Killer Instinct 2

Killer Instinct 2
Arcade flyer for Killer Instinct 2
Developer(s)	Rare
Publisher(s)	Midway Games Nintendo
Designer(s)	Chris Tilston Kevin Bayliss Mark Betteridge
Composer(s)	Robin Beanland
Series	Killer Instinct
Platform(s)	Arcade, Nintendo 64, Xbox One
Release	Arcade INT: Template:Vgy Nintendo 64
Genre(s)	Fighting game
Mode(s)	Up to 2 players simultaneously
Arcade system	Killer Instinct MIPS Based Hardware System

Killer Instinct 2 (commonly abbreviated KI2) is a fighting game developed by Rare and manufactured by Midway for the arcades in 1996 as a sequel to Killer Instinct (1994). A modified version of KI2, licensed by Nintendo, was published for the Nintendo 64 as Killer Instinct Gold that same year. A Super Nintendo Entertainment System version of KI2 was developed and completed, but never released. A digital port of the game for Xbox One is bundled with the second season of Killer Instinct (2013) under the title Killer Instinct 2 Classic.

Gameplay

As with most fighting games and indeed its predecessor, two characters square off with the goal of depleting the opponent's life bar. As with the original Killer Instinct, when a player's original life bar is fully depleted, he or she will fall to the ground, and immediately begin on his or her second lifebar.

As with the first game, KI2 relies on an automatic combo subsystem in its matches. The matches, as with Killer Instinct, revolve around a three strength system (Quick, Medium and Fierce). However, normal moves have lost a lot of their priority and range, as well as gaining extra recovery time. Throws have been added into the game to deal with blocking characters (as opposed to the top attack in Killer Instinct). Additionally, characters can be knocked down much easier with normal moves than in the first game, ending the possibility of opening with a 'glitch' combo and also weakening the effectiveness of normal moves. Normal special moves no longer are judged on priority, but instead follow a three tiered 'rock, paper, scissors' system, in which a certain special move will always break another certain special move (similar to the three tiered system in Soulcalibur).

Additionally, a Super bar has been added to the game (similar to Street Fighter Alpha or the The King of Fighters series). This super bar fills as a fighter takes damage or executes an attack that is blocked by the opponent. After the bar reaches a certain point, the player can use a multi-hit Super Move which is usually an extended version of a normal special move.

The combo system has its roots in the original Killer Instinct. By pressing a certain strength button after an opener move, a player will launch an auto-double and initiate the combo system of the game. However, unlike the first game, players can now open up combos with new and much less risky moves than before (most notable a close Fierce punch or close Fierce kick). Additionally, Super Moves can be placed into combos, greatly increasing their damage and potency as well as being unbreakable. Additionally combos can be extended using throws, super linkers, manual-doubles, and super end specials. As a result of the weakened normal moves and other changes to the system, combos have now become more devastating in KI2. In an apparent effort to help ease this dominance, combo breakers are now easier to perform. Unlike combo breakers in the first game, which also required a three tiered 'rock, paper, scissors' system based on strength to break, combos are now broken depending on the type of attack. Punches break kick doubles, and kicks will break punch doubles.

Parry, an advanced new addition, allow an open counter-attack after a successful parry block. A player can assume a standing defensive position and cause the attacker to temporarily freeze if the parry is successful, and from there either perform a special stunning technique or a 3-hit variant of a Special Move.

The finishing moves have also been reworked. Now each character can only execute these attacks when the opponent's second life bar flashes red (unlike the first Killer Instinct the opponents falls when he or she loses all of his or her energy bars). Each characters has two Ultimate combo moves (one of them can be executed without executing a combo), the Humiliation sequences were dropped, and the Ultra combo feature is still intact. Unlike the Mortal Kombat Fatalities, however, the KI2's finishing moves do not feature brutality or dismemberment.

Plot

Killer Instinct 2 follows on where the first installment left off. Eyedol's death at the hands of Orchid accidentally sets off a time warp, transporting some of the combatants back in time and allowing the Demon Lord Gargos to escape from Limbo.

Now, trapped 2000 years in the past, the warriors that survived Killer Instinct, along with several new faces, fight for the right to face Gargos in combat. Each character that survived the journey from the first game has a corresponding background story, while new characters on this installment are native inhabitants of this past time period. Some fighters, like T.J. Combo who survives from the original, just want to get home. Others, like new character Tusk, want to bring an end to Gargos and his reign of evil. This time there is no tournament or prize money, just a fight to the finish with the fate of the future hanging in the balance.

