At the Summer Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago in 1994, Nintendo showed journalists two arcade games running, it said, on the hardware of its coming 64-bit console, the Ultra 64. One was Williams’ Cruis’n USA. The other was Killer Instinct, a fighting game from Rare, the British studio that was about to release Donkey Kong Country. Edge called it “an amazing beat ’em up”, though its side-on view had already earned it the nickname Street Fighter 2000. The console would not arrive until 1996, and would not be called Ultra 64 when it did. Killer Instinct reached the arcades in late 1994 and came home a year later on the Super Nintendo, a machine it had never been meant for.
Fast facts
- Developer: Rare.
- Arcade: manufactured by WMS and released by Midway in North America in October 1994.
- Home versions: Super Nintendo and Game Boy, 1995, published by Nintendo.
- Fighters: ten selectable characters and a boss, Eyedol.
- Sequels: Killer Instinct 2 (arcade, 1996) and Killer Instinct Gold (Nintendo 64, 1996); Killer Instinct (Xbox One, 2013).
“Ultra 64” in the arcades
Nintendo had promised that coin-ops using its new hardware would appear in 1994, and Killer Instinct and Cruis’n USA were the games that led its return to the arcades. In November 1994 Edge reported that Killer Instinct would be “the first game to bring the Nintendo/SGI CPU into play”. At the AMOA arcade show that autumn it was, Edge said, the main attraction: complete, with “tight play mechanics and utterly beautiful graphics”.
Looking back in 1997, 64 Magazine was less impressed with the branding. Neither game had been programmed by Nintendo, it pointed out, and both had appeared “on standard Williams hardware”; with hindsight, “it was an obvious con”. Killer Instinct’s fighters looked like nothing a home machine could draw because they were not drawn in real time. Rare modelled them on Silicon Graphics workstations using Alias PowerAnimator and stored the rendered frames, the same technique it had used for Donkey Kong Country.
Combos and the combo breaker
Killer Instinct was built around long combinations. At the AMOA show Edge counted 23 hits in “a particularly devastating attack” from Spinal, the skeleton; its review the following May described “absurdly complex 22-hit combination attacks”. A combo started with an opener, which a correctly chosen button turned into an automatic double; a linking move carried it on, and the biggest finish of all was the Ultra Combo. A player could also humiliate a beaten opponent or end the fight with a Danger Move.
The idea Edge singled out was the “combo breaker”: a move with which “the unfortunate victim of a combination onslaught can use to instantly ‘break’ from the carnage”. Breaking worked like rock, paper, scissors. As Nintendo Power later explained, the defender had to recognise the strength of the attack being used: “quick breaks medium, medium breaks fierce and fierce breaks quick”. Because breakers were “relatively easy to master”, Edge thought, there would be “fewer of those tedious, over-scientific one-sided novice/expert bouts”.
The ten fighters were Jago, whose fireball and uppercut Edge thought owed “a great deal” to Street Fighter II; Orchid; Combo; Glacius; Fulgore; Spinal; Sabrewulf, whose name would “ring a bell with Rare/Ultimate aficionados” (Ultimate, the Stamper brothers’ earlier company, had published Sabre Wulf in 1984); Cinder; Riptor; and Chief Thunder. Edge gave the arcade game eight out of ten in May 1995 and called it “a new benchmark for future contenders”.
The Super Nintendo version
The arcade machine’s announcer had promised that the game was “coming to your home”. The Ultra 64 slipped, and in 1995 Nintendo brought Killer Instinct home on the Super Nintendo instead, on a 32-megabit cartridge, the same size as Donkey Kong Country. Nintendo Power promised that “nothing’s been watered down”: all the fighters, all the moves and all the combos, including Riptor’s 30-hit Ultra. In fact Cinder had nearly been left out for lack of space, Computer and Video Games reported, until Rare found room for him. The American release came with a limited-edition CD for the first shipment, Killer Cuts, with 19 remixed tracks from the game and a secret bonus track. The cartridge itself was black: one of only three Super Nintendo games, Fabien Sanglard notes, not moulded in the standard grey.
