Great memories: Killer Instinct

Aaah, a fine pearl true geeks will surely remember. Realeased in 1995, Killer Instinct was Rareware's response to Midway's Mortal Kombat and Capcom's Street Fighters. Like MK, KI had blood and Fatalities (Here, called "No Mercy") and like Street fighters, had three punch buttons and three kick buttons. Strong, Medium and Light. So, they basically merged MK's blood-splattering with Street Fighter's technical gameplay, which made for an interesting fighting experience.

I still remember my first days with this wonderful game: It was someting like ten or so years ago, it was Christmas. At the time, I had only a Sega Genesis (Or Megadrive, for European folks). One of my gifts was a F-Zero cartridge. "I don't have a Super Nintendo...", I said. The next gift was a great surprise: a new SNES console, which included Killer Instinct and its soundtrack, Killer Cuts.

I played that game so much. The graphics were terrific and, like every kids my age, I loved violent stuff. At the time, I didn't so much care about unlockables and everything, if the game was fun, I was happy enough with that. I had a friend who was always comming at my home with his brother and KI was the game we played the most. We were beasts in KI and we were always ready for hot matches, me with my favorite robotic fighter, Fulgore and the others usually picking Cinder or Glacius.

Speaking of fighters, it was the game that had the most original roster in my opinion. Only 10 fighters, including the final boss but they were all unique. You had a robot, a werewolf, a secret agent, a human torch, a dinosaur and so on, whereas in MK they simply took Scorpions, changed his color scheme, added a few moves and made another character with it. Damn, Ermac and Rain had to wait maybe 10 years before they could get their own frickin' character designs! Same with Street Fighter: Take Ryu, change the hair style and the color scheme and there! You got Akuma, Ken and Dan! Big lack of originality and what laziness.......

The graphics were great, too. Using the same procedures as DK Country, Rare made 3D models to be implemented in the game, giving a pseudo-3D feeling to it. Of course, there was no impressions of depths, it played like every 2D fighting games of the time, but it was enjoyable.

The thing that was really annoying with Killer Instinct was the lack of unlockable bonus. You could play as Eyedol with a cheat code but that was it. No new stuff to unlock, while in MK there was plenty of bonus to unlock with cheat codes.

It's pretty limited by today standards but I had such great memories of this game so that's why I think everyone should try it. Get an emulator or somethin' and start kicking ass!

And damn, I gotta find a copy of Killer Cuts..... :(

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On another note, I've pretty much been in Quake mods and total conversions. I discovered some great ones, such as Airquake and Prydon's Gate (Diablo fans, this is for you! :). I got my hands on Quake 2 and I've been looking for some Total Conversions but I didn't find any interesting ones so, if you know of any TCs I should try, just throw me a link! :)