I still vividly remember the first time I ever saw Killer Instinct in the arcade in late October, 1994.
Or more accurately, heard it, because eleven-year-old me couldn’t see much past the throng of teenagers huddled around the brand-new arcade cabinet in the middle of Namco Cyberstation that day; only the the name on the top panel which read Killer Instinct in stylized, liquid-metal lettering (later I’d see a sinister-looking, sword-wielding skeleton on the side of the machine) and the bright bars of light flashing over awestruck faces glued to whatever brutality was taking place on the screen.
The game was loud. The whole room shook with ominous, metal-clanging, industrial rock music (I’d soon learn the game’s character select theme was epic). As I crept closer I heard digitized shrieks, growls and wails unlike any I’d heard before. It was chorused by the hushed chatter from the semi-circle of onlookers – the murmurs of wonderment and susurrations of awe and head-nods of morbid appreciation.
Finally I weaved between two flannel-shirted, baggy-jeaned teenagers and glimpsed the game’s camera panning 3D-style over an orange-red sun and a backdrop of limestone mesas as the two kids who stood in front of the control sticks leaned down to put in a fresh set of tokens. Even the backgrounds looked impressive in this game, I thought, inching my way through the crowd. I couldn’t wait to see the fighters in action.
I looked away for only a moment only because of the rare peculiarity of what sat there next to me: the Mortal Kombat 2 machine. Empty. They’d really moved the Mortal Kombat 2 to the right side of the arcade for this new game? Maybe I could get a quick MK2 session in while I waite-
“C-C-C-Combo Breaker!” the voice from Killer Instinct bellowed, catching me off-guard.
I turned back, saw a hulking, mohawked-fighter named Chief Thunder spin across a tottering bridge suspended between the two mountaintops; he had a tomahawk in each hand, the axe-blades aglow with flame as he tore into his opponent, a muscular ninja with a spiky haircut.
The ambiance, the graphics, the lighting, the sense of weight and diverseness with which the fighters moved – I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen. And the combo that Thunder was pulling off on the ninja? Two hits. Three hits. Four. Five. How many times was he going to carve into that poor bastard on the receiving end?
After what seemed like a few full minutes of unanswered punishment, including a gravity-defying, jumping, spiky-mohawk-headbutt uppercut maneuver (yes, Thunder was uppercutting people… with his head) that juggled his ninja assailant in the air, the round was over.
“ULTRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA COMBOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!”
The words echoed for seemingly as long as the combo itself, the announcer’s voice filled with malign gusto. Thunder lifted his tomahawks and grunted in victory.
I don’t remember if I even got to play the Killer Instinct arcade game that day, but the memory of the enthralled crowd, the reactions and the experience of it all still stick with me over thirty years later.
There’s another memory which sticks in my mind when it comes to the Killer Instinct arcade game however, and while it’s not necessarily a negative one, it was a misleading one, especially in hindsight. Before we get to that however, first we have to revisit a comment made by one of the kids beside me that day after I’d witnessed the Killer Instinct arcade game for the first time.
“Oh, snap. Killer Instinct is sick,” the kid said. “Those graphics are money.”
‘90s slang notwithstanding, the kid was right. Killer Instinct’s graphics were money. Literally. The pre-rendered sprites were created with highly-expensive Silicon Graphics computers, the same cutting-edge machines Rare used to make Donkey Kong Country.
The characters, which ranged from the aforementioned mohawked, Native warrior Thunder to a menacing werewolf to a secret agent in a skintight green leotard and high-heeled boots were extremely detailed for the time, had a distinctive, fresh 3D look that set them apart from their Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat counterparts, captivatingly designed and spectacular to watch in action.
“I can’t wait to get a Nintendo Ultra 64,” the kid added. “Killer Instinct’s gonna be all that.”
Although the term might seem nonsensical today, the Ultra 64 (previously known as Project Reality) to which the kid was referring was the codename for what would eventually become the Nintendo 64, the successor to the SNES.
The Ultra 64 was initially announced in 1993, and by the time KI was released in 1994, the name was still being used in promotional materials – with actual pictures of the console and cartridges featuring the Ultra 64 logo and Nintendo even directly affiliating the Ultra 64 with the Killer Instinct and Cruis’n USA arcade cabinets (you can see still the Ultra 64 logo in the game’s opening credits).
More specifically, Nintendo claimed that Killer Instinct was built with Ultra 64 hardware and as a result would be easily converted to the Ultra 64 home console when the system was released.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t true. Rare did make Killer Instinct with Silicon Graphics equipment and a proprietary “Ultra 64 arcade” hardware platform which they co-developed with Midway, but the arcade version ultimately used different hardware than what would end up being the home console Nintendo 64 version. According to the April, 1995 issue of GamePro, the Killer Instinct arcade “hardware [used] a 64-bit MIPS CPU and the Nintendo 64 file format for data structure, but not the Nintendo 64 memory media or graphics technology.”
When it was announced that the Ultra 64 would be delayed for an additional year (to April 1996) after it was originally slated for a Christmas 1995 release, Rare was burdened with a task much different from what they were initially given by Nintendo; to capitalize on the game’s overwhelming success in the arcades (it was one of the most popular and highest-grossing arcade machines in 1995, according to a July 1995 issue of Cash Box, a trade industry magazine) they’d have to bring Killer Instinct to home consoles – only it wouldn’t be the Ultra 64, which was still in developmental limbo.
Instead, Rare had to convert the Killer Instinct arcade game for home release on the SNES and Game Boy consoles. Despite pushing the limitations of the console with games like Donkey Kong Country, naturally Killer Instinct for the SNES had to be downsized; many of the features which made the games stand out in the arcades were downgraded, downsized or straight up removed to fit the 16-bit format, such as the 3D backgrounds, zooming in and out/scaling and the full-motion videos following a character’s win.
Despite that, design limitations like that didn’t deter ten-year-old me (or millions of other SNES gamers for that matter, considering it was a sales hit) from adding the SNES version of Killer Instinct to the top of my wishlist. I begged my parents to buy me the game as soon as it was released and immediately put my all my playing time into the game which had enamored me in the arcades. And it was with the SNES version of Killer Instinct that I’d learn more about the game’s awesomely-designed, engrossing characters, which I’ll explore in the next installment.
Fellow OG gamers, do you remember the first time you saw or played the Killer Instinct arcade game? Was it as memorable an experience for you as it was for me or were your arcade gaming interests different than mine?
You must be logged in to post a comment Login