Killer Instinct Arcade Rare Retrospective

The release of KI in early 1994 caused quite a stir in the arcade market for a variety of reasons. Those who had been following Rare’s career as a developer were surprised by the company’s abrupt foray into a genre which had never previously seemed to interest them, while gamesplayers the world over rushed for the chance to pull off some spectacular combos and special moves against an array of weird and wonderful opponents rendered to a previously unseen standard. All this attention rocketed the game to number 1 in that year’s official arcade chart, confirming the return to the forefront of development that Rare had initiated with the release of DKC.

Killer Instinct is and always has been a love-it-or-hate-it game with as many critics as it has followers, attracting flak as much for its stubborn refusal to abandon 2D combat traditions as for its heavily combo-based style of play. Nonetheless, its essential popularity was confirmed by the performances of the SNES and Game Boy conversions in 1995, each topping its respective annual sales chart and earning widespread critical acclaim for the achievement it represented. Since then KI2 has been unleashed upon the arcades, with the N64 receiving its own tweaked and enhanced version in the form of KI Gold: but still the original KI refuses to be overshadowed, remaining a long-standing favourite with arcade punters worldwide.