Characters

Main article: List of Killer Instinct characters

Eyedol, Chief Thunder, Cinder and Riptor did not return. In their place, four new characters were introduced: Gargos, Kim Wu, Maya and Tusk.

Each character in the game has two or four different endings. Which ending the player gets depends whether or not the player kills (by using a finishing move vs. simply depleting their health) one or more certain character(s) during the course of the game. For example, Jago's endings both involve Fulgore and B. Orchid (if Fulgore does not kill Jago and B. Orchid, they team up and destroy him). Thus, killing or not killing them over the course of the game alters the outcomes of his endings:

• If he kills both of them, he relishes his victory over Fulgore, but feels an inexplicable emptiness in his heart.
• If he kills Orchid but doesn't destroy Fulgore, the cyborg will eventually make a lethal attack on him after he wins the tournament, and fulfills Ultratech's original purposes by seizing control of the world.
• If he kills Fulgore but spares Orchid, his enjoyment of his enemy's demises is only sweetened by the discovery that Orchid is his older sister.
• If he spares both their lives, he makes that discovery when Orchid saves him from Fulgore's attack.

Development and release

Killer Instinct Gold

Killer Instinct Gold is an upgraded version of Killer Instinct 2 that was released for the Nintendo 64 shortly after the launch of the console. The game suffered some graphical downgrades and the endings for each character do not change (as they would in the Arcade version) due to the memory limitations of the Nintendo 64 cartridge. Other than that, Killer Instinct Gold remains faithful to the original Killer Instinct 2.

The new features include:

• Team Battles, in which one can fight with up to 11 characters.
• Team Elimination Battles, in which one has to finish his or her opponents off with Finishing Moves (finishing moves similar to Mortal Kombat's Fatalities, which can be executed immediately) instead of simply depleting their life bar with normal moves, or they will simply return later on in the match (however as the computer player will sometimes use Gargos as the last opponent, victims can be removed from play anyway as he lacks a finishing move).
• Training and Advanced Training, in which the player can learn the moves of the character they have chosen as well as the correct execution of combos, doubles, auto-doubles link moves, etc.
• Options menu, which allows the player to modify certain data, such as the speed of the game, the color of the blood, button configuration, sound and manage Controller Pak data.
• Unlockable content, such as alternate colors for characters and scenarios, and faster degrees of speed for the game.
• The game's final boss Gargos is playable with a code.

KI Gold is compatible with the Nintendo 64's Controller Pak to save options and high scores, though the cartridge also includes battery save. Unlike the arcade version, this home port had most of its FMV cutscenes and several frames of character animation removed, due to the memory limitations of the Nintendo 64 cartridge. Alternate endings for characters were also removed, resulting in each character having only one ending which seems to mix certain aspects of their other endings into one. Since this system was cartridge-based, and full-screen FMVs can take up hundreds of megabytes of space, the FMVs had to be replaced with a simple animation consisting of a zoom of the character the player was using.

To compensate for the loss of animation, the stages in the game were fully rendered in 3D, as opposed to the scaling and distorting FMVs used for the stage backgrounds in the arcade version, allowing more dynamic camera takes at the beginning of the battle, while using less memory consumption. However, the quality of the animation of the sprites has notably decreased in comparison to KI2.

Killer Instinct 2 Classic

A digital port of the game's arcade version, titled Killer Instinct 2 Classic, was released as part of the "Season 2 Ultra Edition" of Killer Instinct for the Xbox One. The digital version of the game supports online multiplayer via Xbox Live.

Soundtrack

Killer Instinct Gold also released its original soundtrack, as the first Killer Instinct under Rare Label, titled Killer Instinct Gold Cuts. It is a 16-track-audio-CD, which includes original tracks from the Arcade versions plus two remixes and the Training Mode track.

Reception

Killer Instinct Gold won four Nintendo Power Awards '96 in the categories Best Tournament Fighting Game (1st place), Best Code (1st place for the Gargos Code), Best Multi-Player Game (2nd place), and Best Player Control (3rd place). In 2013, Rich Knight and Gus Turner of Complex included it on their list of 25 best 2D fighting games of all time, stating that "not quite as good as the first, Killer Instinct 2's greatest strength and weakness were one and the same: it played too much like Killer Instinct. ... A solid game, but not enough so to overshadow its predecessor."

External links

• Killer Instinct Gold at MobyGames