"A Classic: Overshadowed and Overlooked"

-Visuals 8/10-

Clean and crisp, it's what you'd expect from an arcade to console 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-

Almost perfect transition from the arcade, you have all the music from all of the stages, 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.

The sound effects are first rate as well, with only a couple of sound bites missing that you may, or may not, notice from the arcade version. Definitely a great attempt ar recreating not only the music, but the actual thuds, crunches and blade swipes that echoed through the speakers in your local arcade.

-Control 7/10-

While almost perfect, the game suffers from stiff control in terms of having to use the control pad and not the analog stick to perform moves and combos. 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.

The analog stick would have been nice, and it can be used, but to my own personal knowledge, there isn't anyone out there that can use the analog stick with precision control that is needed here.

-Gameplay 9/10-

First rate stuff for the N64. Giving you not only the Arcade Version and the Versus play, it also offers you the opportunity to learn each character through a Practice/Training mode. In this particular mode, you must follow the directions and pull off each move, then each special move, then each combo ahead of you in order to unlock different game options.

While the Arcade and Versus mode is great to play, the cream of the game comes from that one Training Mode, and once you've mastered each move, special move, combination and otherwise, it'll unlock different options for you to use in the game itself, from air-blocking, to invisibility. Not too bad of an effort.

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.

-Overall 8/10-

One of the best fighters made for the N64 was overlooked for some of the earlier PSX fighting games in terms of visuals and sound. KI Gold is nothing to scoff at, in which it gives you near perfect porting of the arcade with few things missing from it. Some of the most notable portions of the game that are missing, are the FMV sequences on the winning screens and some of the ending screens have been altered. Outside of that, and a few visual glitches {Every game has them}, you're looking at something so close to the Arcade, you might as well have the cabinet in your room.

KI Gold is relatively hard to find these days, and even with Funcoland selling them at 30.00 {US} apiece, you'll be hard pressed to find the game and the original casing. However, if you're an N64 player, and you like a good fighting game, then KI Gold is up your alley. Rent or Purchase, it's a good choice either way.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 12/07/00, Updated 12/07/00