Retro Gaming Friday Episode 1: Killer Instinct (ARCADE)

Several months ago I started this segment on my Youtube channel. Just let's plays of me playing classic games. Mostly from the 80s and 90s, but occasionally from the 2000s as well. The first video is my favorite video game of ALL TIME, Killer Instinct (ARCADE.)

I remember the first time I heard about a game being developed by Rareware and produced by Nintendo called 'Brute Force.' It was a game tentatively scheduled for Nintendo's up-coming 64-BIT console code-named 'Project Reality.' Later on as things started to round into form, the game got a name change to 'Killer Instinct' which I think is the coolest name for a fighting-game ever, but I'm biased. In an issue of Nintendo Power we started to get an idea of what would be the final designs for most of the characters even though some of the names were still different and there was some minor tweaking here and there.

A lot was made about this game due to the fact that the up-coming 64-BIT console which at this point was called the Nintendo ULTRA 64 was being developed by Silicon Graphics which had done work for major big-budget movies such as 'Jurassic Park.' The actual arcade board for Killer Instinct was far more powerful than the N64 wound up being. We never got to see the original Killer Instinct on the N64, but we did get it on the SNES. The rendered sprites for KI (and the Donkey Kong Country series) were way ahead of their time for 16-BIT graphics.

The first time I saw Killer Instinct in person was in early 1995. There was a local bowling alley called Echo Bowl which had the machine. The first thing I saw was Cinder doing an Ultra Combo on someone and the people doing an infinite-juggle on the poor sap they just gave a drubbing to! I was done after that. I was HOOKED. This game has so much ambiance and presence to it. The sounds were deep, crisp, and bassy using the DCS sound system. The machine was always loud so that when you stepped into an arcade you always heard it being played. The music......oh....the music. So revolutionary at the time. The game had a tongue-and-cheek aspect to it that kept it from being too serious. Just the right level of 90s cheese.

Anyway, enough with the stroll down memory-lane. Here is my playthrough. As always, thank you for taking the time to visit my blog, and have a great day.