak with their games. They mastered platforming in both 2D and 3D with Donkey Kong Country and Banjo Kazooie; 1st-person shooting with GoldenEye; kart-racing with Diddy Kong Racing; and of course, 2D fighting with Killer Instinct.

KI plays foremost like Street Fighter, with a dash of the extreme violence of Mortal Kombat. What makes it stand out is the combo system, which delivers ridiculous amounts of damage in flashy style. The whole package is delivered in Donkey Kong Country-style rendered graphics and a cd-quality soundtrack based in eurobeats (a music cd came packed in with original versions).

The graphics aren't quite as good as the original arcade, but are commendable. There is also quite a bit of substance beneath the flash; you can get lucky and pull off cool-looking combos through button mashing, but skilled players have a definite advantage over the rookies. If you like 2D fighters, this is a nice alternative to Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat. Also try the N64 sequel.

bad fighting

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 9
Date: July 24, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I had a friend who used to come over and make fun of me for owning Killer Instinct. He'd constantly ask me "when are you going to get rid of this crappy game?" and I'd tell him "oh, eventually". But it took until 2001 when the game didn't sell at a yard sale that I ended up throwing it in the trashbin . THAT is when I got rid of it for good.

The fighting in Killer Instinct is even worse than in Mortal Kombat, and I didn't think it was possible to defeat Mortal Kombat in sheer crappiness. The one thing Killer Instinct does better than MK is the combo system. It's easier and more enjoyable to unleash combos to your opponent in this game. Unfortunately, just like Mortal Kombat, the fighting system is severely dated and useless by todays standards. Unless you like your fighting games to be in slow-motion along with neverending choppy graphics (with bad-looking fatalities included for additional pain- pain that YOU feel) you should never ever think about buying this game. Just another Super NES fighting game I hope people can't remember.

Nowadays, it is still fun to play on the ancient SNES!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: January 08, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This game is unbelievably good for a game made over ten years ago, and the more amzing thing is that it is still fun to play nowadays, not necessarily because of graphics (which are really good for 15 years ago, almost), but because of the great gameplay and wide selection of characters, not all human, in fact, only a couple are, making it a lot more fun with a variety of distinct characters. There is no game like this one. You might say mortal kombat is, but thats just the gameplay, not the characters and cool moves you can do with them.

Buy this game if you have SNES. It is easily one of the top 5 for SNES.

One of the Best SNES Games

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: August 27, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This game was awesome for it's time. It was visually amazing, the sounds were sharp and realistic, and everyone was unique. If you used the cheat, you could unlock the two headed boss, Eyedol. That made the game experience even more fun. The CD it came with has awesome tracks to play as well if you manage to find one with it.

WHAT A THRILL RIDE

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: August 17, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This game had more combos then Mortal Kombat it should have been remember now. I wish they were still making games of this on PS2. You can make the fighters fight faster by holding down all the buttons when you pick your fighter and when they have on the screen your fighter vs the computer to tell that it worked it will make a punching sound. The computer always tell you how many combos you made in other words how many hits. The most hit is the altra which has 24 hits, thats the finishing one. My favorite fighters are Spinal, Fulgore, B. Orchid, Jago, Combo, Thunder, Saberwolf, Raptor, Cinder. This game makes the Street Fighter games on Super NES look like a pre school game.

Sigh...Need To Bump This Back Up

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: February 01, 2005
Author: Amazon User

It's official, Der Kommisar is an idiot. The reviewer before me tore apart his pitiful argument piece by piece before shoving it into his bladder. It was rather amusing.

Anybody who does not hail Killer Instinct to be the holy grail of video games should just give up and go back to the basics of how to jump with Super Mario.

15 Reviews and 4 and a half stars is unacceptable. Any respectable gamer who was around in the mid Nineties should know just how exactly revolutionary and important this game was to the genre of versus fighters. KI players, I know you're out there. Show your appreciation.

Rebuttal

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: December 03, 2004
Author: Amazon User

The following will be some counters used against some points made by previous reviewers who either are obviously uninformed or unfortunately hopelessly ignorant.

