I feel like lately Killer Instinct has gotten an incredibly bad wrap from people who weren't around when the game was new.

Killer Instinct is by no means a bad game. But it's not a fighting game either, really. In all honestly, It's design ethos seems to be exactly what Dive Kick explains itself as trying to do.

In the early-mid ninties, fighting games were huge, and the popularity of street fighter 2 gave rise to the invention of a game exploit known as a "combo". A "combo" was a combination of moves that a player could do that would exploit the game animations in order to chain moves together which did not allow the other a player and opportunity to block or to counter. The player simply had to wait until the combo was over, or, if he was really good, he knew the precise second when he had an opportunity to perform a move that would interrupt the combo. A "combo breaker". Soon, this became the domain of high level fighting game play. The actual tactics the game was built on became overshadowed by a meta-game of "who could break the game more". It wasn't long until fighting games began intentionally building combos into the game mechanics. It wasn't long after that, that Killer Instinct came along.

Killer Instict, like Dive Kick, built an entire game around trying to bring that feeling of high level play down to the people who didn't necessarily have the skill to get there on their own. Killer Instinct, honestly, couldn't even be played like a normal fighting game. The whole game was built to resemble the game exploits of past fighting games.

But that's not what made Killer Instinct such an amazing game at the time. Sure it was a bad "fighting game" that existed entirely around replicating the exploits of other, superior fighting games. What it did WELL, was take an "all killer no filler" approach to fighting games. Killer Instinct 1 and the SNES port of the game did what few games do, these days, insomuch as it went out of it's way to provide the total package. Virtua Fighter was big at the time for it's use of 3d graphics. Killer Instict grabbed the 3d rings of VF and included RARE's classic graphics exploit of ray tracing graphics and then taking photos of them for sprites. the result is that the game looked phenomal at the time. Where most fighting games tried to feature their take on what they thought "martial arts" music sounded like, Killer Instinct opted for an edgy techno/metal soundtrack that you could hear all over the arcade. And a loud, affected announcer always made sure you knew what was going on at the KI machine. But more than that, it aped any game that had something worth stealing. Street Fighter had combos? KI had BIGGER combos. Event combos so big they would kill the other player. Mortal Kombat had fatalities? Killer Instinct had Fatalities. And more of them. Silly ones. Real ones. Rumored ones. MK had violence? KI had as much. Good fighting games had character stories? KI had them too. And all the characters were extremeley well designed to boot.

I don't have high hopes for this new KI. I haven't seen a game developer put out "the total package" in a long time. They always cut things they don't think are necessary. "why does every character need an animated ending? we'll just put up a text card." "Why does every character need a fatality? We'll just do a few." "Why does a game need secrets? We'll do DLC".

KI is a game that can only, only, only succeed if the developers take the tone that it has to deliver twice as much as expected.

Worked just fine with Duke Nukem Forever. Right?

KI's tone was perfect at the time. A time where cartoony violence over good gameplay was a highlight, not just awkward. A time where extreme sports (and xtreme everything else) were the edgiest thing around. A time when "doing the dew" didn't cause an involuntary eye roll. KI was fun because the bar was lower then. Games are better now. Fighting games even more so.

Some fond memories... should remain just that.

This was an extremely well articulated description of Killer Instinct. I was aware of the game, but have never had any serious interaction with it. Although after reading your post, I feel I've learned more about it.

Whether it'll be done right is yet to been seen, as what was shown today was too brief to make much of a judgement. But it being used mostly as a twitchTV streaming demo can't be a good sign.

Way too early to judge this game as irrelevant. I don't get all the negativity surrounding basically everything these days.

I remember Killer Instinct being a game of its time, and I'm not confident that it can be relevant again.

I wanted to be good at KI so bad but could never pull off those ultimate combos that are 30+.

Cinder was badass.

@brendan You've got a mighty good point there.

The Killer Instinct monsters always remind me of things you see in TV game design school ads.

"WANNA MAKE THE HOTTEST, NEWEST GAMES!?"

*Fulgore and Saberwolf fly by, spinning in circles, with laser sound effects*

It's Double Helix, the proud creators of Silent Hill: Homecoming and the Battleship game. It will be awful.

I just remember playing it at the arcade and being blown away by the graphics, the music, the characters. I've never been a fighting game buff or whatever, so I can't comment on that. I just love the fact that someone is going to try and bring one of my best childhood memories back to life. It might be an utterly failed attempt, but an attempt no less. I've been waiting for one for years.

I'm not sure hwat you mean. Duke Nukem Forever did just the opposite. It didn't deliver anything the previous game did and tried to make everything "modern" which resulted in a game that wasn't worth playing at all.

And I couldn't disagree with you more saying "games are better now". Games have more realistic graphics, sure, but I have much, much, much less fun playing modern games, and on average review scores are much lower as well.

So ye.. the game is f2p, with buyable characters. While they have several models of purchase, it seems like we can completely forget about any sorta of over the top package of awesomeness.

Yeaaah, just found out it's f2p, not brilliant.

So yes, there are fighting games using a f2p model now, but they are reusing already made content from the full releases to both attract people who weren't interested in paying for the games, and to make some more money from said content at the end of this generation of consoles. They arn't the only way or primary way to play the games, more like money making trial versions.
This on the other hand, is the only version of the game, if it wants to be a serious fighting game every character needs to be available for everyone to practice with and against, which to me predicts how this will turn out.