Killer Instinct

The Good
For a handheld game, KI isn't all that bad at all. I'm actually surprised at how much rare were able to include in this. Sure, it's far from the originals looks, but it really is impressive to watch when compared to other Game Boy fighters.

Getting into the game isn't all that hard. Choose your player and mash the buttons. Thankfully there are plenty of moves each character can perform, and they are easy enough to pull off (most of them anyway).

What stands KI out from the crowd is the graphics. On a system which has very little power, Rare have found some extra power to not only present the characters in a form similar to the Arcade versions, but also keep them moving around the screen fairly smoothly. All that and a fairly decent MIDI soundtrack that never got annoying to me like past Game Boy music scores.

The Bad
Here's where the achivements come to a halt. Thankfully, the Game Boy Pocket, Color and Advance made it easier to see the characters on screen, as the original Game Boy had a hard time keeping up. Graphics were at times blurry, unless you had an uptodate system.

So much work has been put into the graphics that Rare forgot to add some decent play modes to back up the single player game. You can complete the game fairly quickly once you get used to a characters style, and other then pushing up the difficulty level, nothing else will keep you occupied here.

The Bottom Line
Rare had something going with this. It's the best presentation on an original Game Boy screen, yet still the complete package is below par. Hopefully a full conversion of KI will find its way to the Game Boy Advance, as it made plenty of fans while out and about during the 90's. It deserves to be brought back into the world, I just hope that Nintendo realise that.