Originality:
The main concern regarding Killer Instinct is apparently that it is unoriginal. One reviewer suggested that it has a six button fighting scheme ripped off from Street Fighter. First of all, KI and SF are apples and oranges. When Super Street Fighter II Turbo came out in 1994, it introduced a system where the character would execute a combination of combos by building a separate energy bar and then releasing it at will. The combo system in KI is not only completely different, but it innovated the industry by bringing fighters altogether to a new level. Never before has a fighting game possess combos as high as 50 hits. The arcade version even allows infinite juggling! No other game has anything distantly similar to KI's exceptional combo system of openers, autoseconds, linkers and endings. No other game has the patented "combo breaker" that allows players to end their opponent's assault right in the middle of their combo. Thus, the argument that KI ripped off SF's fighting style is quite absurd. You're better off comparing SF to Fatal Fury or King of Fighters in the SNK Company. Or better yet, you might even find more similarities between SF and Marvel because KI is in a completely different league.

If anything, KI is more similar to Mortal Kombat in its game design. Even so, MK has utterly nothing on KI when it solely comes down to gameplay. KI not only has the uniqueness of MK's special moves for each character, it also has a much superior combo system and overall a better flow in the game. Although it is somewhat true that the "no mercy" finishers in KI are in the same vein as the "Fatalities" of MK, KI was still able to innovate this further by the creation of the Ultimate Combo, allowing players to perform finishers in the middle of a combo. MK also wished it came up with the genius of the Ultra Combo, hands down the greatest feature ever made for a video game.

Weak Controls:
How exactly does Killer Instinct possess "weak controls"? It combines the style of controls for special moves in traditional Street Fighter (such as the basic D,DF,F+P) with the ones introduced by Mortal Kombat (such as F,F+P). Therefore, how can it possibly do any wrong? For characters such as Cinder, KI's controls allow you to use both styles! A lot of the more complex combos are very difficult to perform, but that's the deal with any game. Practice makes perfect.

Life Bars:
The life bars do not regenerate between rounds in Killer Instinct because the game happens to be cumulative. Do not approach a fight with an expectation of two rounds but rather one. Comebacks may be tough, but it is definitely not impossible. I've seen situations where players are in the "last breath" stage where the announcer says "danger", randomly push the pad and buttons rapidly, escape and win. Why? Because you do over twice your normal damage in the "last breath" stage! There are always opportunities to make comebacks but this is more issues concerning the gamer, than the actual game.

Balance:
Contrary to some false accusations, Killer Instinct is actually perfectly balanced. Just because some characters are easier to learn than others does not make them superior. This is actually part of what makes the game so appealing, the learning process of each character's advantages and disadvantages. Whether it's Cinder's air priority, Orchid's ground edge or Thunder's chipping technique, it all eventually evens out. Spinal, the hardest character to learn is unstoppable if a player can master his specialities. Riptor's amazingly fast transition between moves makes him a dominant force as well as Sabrewulf's ability to manually power up through his howl. Even Eyedol, KI's best character has lag time, just like everyone else. If the computer takes advantage of an initial mistake, combo break him. Again, this is concerning more of the game's strategy than game design.

Honestly, there are no flaws in this game. If so, they are so trival and miniscule, it's not even worth mentionning. Killer Instinct is undeniably a video game classic, period.

No other fighter comes close.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 10
Date: June 20, 2004
Author: Amazon User

First of all, I mean no other fighting game matches this one in replay value, due to insane combos (of which there are many different variations), great "No Mercy" (finishing) moves and a great cast of characters. I was a fan from the moment I played it for the first time, and 10 years later it is still without a doubt my favorite game of all-time. Do not be mistaken though, I am not saying all of the other fighters out there are bad(Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat are also 5 star fighters), but when Killer Instinct hit the arcades there was nothing like it, at least in my opinion. The graphics were beautiful, the combos were amazing and it seemed like an all around original game.

Other reviewers might have you believe this game rips off the others, but nothing could be further from the truth. Sure, they all share similarities, but Killer Instinct was the first to develop this complex combo system, consisting of linkers, auto-doubles and enders, not to mention the ULTRA combo. To me the ULTRA is the greatest concept of all-time as far as fighting games are concerned. It is a move performed at the end of a combo that adds many more hits to give a great-looking combo to finish off your opponent. There are also combo breakers to stop your opponent from performing a combo on you. So by now you should be able to understand that this game takes a LOT of practice to get good at. Learning the combo theory, mastering each character's moves and getting comfortable with each character's style is hard work, but with enough practice will be rewarding once you know your stuff. There are 8 great characters to choose from, each with their own background level, and depending on the location you can knock your opponent off of buildings. It has pretty decent music to boot, giving a great game experience--in my opinion one of the best games you could own for the Super NES. So if you are a fan of fighting games or own a Super NES, try this one out. You can find it for very cheap these days, so it is definately worth picking up if you see it around. You will either hate this game and never want to play it again, or you will be hooked instantly and develop an addiction to the style this game presents.

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