Below are user reviews of Killer Instinct and on the right are links to professionally written reviews.
The summary of review scores shows the distribution of scores given by the professional reviewers for Killer Instinct.
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Higher scores (columns further towards the right) are better.
User Reviews (1 - 11 of 21)
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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.
ok- its snes whatcha expect
3
Rating: 3,
Useful: 3 / 4
Date: January 26, 2003
Author: Amazon User
pretty good game but it goes from easy to very hard very fast... i do recomend getting it if you like to chill with friends and play multi-player when your bored.. dont get it if you just gonna be playing it by yourself it will get boring
Killer instinct is killer fun!
4
Rating: 4,
Useful: 3 / 6
Date: October 03, 2000
Author: Amazon User
The game was easy to learn and fun to play and realistic looking.
It's hard to believe that this is only 16 bit
4
Rating: 4,
Useful: 1 / 1
Date: March 06, 2002
Author: Amazon User
For a 16 bit game, this rocks. Interesting set of characters, phenominal graphics, and outstanding music once again proves why the SNES is one of the all time greatest systems. As in controls this title utilizes every button available (9 total) to unleash incredible combos that makes this the fighting game to own.
That is not to say that this game doesn't have it's flaws. For example the difficulty is set (even on easy) to where a casual gamer just can't pick this up and play. The training mode is lackluster, and combos are difficult to pull off. Also despite how cool the music is, it doesn't always fit the area your fighing in. However overall it works just fine.
Looking at characters there is a nice variety. You have cyborgs, ninjas, assassins, mutants, aliens, lycanthropies, and even a skeleton (who has the funniest ending). No move is duplicated, each has their own set of specials and combos. However the finishing taunt (won't spoil it) is a little dumb, and the finishers are OK at best.
In the end Killer Instinct is a nice game to purchase, it will take a lot of practice to beat the final boss but it is so worth it if you win.
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.
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.
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.
Other games could not copy KI
5
Rating: 5,
Useful: 4 / 4
Date: October 18, 2002
Author: Amazon User
Killer Instinct was a really good game. The home version was a pretty good translation of the Arcade smash and the game didn't get old as quickly as other fighting games.
This game took the bar up to 10. After KI, almost every other fighting game came up with some sort of combo system. Some not as impressive as KI but still, the combo system was adopted and to this day, very used by most games because let's face it, the combos add another dimension to the game. Instead of a whalloping one-hit move that hurt like hell, you could unleash vicious combos that, if done properly could wipe your opponent across the screen.
I think one of the only problems with KI on the home system was the same problem with the Arcade version. It was to complicated for a lot of gamers. A lot of people could not get the combo system down and I will admit certain characters had some difficult ones. You really had to know the combo system to win at KI.
But once you got decent (you didn't have to be stand up good all the time, trust me I got lazy in a lot of matches), it was one of the most fun games you had played. I believe this was on of the first games that you could play on the short lived SNES modem hook up. With the modem hook up, you could play with your friends on the other side of the country. But now we have the internet so it's not that big of a deal.
KI is a keeper. I'd get it while you can. If it's still not for you, than maybe the Street Fighter ot MK series is for you.
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.
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