Re:Retro

Killer Instinct: It’s all about combos, baby

by Joel on June 8th, 2008

If there’s a side-scrolling fighting game that I played more than Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat, it’s Killer Instinct, developed by Rare, Midway and Nintendo and released in arcades in 1994.

If you’ve played Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat, then playing Killer Instinct should be a breeze for you. In Killer Instinct, like other fighting games, the player controls a character with the goal of beating different opponents in a one-on-one match.

The game, however, has other features that differentiate it from other titles:

A double energy bar. Instead of having to beat an opponent in two rounds, each character has two bars of energy. If a player finishes his or her opponent’s first life bar, the fight stops and resumes, just like a transition between two rounds. The difference is, the winning character gets to keep whatever amount of energy he or she had upon beating the opponent. Nifty, eh?

Automatic combos. I think this feature has already been incorporated in today’s generation of fighting games. Back then, though, it was unique to Killer Instinct. Rather than pressing different buttons to deliver individual attacks that make up a combo, combos in Killer Instinct are automated by assigning a button to a special move.

Finishing moves. This feature is inspired by Mortal Kombat’s fatalities. Each character has at least two moves known as No Mercy, which finishes an opponent in a violent manner. One of these No Mercy moves can be activated at the end of a combo.

Sigh. I wish I played the game in the arcades. Too bad I was only able to beat the crap out of my cousins on the Super Nintendo System version of Killer Instinct.

Here’s a video of the intro of Killer Instinct’s arcade version:

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POSTED IN: Arcade, Arcade Games, Blowing people up, Blowing stuff up, Game Boy, N64, Nintendo, Re:Retro, SNES, Street Fighter, Videos, Your Daddy played this game