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Released in North America for the Nintendo 64 on November 25, 1996, by Nintendo, and developed by Rare, Killer Instinct Gold features 2D fighting against 3D backgrounds.
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My cousin Joe had a launch weekend Nintendo 64 for a year before he sold it to
me, and ditched out on Nintendo for Playstation. During that time, he only
bought a small handful of games, while renting only a few more. One of those rentals
was
Killer Instinct Gold, a game I'd remembered putting a few quarters
into at the arcades. It had been awhile since I'd put any time into a home
console fighting game (
Super Street Fight II and
Mortal Kombat II and
III for SNES and Sega Genesis had probably
been the last), so I was excited to give
Killer Instinct a spin.
Unfortunately, the game got old quickly and didn't impress, so I quickly went
back to Joe's (soon to be my) copies of
Wave Race 64 and
Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire. Recently, I saw a copy of
Killer Instinct Gold
selling on the cheap, and decided to give the game another chance. Is it better than
I remembered?
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This came out in the 90's, right? Checks out.
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Quite unfortunately, my original assessment of
Killer Instinct Gold wasn't too far off.
Visually, the game looks like a mess. The graphical style
Rareware went for here is now quite dated, and not in that charming Nintendo 64 way.
The backdrops are polygonally messy 3D, while the fighters themselves are large,
detailed sprites. While this was novel in the early 90's, it was already
starting to look awkward by this game's release in 1996. While impressive at
moments, taken as a whole, the graphics in
Killer Instict Gold are a bit of a
mess, though I must mention, the game runs fast and smoothly.
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I guess?
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Speaking of dated, the soundtrack is definitely of its time, as well, though it
does fare a bit better. For whatever reason, Rare decided to give the game's music a mid-90's Eurodance flavor, with several pieces sounding like B-sides from a La
Bouche album. Thankfully, that sound has just a bit of fun timelessness to it,
and it's high energy, so it strangely works here. All of the character grunts and
smacky punch sounds are on point, as well. Speaking of characters, there's
a decent mix here, martial artists, a cyborg, a werewolf, a skeleton, a giant ice
man...
But now to the gameplay...
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Wait, what kind of game is this?
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I'll put a double-caveat here: I am not great at 2D fighting games...but I love
2D fighting games.
Street Fighter II blew my mind when I was a teenager
hanging out in the arcades. I sunk a copious amount of quarters into
X-Men: Children of the Atom. I played an insane amount of
Mortal Kombats 1,
2, and
3.
Marvel vs Capcom 2? 100
hours.
Street Fighter 3: Third Strike? 100 hours. I'm terrible at all of
those fighting games (and many others), but I love them all, and stuck with them until I unlocked everything they had to offer. I feel no such urge to stick with
Killer Instinct Gold.
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But I did it anyway for this review, and death-punched this stupid
Gargoyle final boss in the throat.
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But why not so sticky?
Fighting games generally feature light, medium and heavy
punches, light, medium, and heavy kicks, and the ability to use those moving
forward, backward, standing still, jumping, or crouching. Generally, you can
throw projectiles or do other special moves by doing certain button
combinations, i.e., the classic Street Fighter "down, down-forward,
forward directional pad/joystick rub + punch" combo, which allows Ryu and Ken to
throw fireballs in those games. Other similar button combinations allow additional special moves. K
iller Instinct Gold's got all that stuff.
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Manual? What is this, a Tony Hawk game?
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However, what makes
Killer Instinct Gold different is an insanely complex,
generally memorization-based combo system, which allows you, but more likely
unless you're a master, your CPU opponent, to unleash seemingly endless combo
attacks. There are also ways to stop these combos, i.e. "combo breakers" among
other things. On the early levels of difficulty, you can get by with fighting
game basics, or even with some characters, just mashing buttons. However, the
entry level to the higher modes of difficulty are essentially sky-high, and
reachable only to someone who wants to memorize these laborious, complex
combos.
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Note: Glacius died on the way back to his home planet.
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The thing of it is, most fighting games' higher difficult levels are pretty
inaccessible to someone who hasn't poured hours into the game. Did I mention I
also love 3D fighting games, and that I've put more hours into
Soul Calibur than I can even remember? I'm actually good at that
one...but that's not the point! The point is that for a player to dedicate many
hours of their life into a game to get good at it, that game has to be fun.
Killer Instinct Gold has some low-level thrills, but pumping
hour-upon-hour into it just isn't very fun...for most people. The balance and
the enjoyment factor just isn't there...for most people. Really, these issues were
inherent in the original arcade versions of
Killer Instinct, making long play sessions of it not very enjoyable...for most
people.
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Ah, yes, the thong leotard, the most effective of all fighter
uniforms.
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Why do I keep saying "for most people?" Well, that's because some players will
take extreme pride and enjoyment in memorizing and unleashing
Killer Instinct Gold's combos. Those people are a small crowd, but I
can't pretend like they don't exist. They do, and they'll find little not to
like here, outside of the fact that some characters are missing from the arcade versions, and the graphics look kind of wonky. For everyone else, turn the blood up in the options
menu, and jam buttons until you get tired of it. Fighting a friend in the multiplayer might buy a few more hours of playtime, as well. But...if you're one of the committed, every character has a brief ending that gets slightly less brief on higher difficulty levels. You could dedicate many hours to mastering the combo system to experience those. Yes, you
could do that...
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