Killer Instinct Gold

"A huge dissapointment"

Killer instinct: The game that was supposed to show what the N64 hardware was capable off (graphically speaking). It came to the arcades first, with a screen that reminded us that it was powered by nintendo's ''ultra 64'' hardware. The arcade machine actually used a R4600 chip (the N64 uses a R4300I one, so its not far from reality).

When the game came out for the SNES because the ''ultra 64'' was delayed, Rare had to develop KI2, which would show what the N64 can do.

The game is basicly a mortal kombat/street fighter mix with a twist: huge ''automatic combos''. (More on it later). Some hated this new combo system (new for KI1, carried over to KI2), especially the street fighter purists, while some people loved it. If you hated the killer instinct style combos, you're going to hate the game anyway, and I don't know why you're looking for killer instinct reviews, so I'll keep reviewing this game supposing you don't mind the KI combo system.

***Gameplay***:

This game uses the street fighter style 6 button system, with quick, medium and hard punches and kicks, and the characters have a set of special moves (resembling street fighter a lot, for example, jago has ''endokukens'' and ''tiger fury'' moves, which are hadoken and dragon punch moves, they even use the same controller motions) and super specials (which are usually the same moves, only stronger).

The combo system is cheap, you just follow preset combo sequences and end up with 13 hit combos and things like that.

Besides that, the game borrows the fatality concept from mortal kombat, in which you pull a ''finishing move'' that kills your opponent, only that you do it when your opponent's life bar is flashing red, or you can do an ''ultra combo'' too (a huge combo).

***Graphics***:

And the dissapointment starts! KI1 was a graphically impressive game. The characters were huge, detailed and ''shiny'', in a donkey kong country kind of way, only better. IMO, it's one of the best looking games ever. Many people played KI and KI2 just because of its superb graphics. KI2 was more of the same. Both games also had some eye popping mini cinemas everytime you won a match, which I remember seeing in awe.

I bought the game and I realized what a rip off KI gold is. The characters look very blurry. From ANY scaling degree, it just looks blurry. Now the characters remind me of claynimation models. The blurryness becomes ridiculous once you win a match and get a closeup. ''Is that bunch of pixels supposed to be my character''?

The once beautiful, ACM backgrounds were replaced by polygonal ones for KI gold, which are far less detailed and can be very blocky.

And the worst offense here: WHAT HAPPENED TO THE BEAUTIFUL ACM CINEMAS YOU USED TO GET WHEN YOU WON A MATCH IN THE ARCADE? Instead you get a scaling view on the image of your fighter-which looks like a cardboard standee-.

Many people think this game actually looked good. It doesn't. They're comparing it to the SNES KI1, which actually looked pretty good for being a 16bit rendition of a 64bit game using a hard drive. However, this is the N64, this the system that's supposed to be inside the arcade machine, and it was supposed to be a perfect port. So why did we get a watered down version instead?

***Sound***:

It is actually good. The voice of the game's narrator is crisp and sounds great, and just like in the arcade. The music of each stage is pretty cool too.

***extras***:

More dissapointment!! I already mentioned the loss of the cinematic displays after you win a fight. Well, KI2 also had multiple endings, depending on if you performed your finishing moves on certain characters. For instance, if jago uses it on fulgore, he gets ending A, if he doesn't, he gets ending B. The multiple endings are gone. The full motion video in the endings are gone too. This may be all bells and whistles. But what is KI without its bells and whistles?

The veredict:

gameplay: 8 out of 10

Pretty close to the arcade. The N64 controller may not be the best thing for fighting games, but the gameplay is still pretty good.

Sound: 9 out of 10

Tons of voices, great music, the narrator still sounds as cool.

Graphics: 2 out of 10

KI/KI2 is all about its graphics. The cool, jaw dropping ACM characters and cinema clips. KI gold is a blurfest, a similar experience to having myopia and trying to look far away-always. See the closeups after you win a match and laugh at the bunch of blurry pixels.

Replay value: 5 out of 10

Beat the game, find lame endings, find the FMV gone, and unlock 3 ''secret colors''. Yawns.

Final score: 6.5
Since graphics are such an important factor for this game, we can't forgive how they were butchered. Besides that, why is this first gen nintendo64 fighter, based on an arcade game that was supposed to be made with the N64 in mind so full of compromises? Graphics, endings, cinemas, backgrounds... all those compromises for a game that should fit like a glove?

Raised to 7 for gamefaqs.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 06/24/03, Updated 06/24/03