Collection essentials #203: Killer Instinct (SNES)

Arcade fighting games were all the rage in the early ‘90s, something that started with a certain extremely popular Capcom franchise I haven’t gotten to yet, and continuing with Midway’s Mortal Kombat which put a more violent and mature spin on the genre that helped it stand out. British company Rare, who mostly made games for Nintendo consoles, wanted to capitalize on fans of the more dark and violent fighting games, and thus Killer Instinct was born, though it is considerably less violent than the aforementioned Mortal Kombat.

In 1994, companies such as Nintendo were hard at work at making video games with 3D graphics a reality, as that’s what the next generation of video game consoles would feature. Killer Instinct was an attempt to use some of that developing technology to release an impressive-looking arcade game before the new consoles were out. And they succeeded, as the original arcade Killer Instinct looks quite impressive, especially for its time. There was a problem though, that being Nintendo’s big 3D console on the horizon was taking a long time to develop and got delayed to 1996. And so, rather than wait well over a year to bring the game home to that system, it was decided that a Super Nintendo version be made instead. Obviously, serious compromises had to be made because that old console was nowhere near powerful enough to recreate the exact arcade game. And honestly the job they did with the conversion is extremely impressive. The graphics and audio were very much scaled back, but they successfully retained the game’s style and didn’t cut any gameplay-related elements.

I’d like to describe how a fighting game works, but I’d actually like to save that full description for when I get to the enormous Capcom game that shaped the entire genre, so I’ll make this a bit abbreviated. Basically, it’s those games where two characters fight it out using various moves in an effort to get the opponent’s health bar down to zero first. Killer Instinct provides a variety of cool and memorable characters, each with unique moves. On a basic level it very much resembles an average fighting game, but this game does do some things that help it stand out. Most notable is the “combo” system. This game provides the ability to link moves together quite a bit if you can land a hit on the opponent and continue to press the right button combinations. It can take several seconds to pull off a full-length combo when done correctly, but there’s also the possibility that the opponent will input a certain button combination that will break up the combo, which causes the announcer to yell out “CO-CO-CO-COMBO BREAKER!”, a very memorable voice clip.

As for my personal history with Killer Instinct, it’s a game that my cousins Kevin and Peter owned, so I would play it at their house all the time. But they were way better than me, and that was sometimes frustrating! I knew a lot of the moves, but not many combos, and I sometimes felt like I had to resort to jump-kicking around the stage to dodge their attacks and do damage, which was really annoying of me. 

I wouldn’t call Killer Instinct one of my absolute top fighting games, but it’s certainly an impressive one that stands out from its peers and deserves to be a collection essential.