"A follow up to an already great fighter"

-Visuals 10/10-

Clean and crisp, it's what you'd expect from an arcade port of a technical fighter. Placing you in the persona of several different fighters, you'll have a range of character design to look at. From a Conan the Barbarian type swordsman, to an animated skeleton, nothing was left to chance here.

The battlegrounds that you fight on are somewhat interactive, and always have something to draw your attention away from the fight at first. It's a refreshing change of pace from fighting games that rely solely on character design.

-Audio 8/10-

A perfect compling in the arcade version, you have all the music from all of the stages moving fluidly, and it all rings out clear in your ears. Each stages music gives you an upbeat feeling and keeps you rocking with the intense fighting going on, and most of the music is mood specific.
Thuds, crunches, grunts, groans and otherwise sound great when listened to close enough, and blend in nicely without fading too far into the background, or blaring out too loudly into the foreground. Either way, it's pleasent enough not to drive you nuts.

-Control 10/10-

Responsive in every aspect, timing the moves only takes a little practice, and even the high hitting combinations can be done without much effort. The true test is to be able to time out the Manual combinations without screwing it up completely. Beginners will have trouble, even with easy to use control stick, and the simple button set-up.

With that aside, most moves are rather easy to complete, and combos can be a breeze as long as they remain Automatic. When you start getting into the high-hitting manual combinations, you have trouble pulling off some of the transition moves to link the combos together.

-Gameplay 9/10-

The game itself ranges from easy battles, to pitched, almost unfair fights against the main boss. You'll find yourself in dire need of learning every characters moves in order to proceed, and with that, you'll find that the game takes a much more technical turn, forcing you to use and switch up different moves for an almost endless list of combos.

The combinations is where you'll spend all of your time, as the lists and the possibilities can be endless. All of the fighters have several jump in combinations, that can turn into long and involved combos. Along with this, there are stage fatalities and different finishing moves that can be performed with a little practice. Just remember that timing is everything with this game, and to really get into it, you have to take the time to play and practice with each character.

-Overall 10/10-

One of the best fighter series that started in the arcade and moved onto the home systems, Killer Instinct 2 is nothing to scoff at, in which it gives you perfect version to play with missing from it. Some of the most notable portions of the game have to be the motion of the characters after each match, and even the flashy way that you can end a fight with speedy combinations. Outside of that, and a few visual glitches, you've got some pretty nice fighting for a game that is near legendary.

KI 2 is hard to find in the arcades these days, having been matched up against the Tekken Series and even the Street Fighter series. Needless to say, it's worth spending a few dollars in quarters, just to play through a few times for a little bit of rememberance, and something that is different than Tekken.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 03/16/01, Updated 03/16/01