"Fun but cheap."

THE YEAR IS 1995 (or 1994, I forgot)

Deep in the mysterious laboratories of the video game company Nintendo, a company that practically had never before made a violent game, let alone a fighter, decided to push Rare's violent product under its name. KI would go on to forever make combos in fighting games mainstream.

AUDIO/VISUAL DETAIL

It still looks pretty nice by today's standards. The game had nice backgrounds and if I remember correctly, the characters were 3D models on a 2D axis. Animation was relatively smooth.

The commentator was pretty cool: he shouts a different name for each combo. The music set the mood: dark, kind of industrial.

MAKING COMBOS A GIMMICK

Before KI, only really, hardcore players were seen at arcades pulling devastating combos (usually no more than 4 hits, by the way). In KI, after learning the basics of a character, anyone can start doing 10+ hit combos with relative ease. You do a combo starter move, hit one of the three punches or kicks (each character has a different linker), then a special move, and repeat the process.

One fundamental problem with this: seeing as Rare wanted players to go off with combos, huge combos don't actually serve any significant damage. Throw in the fact that anytime when the opponent has you in a combo (other than a juggle), you can do a combo breaker, and the large combos lose all impact. Sticking to 3 or 4-hit combos and strong single attacks is more effective, unless you wanted to put on a show for newbies, of course.

There are two No Mercies (fatalities) for each fighter, which are heavily inspired by Mortal Kombat. Also, everyone has an Ultra Combo, which basically does a 20+ hit combo after inputting a singal move while doing a standard move. It's a nice way to finish off your opponent (you can only do it when there's just about a 1/4 of health left, blinking red).

WHY DID KI NOT SEE COUNTLESS, SUCCESSFUL SEQUELS?

Because gamers began to notice its lack of long-term appeal. Whereas competition like Street Fighter, King of Fighters, and Virtua Fighter had more free-form fighting, playing KI kind of seems like you're ''on rails''. This especially became apparent when KI was ported to SNES; it was a blast the first month, but after that, people got sick of it. Chain combos were always similar for each character, the fatalities are always the same, etc. But hey, nothing you can really do about it: having specific gimmicks limits the number of things you can do.

STORY, CHARACTERS

I don't fully remember the story, but it had something to do with an evil technological development project that made that incredibly cheap, final boss Eyedol (a freak beast with two heads and a club). There was a good variety of characters to play as, fairly cool designs, though not too original: a skeleton, boxer, ninja, robot, human torch, ice man, etc.

FINAL WORD

If you've never played KI, or haven't touched it in a long time, give it a play again. You'll find yourself having a lot of fun... It's always a really short-term fix though.

OVERALL -- 7/10

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 04/18/01, Updated 08/19/03