Killer Instinct (Super NES, 1995)

 

Not to be confused with hit 1990's movie Basic Instinct. There's no connection. At least, I don't think there are any scenes where Fulgore crosses and uncrosses his legs seductively. Sabrewulf and Spinal are both nude though. Actually a bunch of characters are nude. Regardless, this is easily one of the best fighting games on the Super NES, even though I've never been very good at it.

This game had a black cartridge, which made it stand out. Was rare (heh) for any SNES games to do this sort of thing.

Alright, here we go. So this game was part of a tag-team with Donkey Kong Country 2 in an effort to keep the SNES technologically relevant against the more powerful Sony Playstation and Sega Saturn.

I mean, it was already creatively relevant, with things like Chrono Trigger utterly annihilating anything available for the new systems. However, those systems had rudimentary, polygonal 3D! Beat that, Chrono Trigger!

Wait what? Combo has cybernetically enhanced arms? Way to rip off Jax.

Jago seems to be the guy most people consider the main character. He's the Liu Kang type warrior monk good guy whose destiny is to defeat evil. He's more of a ninja though, and has a sword.

Here's B. Orchid, Nintendo's attempt to go after the coveted Teenage Boy Demographic. She's a government agent, you know, like Nina Williams or Sonya Blade.

What does the B stand for? Probably Betty, Betty Orchid. In any case, here she is, pulling in that Teenage Boy Demographic. Personally, was never a fan. In 1995 I was into Ayla anyway. ...real girls, you say? No way, they were scary.

This is a good time to bring up one of Nintendo Power's more interesting articles:

They gave KI the old mega-push, and to do this they had a bunch of Nintendo of America employees give their thoughts on who the best character was, along with their most effective moves. They managed to find one master for each character (and two for Chief Thunder)

I remember Henry Sterchi. He tested games, lots of games. When I was a kid I couldn't decide if I wanted to be a playtester or a Game Counselor for Nintendo Power. Neither panned out, due to me being like ten.

Whoa, they found the legendary Ken Lobb. That guy had my dream job in the mid-90s, got to play everything before the masses did, and had a gun named after him in Goldeneye 007.

It must have been pretty cool to be immortalized in this particular article, since everyone involved was touted as the best players they could find at NOA.

Chief Thunder inexplicably gets a second entry, which would indicate that he's probably the best character. However, this means someone got bumped.

The final pages go to Sabrewulf and Glacius. The latter is an icy liquid guy who can best be described as Sub-Zero + the T-1000. As a kid, Glacius was probably my favorite character.

So...who got left out? Looks like TJ Combo got left out. TJ Combo, one of the "debatable main character" characters along with Jago and Fulgore.

Are they serious? Two Chief Thunders, and no TJ Combos? Was this a printing error? How in the heck did they have exactly as many entries as characters, yet miss one character?

I kinda remember Cinder being the one they left out, so a bit of a Mandela Effect going on there. This is all a bit bizarre.

In any case, the cover of this issue was really nice:

Fulgore has a definite "Predator" vibe with the wrist-claws and general demeanor. Is there no end to the number of games inspired by either Alien, Predator, or Terminator? All I know for sure is, without them, I probably wouldn't even have a site here.

Character select. Pretty standard character select. Never liked select timers...they make sense in 2P fights to get people to hurry up, but when playing 1P they ought to give you time to check everyone out.

Here's TJ Combo, forgotten by Nintendo Power. All of his moves are punch-related, which is a fun time.

My least-favorite character is Riptor. He's kind of out of place here. A raptor? What is this, Primal Rage?

I go with Glacius, the one I always used to play. He's got a liquid-uppercut move that the CPU has a hard time avoiding.

He battles his archnemesis (well, I don't know, probably) Cinder.

This is the stage I think of when I think of Killer Instinct. It's wild. An expansive desert, with a city in the background...or are those oil wells?

The combat here is all about executing combos, which means chaining certain button inputs to unleash a string of automatic attacks that do a specific amount of damage.

Personally I would always stick to the more normal fighting game "special moves" of the era, like Glacius' uppercut and various projectiles.

In Glacius' case, this is an ice-ball that fires low and bounces on the ground, which is unique and hard to dodge. I'd spam this on my foes.

One fun thing to do is fight Glacius with Glacius and see what color he turns into. There are like five different outfit colors for every character, and for Glacius and Cinder it's a full-body color change that really stands out.

Glacius may have been my favorite, but I also liked Fulgore a lot. The glow of his claws looks really good in action.

They can't say "flawless" because the Boon/Tobias legal team is watching with binoculars, so we get "supreme victories" instead.

They got really weird with the characters in this game, including a skeleton and a raptor. Skeletons were huge in video games back in the day, probably due to Jason and the Argonauts.

TJ Combo's stage has a boxing ring, which is neat. Here he is fighting Chief Thunder, the guy who took his spot in Nintendo Power.

Thunder is cool, at least, and mauls folk with his twin tomahawks. Not sure if he's "get two entries in NP" cool though. No, I'm not gonna let that go!

Orchid's pre-fight portrait has gravity-defying boobs. Somebody could poke an eye on those things!

Orchid's sexy win pose is reason enough to play as her if you're a Teenage Boy in the 90's. They'll have that demographic back in no time.

Also she's got an attack where she transforms into a NEON CAT for a moment.

TJ Combo looks like he's trying to tickle Spinal's ribs. No wonder Spinal is turtling up.

On this run-through I think I like playing as Combo the most. His punches are enjoyable to dish out, with the boxing gloves and all.

Finally I give Jago a whirl. He's got a green fireball attack, along with...

...a sword attack, and a flying roundhouse kick. It's a solid lineup of special moves, but I'm not sure he has "leading man charisma".

The flying roundhouse kick is especially good against the CPU, and catches it off-guard a lot much like the Glacius uppercut does.

In my quest to play as every character, I take a minute to play as Cinder. Played as this dude a LOT as a kid, probably my #3 besides Glacius and Fulgore. Don't know his moves, though.

Fulgore is usually the last fighter you face before the boss, for some reason. He's got a sick rising uppercut attack.

He's the one I take to fight the boss. Only one boss in this game, and it's a two-headed ettin.

Yep, this is Eyedol, who never did much for me. He lacks the cool factor of, say, Goro.

As is fighting game tradition, the final boss fight is REALLY HARD, and he absolutely wails on you with combos.

I fight back with flying kick spam!

...and get rocked by green fireballs!

Firing back with projectiles of my own, and he leaps over them!

Finally, I win! ....or do I? Nope, it's a double-KO. This dude is a beast!

Eventually I eke out a win for real, and that's another game in the bag. Wish I had more to say about this one because it's got a lot of depth to it, but I'm just not a fighting game expert.

The game ends with Eyedol falling into a pit of lava. RIP. Wonder if his two heads ever got into arguments.

Rare challenges the player to up the difficulty level and learn how to do a real combo.

Good game, and historically significant. Most notably, it isn't just a flat-out ripoff of SFII like most of the fighters in this time period were in retrospect.