Killer Instinct (Rare / Nintendo - Arcade - 1994)
18"Killer Instinct is a fighting video game developed by Rare and published by Midway. It was released as an arcade game in the fall of 1994 and, the following year, ported to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) and the Game Boy. The game's plot involves an all-powerful corporation organizing a fighting tournament. The story was adapted in a limited comic book series published under the short-lived Acclaim Comics imprint.
According to Ken Lobb, the groundwork for Killer Instinct started as a Namco fighting game project in the early planning stages titled 'Melee' (which itself later became Weaponlord) during his time at Namco. Aspects of Killer Instinct's core gameplay were influenced from SNK fighting games, namely both the World Heroes series and the Fatal Fury series.
Despite a generic storyline, Killer Instinct featured more detailed graphics and more diverse characters than any other games of its genre as well as some gameplay elements unique to fighting games of the time. Instead of fighting enemies in best-of-three-rounds bouts, each player has two life bars. The player that depletes the other player's life bars first wins the match. The game also introduced 'auto-doubles', a feature which allows players to press a certain sequence of buttons to make characters automatically perform combos on opponents. Also featured in the game are "combo breakers", special defensive moves that can interrupt combos.
A critical and commercial success, Killer Instinct was followed by a sequel, the 1996 arcade game Killer Instinct 2, later ported to the Nintendo 64 as Killer Instinct Gold.
Gameplay
Killer Instinct plays like many other fighting games, in which the player controls a character to beat an opponent in a one-on-one encounter. The game borrows the attack set of Street Fighter and is also inspired by the finishing moves from Mortal Kombat. There are also several features that distinguish it from other franchises:
A double health bar: instead of winning two rounds, each player has two bars of health. The player who depletes the opponent's health bar wins the bout, and a player does not recover health upon draining their opponent's first health bar.
-Automatic combos: Many combos are automated, after an initial button press sequence.
-Finishing moves: Bearing resemblance to (but being less graphic than) Mortal Kombat's Fatalities, each character has at least two moves known as No Mercy (Danger Move in later revisions) to finish the opponent. Another finisher is the Humiliation, that forces the opponent to dance.
-Ultra Combo: Another finisher, it operates like an Ultimate Combo, though this one allows the character to deliver a long string of hits as the combo finisher instead, usually surpassing 20 hits, and can sometimes reach upwards of 80 hits.
-Combo Breaker: The player who is being caught in a combo may break out of it by performing a combo breaker move. A combo can be broken at either the auto-double or linker stage. After performing a combo breaker, a white starburst will appear at the tip of the breaker's current health bar, enabling advanced versions of some special moves that require a different command.
Plot
Ultratech is a very powerful megacorporation which organizes a tournament called Killer Instinct. Along with regular participants, experimental creatures created by Ultratech also fight in the tournament so their strength can be tested. Ultratech also discovers a technology to make bridges between dimensions, and releases a two-headed cyclops, satyr-like monster called Eyedol from his dimensional prison in Limbo."
game info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_Instinct_(1994_video_game)
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