British players paid £55. Total! reviewed it in October 1995, found all ten fighters and Eyedol present, and praised the backdrops as “some of the most detailed and aesthetically pleasing that we’ve seen”, but warned that the PAL version ran a little slower than the American one, a point Computer and Video Games made too. A Game Boy version followed in 1995.
Killer Instinct 2 and Gold
Killer Instinct 2 reached American arcades in early 1996, with four new characters, Maya, Tusk, Kim Wu and Gargos. Nintendo Power reported that each fighter now had three or more linkers instead of one, that kicks now broke punches and punches broke kicks whatever their strength, and that a super-move meter had been added. Its Nintendo 64 conversion, Killer Instinct Gold, came out in 1996 in America with rotating 3D arenas. N64 Magazine, reviewing it in April 1997, called it “a year too late” and summed it up as “guaranteed to please fans of the coin-op. And nobody else.”
Killer Instinct on the Xbox One
After Microsoft bought Rare in 2002 the series lay dormant until 2013, when a new Killer Instinct was a launch game for the Xbox One, developed by Double Helix Games. It was free to download with one fighter, Jago; the rest were sold separately. Edge found “a smart battle system that will let even beginners pull off flashy, extended combos”, with openers, linkers, enders and the combo breaker all back, and the Ultra Combo “brought over from Rare’s arcade original”, but thought the launch version felt “like half a game”. Iron Galaxy Studios took over after Amazon bought Double Helix in 2014 and added two more seasons of fighters; the game came to Windows in 2016, and a 2016 Definitive Edition included ports of the two arcade games. A free Anniversary Edition update followed in November 2023.
Sources
- Edge issue 12, September 1994, pp. 3 and 11: the Summer CES, “Street Fighter 2000”, Killer Instinct and Cruis’n USA for the Ultra 64.
- Edge issue 14, November 1994, p. 15: Killer Instinct as the second Ultra 64 coin-op and “the first game to bring the Nintendo/SGI CPU into play”.
- Edge issue 15, December 1994, p. 13: the AMOA show; Killer Instinct complete; 23 hits from Spinal.
- Edge issue 20, May 1995, pp. 80–81: arcade review (manufacturer WMS, developer Rare): Alias PowerAnimator on SGI, pre-rendered graphics, ten characters, 22-hit combos, the combo breaker, eight out of ten.
- 64 Magazine issue 1, May 1997, p. 8: the Ultra 64 coin-ops, Rare’s ACM technique, “standard Williams hardware”, “an obvious con”, the SNES release.
- Nintendo Power volume 73, June 1995, p. 56: the 32-megabit SNES version, Riptor’s 30-hit Ultra, Killer Cuts (19 tracks and a hidden cut).
- Computer and Video Games issue 168, November 1995, p. 80: the £55 price, Cinder, the 32-megabit cartridge, the slower PAL version.
- Total! issue 46, October 1995, p. 28: SNES review: ten fighters and Eyedol, the backdrops, the PAL speed.
- Fabien Sanglard, Game Engine Black Book: DOOM, p. 321: the black Killer Instinct cartridge.
- Nintendo Power volume 81, February 1996: Killer Instinct 2 in the arcades, the new characters, linkers, auto doubles and the combo breaker rules in both games, the super-move meter.
- Nintendo Power volume 91, December 1996: Killer Instinct Gold’s 3D arenas; the arcade announcer’s “Coming to your home”.
- N64 Magazine issue 1, April 1997, pp. 76–77: Killer Instinct Gold review.
- Edge issue 262, January 2014, p. 96: Killer Instinct (Xbox One, Double Helix) review.
- Wikipedia, “Killer Instinct (1994 video game)” (accessed September 2026) (web, secondary): the October 1994 arcade release, Midway, the Game Boy version. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_Instinct_(1994_video_game)
- Wikipedia, “Killer Instinct (2013 video game)” (accessed September 2026) (web, secondary): Iron Galaxy, the Amazon purchase of Double Helix, the Windows release, the Definitive and Anniversary editions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_Instinct_(2013_video_game)