Ex-Rare designers Chris Tilston and Phil Dunne have been speaking to EuroGamer. The two who once worked on the likes of Donkey Kong Country, Banjo Kazooie and Golden Eye, are now working as part of a four-man team at indie developer Starfire Studios.
I found the interview interesting as it sheds some light on a few things, including the development of the Super Nintendo version of Killer Instinct. Apparently, Killer Instinct was designed to be "loud, brash and in your face" for the arcade market, and Tilston admits the fighter was never intended for release on home consoles. He also tells us that other designers at Rare said they would never be able to strip down the detail level to get it running on Super Nintendo hardware, Chris in the end managed to get rid of 80% of the animation, calling it "a bastardisation" of the arcade version. However, he also noted that the console game did very well, selling 3.2 million copies in the process, They also revealed that Killer Instinct 2 was far into development for the Super Nintendo, including more frames and high quality graphics, but when the Nintendo 64 came around, the team decided to make Killer Instinct Gold for the new system.
Asked if they would like to do a new Killer Instinct game if Microsoft approached them, Tilston replied:
"Yeah. We'd consider it, yeah definitely. But they've got a team of guys at Rare. There's nobody from the original team left."
Dunne also revealed the game eventually released as Banjo Pilot on Game Boy Advance was originally going to be Donkey Kong Pilot [he meant Diddy Kong Pilot] and was actually completed. But once Rare was sold to Microsoft, they couldn't use the Donkey Kong license and that became Banjo.
Full Interview: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-10-13-ex-rare-devs-talk-killer-instinct-perfect-dark-interview
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